Wednesday, April 21, 2010

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.

3 comments:

  1. Kristen I can't wait to visit! It looks so peaceful here. Show us the inside of your house!

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  2. hi kristen how are u doing espero que estes bien tengo mucho tiempo de no escuchar de ti no creas que te estoy estoy ostigando solamente me quiero referir a una amistad en fin si puedes me escribes cuidate mucho bye.

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