Oh the things that happen when your roommate leaves...

It’s funny how things go in phases. Over the past month I have found myself painfully throwing out a lot of food. It started when Sonia, my roommate, left to go back to Colombia. We actually had another American girl staying with us at the time, and so the first thing Emily and I did was to scour through what Sonia had generously left us: fermenting purple jello and freezer-burned mystery meat (the chicken that she left, unfortunately, had to be tossed after it leaked all over the de-thawed freezer…keep reading). In this whole process, Emily and I were working on getting the honking-big fridge (which sat in our kitchen holding photos for six months before I even tried to turn it on…I always wondered why we didn’t use it…) to work, so that Sonia’s fridge could be given to a friend. We got the repair man to come and fix the big whopper, and that night, Emily and I huddled together as we listened to the booms and bangs coming from the monster deep within our only hope of ant-free sugar and cold milk. The repair man visited us three more times after our noisy night. And of course he was always sooo punctual and sooo knowledgeable about the new parts that we were going to need. At the end of it all, we decided, heck, two of us don’t really need such a monster fridge for just a few items anyways. So the fridge still sits in my kitchen, holding pictures and wedding announcements, waiting for the next renter to delight.

(pictures- self-portrait of one of the girls at the ARK 2 in Constanza; Breakfast at Tom (one of my home church's pastor) & Tori's summer apartment out at the ARK; below: Jarabacoa interns, Tori, the tshirt flag and me. in the background: beautiful Constanza)

I want to you all to know that the fridge drama was actually quite enlightening as to how far my comforts can be pushed. I never realized how much my emotions rest on the dependability of a fridge! Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit it (you go live out of your comfort zone and we’ll see what you end up writing about). Anyways, a fridge in the DR is actually quite the same as a fridge in the US. Typically, there are no bugs…or mold (unless it’s your own fault); it keeps things from rotting or going bad within 24 hours, and sadly, for some of us, it holds our comforts. I never knew my addiction to cereal and PB&J was so substantial until this past month. I realized all I really want from my fridge is: cold (or even just unspoiled) milk, my PB&J, and unspoiled mangos and avocados. BUT, when you open up what you thought was a working fridge, to a wall of heat and smell, dripping water, a stream of ants, a couple cockroaches and flies, and thawed chicken, you have to reconsider the quality of the other items. The water didn’t even escape. It tasted like dirty fridge. Same for the bagged chocolate chips. Found that out when I attempted to make cookies. That was a sad one. Oh the tortillas…yeah, dirty fridge too. But hey, the butter was salvaged! And the sugar was still ant-free (sadly the same cannot be said about the bigger bag of sugar that lives in the cupboard). Oh, the ketchup was still good; can’t see that one going bad. Luckily, I was rescued by a mini-fridge. It’s on loan, but for now it is perfect for my new milk, PB&J and fruit, and the butter, sugar, and ketchup.

(pics- Sally (who just moved to Jarabacoa with her husband John and their 3boys from Lafayette. Sally and I are the proud woman's 14+ 1st and 2nd place Ark Marathon winners. My winnings? an XXL tshirt; below: Eladio the bus driver, some nice gardener's hose, and the steaming engine. I'm glad Eladio was in charge of that one.)
And through all this food tossing, which doesn’t include the bugs Emily found in the rice and the ants that took over the baked oatmeal I just made (which I happen to notice a bit too late to spit out), I have clung to the gratitude of my noisy next door neighbor friends. They tend to not mind what I despise and in fact seem to get fatter with everything I toss into their field. If the food trend continues, I will have to actually consider getting my own friends, so I can at least get some fresh eggs out of my chucked food.

I know I have been rambling about nothing with the happenings of work. In reality, so much of my energy is poured into learning how to live outside my comfort zone. I cannot say it is easy to be here in the DR as a single woman. One of the hardest things is walking alone through the normally- mindless daily tasks in life. I never thought that a hot fridge or a flat tire or sometimes even a trip to the store would need multiple deep-breathes. But also, I couldn’t imagine not having this period of sometimes near-desperation; for it is in these times when I remember, ‘oh yeah, YOU are here God’…’YOU are going to do it with me’. Of course my pea-brain tends to remember after the fact; but even then, as I’m slowly learning to see God and talk to Him in every moment, life becomes a bit more amusing and God becomes a bit more of a silly best friend…who likes to put ants on baked oatmeal.
(pic: english class food night. we had american food but we never got anyone to talk in english)

P.S. I guess maybe I should write a word or two about actual work…spent four weeks being gofer for the summer construction teams- aka- my new best friends are at the hardware store. And in the process I got to watch one man in less than a week fix all the toilets and sinks in the only bathrooms that all 260+ kids use on a daily basis. He is my hero. On top of that, you know you have made some serious language improvement when you can go into the hardware store and come out with semi gloss light blue paint, faucets, pipe caps, a bow saw and the innards for a toilet (obviously I don’t even know the English names).

But now that teams are done and the summer interns have left, I have spent the past week trying to spice up the horribly drab office I work in. I’ll post some pix. Happy August!

Before and after...!