Life at the Farm...

Well, I have now been living here at the Finca for 5 days now.  Wow, it has been quite the week here.  A bit overwhelming at times but so blessed in many ways.  I don’t have much time with internet but here is a quick snapshot about what I have experienced here:

I live literally 50 feet from the ocean- I can currently here the waves from here in my room.

We eat a ton of rices and beans and all of our meals are shared among the 23 people that live in my house.

I wash my clothes in a pila- which is like a huge sink that we fill with water and then fill up bowls and pour out the water onto our clothes. We also use a pila for our kitchen sink, with which we wash our plates after ever single meal.

I made muffins using a fogon, which is basically a huge clay oven with an adjoining cook top that uses fire wood.  We use this to cook at every meal  except breakfast when we are allowed to use the stove in our house.

We can’t put toilet paper in the toilet and have to burn all of our trash. 

Showers are cold but so nice- although the line of girls is quite long since there at 18 of us and one shower, one sink and one toilet.

I really like my roommates Betsy and Mary Kate (two for now but only 1 after mid November since MK is moving to Ceiba to work with the adolescent program for her second year as a missionary). 

I have decorated the room and they were right- a bed, a couple of shelves and little else.  I am so lucky that I brought things to organize- hooks over our window shutters were such a blessing!!  Being organized is one of my trademarks here- word seems to be getting around that I really like it.  J 

There are a ton of bugs- just flicked an ant off my arm as I sit here in my bed and type (I like to type things up on my computer and then when I can get internet, I just send them!).  

There are also a ton of chickens and roosters and turkeys.  Every single one of them likes to begin making ridiculous amounts of noise starting at around 4 am, every day.  Since I get up around 5:20 it’s not terrible but still, that hour is quite important!!

As for how jobs are going here, it looks like the 6 jobs available for the group of us are:

2 social workers

Colegio (Middle School) Math

Colegio Science

Kinder/1^st Grade

Special Ed/Accountant

Please pray for us as we shadow and figure out in the next two weeks where we will be spending the next year!

That is all for now!

Much love to all at home,

Erin Lucia