Whatever snuck in through my window yesterday night and ate one of my pieces of bread through two plastic bags – sucks. As I stared at the ripped bag, trying to deduce what type of animal committed such an atrocity, I was faced with the tough decision eating one of the two remaining rolls, or not. As usually, I was hungry, on a very tight budget, and the bakery is a ten-minute walk through shade-less equatorial sun, so I decided to eat the roll that was furthest from the site of the attack – and hoped that the culprit had a clean mouth.

As I walked in the front door after my early morning run the following morning, I was worried about making the decision to-eat or not-to-eat the remaining mostly intact portion of the only wheat bread in town. Luckily, the thousands of ants marching happily across my countertop carrying away my bread made the not-to-eat decision a whole lot easier.

I have fallen into a pit of emptiness – oh wait, that is just my apartment.

About a week and a half ago I made the decision to move out of my host families’ house. PC’s timeline is living with a host family for three months, I lived with mine for six, but ultimately the decision to move out came down to privacy, not having running water in the house, not having a toilet seat, and my little brother peeing outside my window every morning before school. The host brother thing was actually kind of funny, but only because he is four.

I love my host family, and their pet guanta, and have visited many times since the big move, but I have always been the independent type, and love living alone. I savored the first few days of reading in my hammock without Steven jumping on me, or chasing the guanta around with a broom in his underwear, but as the community gets more comfortable with the idea of the gringo being out in the wild, there has been an increase in random forced-entry visits. Whether it is the neighborhood kids wanting someone to laugh at, or my drunken neighbors wanting to hangout and finish the case of beer at my place, my solitude is quickly becoming as irregular as clean clothes.

I have pretty much nothing in my house wares department, and it is both awesome and depressing. The few items I bought with me, I can’t really unpack because I have nothing to unpack my stuff onto other than a moldy tile floor. I am trying to fix the mold problem, but bleach, vinegar, and laundry soap only prove to be temporary solutions. I am working on getting some serious primer, but it is so humid here that last night the condensation from the roof woke me up dripping on my face.

Hopefully this weekend will win me some comfort. I am promised a mattress from my counterpart agency, three plastic chairs from another PC volunteer, and already have an excellent hand-me-down propane stove and toaster oven. I am treasure hunting like a Somali pirate, trying to commandeer wood to build a bed, shelves, and table. I am also shopping around for curtains to keep out the prying – what is that gringo up to in there – eyes.

Standing up while eating breakfast, sitting on the tile floor reading about reforestation, and trying type in a hammock is cool for a few days, but it is getting old and uncomfortable as we enter week two. It will also be awesome to be able to store food, and protect it from the army of ants longer than 4-12 hours if I can ever afford a refrigerator.