Living in a fish bowl

After getting a great deal on a stove and refrigerator (both for less than $500!) we were able to move into our home early last week. Woohoo! It feels so nice to completely unpacked. And in the process we found our camera cord! Expect many pictures from now on. =) When we arrived back in the area after leaving Copan we found a team from Highland Park Community Church in Casper, Wyoming in Canchias. It truly is amazing how much of a blessing a group of people can be when your lives only cross paths for a few hours. They stopped by our house when we were moving in and gave us a few housewarming gifts and prayed for us and for our safety in the house. A couple of of the guys even leveled our refrigerator for us. It was fun to be able to show people around our home when we've only been in it for a few hours.


Now it's time for your tour! It's really hard to take pictures of rooms, so these aren't stellar photos, but you get the idea.

Our 'pila' - this is where we will wash all of our clothes by hand!!!

Our "closet" - Um, yeah, we need to build some shelves.

Bedroom

Living Room: VERY empty, but when some kids came over they were sliding all around on the tile so maybe we should turn it into a skating rink??

Kitchen

Kitchen

Our dining room: I think it's the only room with any decorations!




We've also met a few of our neighbors. Most of them are under the age of 10. Spending the day with a 10 year old is actually a great way to practice your Spanish. The one we've spent the most time with is Gabriella. Here she is washing our clothes in our pila.

I think she decided that I was taking too much time and using too much soap so she moved me out of the way and took over. After doing all of our laundry she hung out with me in the house (after walking around for a while saying over and over again incredulously "Only 2 people live here???" I found out later that she's one of 13 kids in her family and they live in the tiny house next to ours.) She was fascinated by the computer and I showed her a little bit of Microsoft Word and a Paint program and she played on the computer for quite a while. She came back a few days later and brought her friend Brenda. But SHE was the boss of the computer, wouldn't let Brenda touch it!

Overall, we really enjoy having so many kids around and we like having them over and showing them that we are friendly gringos. Unfortunately, this also presents a few problems. Gabriella and her friends have decided that if the door is unlocked, it's an invitation to come in. So, it's not uncommon for us to be reading on the couch when some little girls file in from the side door ready for some computer time! We know how to ask them to leave in Spanish, but we don't know how to do it nicely, so we usually don't say anything. We're just trying to get better at locking the doors. But a new problem has developed. On Sunday Sean got up and walked out of our room to find Brenda standing with her nose pressed against our living room screen looking in the house. Sean said 'Good morning' and thought she would leave. Nope. I got up and joined him in the kitchen and she just continued to watch us. It was the weirdest feeling. Throughout the day we'd look up to see Brenda's face again. And we have no curtains right now so there's nothing we can do about it! Then this morning it happened again, only we've never seen these kids before. And they didn't just pick one window to watch us from, whatever room I was in, they would all run around the house and watch me from the nearest possible window. And if I would into our bedroom, where we have a blanket hanging up, they would stand at the window behind the couch where Sean was sitting and just stare at the back of his head. It's so so weird!!!