Our New Home!

We moved to a house which we will call "home" for the next two years. The owner is standing in front of the house. She does not need the house because she is in another village taking care of her elderly father. We will have to pay her $90 a month which the Peace Corps reimburses us. We have two bedrooms so now we can have company --- hint! The water bill is about 15 cents a month and electricity runs about $2 per month! The downside is we have no neighbors (except a mechanic who works day and night on tractors and raises roosters for cock fighting which is held weekly behind his house). The other downside is we have a squat toilet and no shower, bath tub, or bathroom sink. There is a large basin of water (of questionable quality) that we reach into with a bucket and pour water over ourselves (Thai style). This should make baths quite fast and reduce the amount of shampoo we use!!! We have just recently discovered that the water is turned on at 7:00 am and turned off at 6:00 pm to avoid broken pipes occurring at night!!! This makes things difficult considering we have to leave at 7:00 am to go to our assigned schools. The water has a beautiful tan color and an aroma we shall call "Pond Delight". It gives a sheen to our hair and white socks! Don't worry, we drink purified water that can be purchased throughout the village. Although it looks modern, the workmanship is poor. You can see daylight through the walls around the windows and it's "lights out" on certain nights due to the swarms of insects. Scorpions, centipoedes and giant spiders seem to think that it is their house. There is no air-conditioning so a fan is an essential item by the mosquito net over our bed. By the way, check out that TV antenna. We get 6 TV stations --- all in Thai. We do appreciate DVD's!!!! In fact, over the next two years, everytime we were in Bangkok for medical checkups or meetings, Bob would take the skytrain to Panthip Plaza and buy a few dozen DVD's at the price of 100 baht ($3.00) each.