Come on in!

As promised, I bring you a picture tour of the inside of my house.


Here is Sergio, hanging out at the back door of my house, asking you to enter!

This is the main room of my house and the view you have as soon as you enter from the back door. I almost never use the front door, which you see behind my rocking chairs, unless I'm coming home late at night and don't want to disturb the family by opening the squeaky gate. And since I very infrequently stay out late in Palacaguina, that door hasn't been used in months.

The rocking chairs are my very comfortable sitting area. There is a third chair in the background that is injured and I intend to get it repaired but haven't quite gotten around to it yet. The back corner, where you can see boxes and things, has become my place to put stuff when I don't have a spot for it. I should do something about that.

This is looking at the back door from inside. This is my kitchen. You can also see Sergio, still hanging out in the background.

Here is my table with my stove top. It is simple with 3 burners and hooks up to that green gas tank. I have to manually light the burners with a match but it works very well and I occasionally cook up quite the delicious feast.

This is the other half of my kitchen. Next to my refrigerator is a little dish drain thing that contains all of the dishes I own. All of my dry food is in the plastic container and the orange bucket on the table, so that little animals don't eat my stuff. You can see to the right the doorway that leads in to my room.

And here is my room! This is the view from the doorway. My completely stuffed and unorganized bookshelf, lots of pictures on the wall including 12 black and white NYC prints from a calendar, and my "desk" - ie the table with my computer and lots of books. It serves as both my desk and my kitchen table.

Most of my belongings are jammed into that giant wardrobe type thing. Bottom two shelves are clothes and the top two are toiletries and any other random things I couldn't find a place for. Then there is my "closet", which is actually great so I can hang up some stuff and then use the top of it as an extra shelf for more clothes and the bottom serves as a shoe rack. Back in the corner are my suitcases and my ever expanding sack of dirty clothes.

My bed! I love my bed here. It is big and super comfortable and I feel nice and safe underneath my mosquito net. And, as you can see, I have a nice little bed for any visitors to sleep on! So come to Nicaragua! Also present, of course, is my trusty fan. Can't live without that.

That's all of my house, but here is a shot of my ceiling. You can't see it that well but it is kinda like tiles, which makes it nice and cool in my house during the day, but unfortunately also lets rain and dirt fall through. The wall you see is what separates the main room from my bedroom and, like walls in most Nicaraguan houses, it doesn't go all the way up the ceiling. The red thing hanging from the beam is to keep bats away. I don't really know how it works but I definitely plan on keeping it there.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of my house. Come down to Nicaragua to see it person!

My House

I have reached the point where I am so comfortable with my life here that it no longer occurs to me how different things are. And then sometimes, when I talk to people from home, I realize that nobody really has a firm picture in their heads of what my life is actually like here.

You are about to embark on a photo tour of my house. Being able to visualize my living situation will give you a big peak into my life. (Note: There will be no pictures of the inside of my house quite yet. I am currently reorganizing things and that will be my next post.)


This is my house! It looks pretty rustic, huh? I almost never go through the front door. Only sometimes if I'm coming home late at night and I don't want to disturb the family by opening the squeaky gate.


This is the squeaky gate that I usually go through to get to my house. You can see my house in the background. The building that is to the left of the gate is the house where everyone else lives. I refer to it as my aunt's house.

This is the view of my house from within the front gate. I don't really know what the stuff is that's on the ground there in the front. Ok, well I know that it's blocks of adobe, which is like dirt blocks to build a new room with. They just appeared yesterday. Apparently they are going to build a new room on the back of my aunt's house. But that's my house back there, with the window that leads in to the main room.



This is my back little patio area. I frequently sit at the table and read and drink coffee and just relax. The door on the left is the little bedroom that I used to live in and now Maria lives there. The door on the right is the door that I always use to enter my house. It leads in to the main room of my house (there are only 2 rooms - my bedroom and the main room).


This is a typical view from my window. I love keeping my window open and just listening to the sounds of the boys playing. This is an impromptu game of soccer that started one afternoon. Sometimes the ball comes flying through my open window. That's my aunt's house that you see in the background.



Down a few steps from the back of my patio, you can find this area. This is where Doggy usually hangs out. This is the washing area, or my lavendera. I wash all of my clothes here. And you can also see my shower.



Inside my shower. I'm lucky because there is pretty consistent running water in my town, so most days I am able to take an actual shower. However, if I need to shower and there is no running water, we keep those buckets filled so I can bucket shower nice and quickly.

Just down behind the shower and washing area is the rest of my backyard, which includes the clothes line where I hang my freshly hand-washed clothing to dry, and my latrine.


An inside peak of the mysterious latrine. It's really not that bad, except that the recent rain we have gotten has led to lots of bugs everywhere, including the latrine. But don't worry. I spray it with Raid most days and that keeps it under control. It doesn't even smell that bad but sometimes I spray some french vanilla air freshener in it anyway.



So there you go! I hope you enjoyed seeing pictures of where I live. I absolutely love my living situation and know I'm lucky to have found such a caring family who I can trust completely. Sometimes Maria has to yell at me for forgetting to lock my door. But I feel completely safe here and have privacy and independence.

Let me know what you think and how it compares to what you imagined.