In the last month it seems like both nothing and an unfathomable amount has happened. While it seems impossible, I think both are pretty true.
My days here are far from full, but I manage to find ways to fill my time with various nonsense-activities. Volunteers from earlier batches knowingly tell me that this will change soon, but I’m still a bit doubtful. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some reading (I’ve read 20 books in a little more than 3 months) and making the appropriate preparations for moving out of my host family’s house and into my own apartment.
Five or six weeks ago I went apartment searching and located one that seemed suitable, and made the arrangements to have it approved (we have to have approval from peace corps so that they can come and inspect your new digs and make sure we’re not moving into a deathtrap in the ghetto). Being the smart cookie that I am, I made sure that it was up to all necessary standards- party because I didn’t want to have to look for another place and partly because I wouldn’t want to live somewhere that didn’t meet the basic standards. A few weeks ago, when my regional manager came to do a site visit I took her by and she approved my move, I was all clear to move at the beginning of September, exactly 3 months after I arrived at site.
The week of my move was hectic and I made many trips to Naga, the nearest city to my site. I was hoping to make use of the school mulit-cab (a weird little truck thing that has benches on the back and rides low like a car) to transport everything in one day. However, when I asked about using it, my supervisor had suggested it, I was informed that it’s “under repair.” This thing has been under repair pretty much since I got here. I’m not sure if it really breaks down all that much, if it’s been broken down for a long time and never fixed or if that’s their way of saying no without saying “no.” Regardless, my plans to have a smooth quick trip to the city to get all the big things I needed (like a mattress, kitchen stuff, closet, kitchen table and other odds and ends) was foiled and I had to rethink and regroup.
I don’t know anyone else that has a car that I would feel comfortable asking to drive me to and from town and haul all my stuff, so I decided that I was going to have to do this in pieces. In the past week, I made exactly 5 trips to Naga. Usually, I go twice at most- once during the week for my language lesson and once on the weekend to get away, use the internet and pick up groceries. Each time I went, I returned with a large load of things and piece by piece I semi-furnished my new place.
I say semi-furnished because I still lack a good number of things- they aren’t really necessary, but make a house a bit more comfortable to be in. Right now the only furniture I have is a small kitchen table and two plastic chairs that I borrowed from the school. I don’t have an actual bed, just a bamboo-backed mattress that I roll up when I’m not sleeping on it. I told my host family in Pili about that and they said, “You will be floor manager!” and laughed heartily. Apparently that’s what they call it when you sleep on the floor. Ate Shirley said that they used to do that until they had the money to get beds (and they still do it when I come to visit and bed space is short), they just slept “Japanese style.”
I’m still not sure if I will ever get an actual bed frame- I guess it will depend on how comfortable this set-up is in the long-run. Eventually, I’ll also try to get some things to sit on. There’s some very beautiful bamboo furniture available locally and it’s actually pretty cheap, especially compared to the vinyl-type upholstered furniture that abounds here (not fun to sit on in the heat, your butt gets all sweaty and you stick to the furniture). Eventually, I’d like to get a small couch, a chair or two, a couple of small tables and a bookshelf.
In preparation for moving in to the new place I did a lot of cleaning that involved killing only 5 or 6 cockroaches and spraying the crap out of any areas that seemed like cockroaches might like to move into in the future. I swept, mopped and scrubbed the entire apartment. In the past two days I’ve also waxed the concrete floors in my bedroom and the spare room that I’m going to use as a large closet. The process of waxing is a bit disagreeable, mainly because I chose to use “red dye wax” which is red in color (duh!) and is petroleum based so it stinks like you can’t believe. First you have to coat the floor with the wax, let it dry and then polish it using a coconut husk. So far, the floor in my room (which I waxed first) still turns my feet a little red when I walk on it; I’m hoping that will stop soon. It is nice now, though, because the floor is “waterproof” and much easier to sweep. I just need to get a grass mat to put under my mattress to keep the bamboo from getting stained and make it look pretty!
I’ve been trying to get things taken care of pretty quickly yet not get ahead of myself as far as getting “things.” I am leaving my site in a couple of days and heading off for a couple of weeks to do technical training with Peace Corps. I figure that I can get by with what I’ve got until I get back, but I do want to get things either put away or stored neatly until my return.