December 20

it's sunday, almost 1pm. We've just finished lunch. alex is lying in bed and I am sitting in the living room. It's raining outside. we have our health week closing ceremony today, we'll probably head that way in 45 minutes or so. Our house is getting closer to being finished. All of the walls are in place, they just need to nail the walls down good, and build doors, window covers and furniture. Also, they need to finish our outhouse We've decided not to move in until all of the furniture is finished.

I can't believe it's almost Christmas.

Lucas' stomach just started hurting so he said I should finish this blog entry.
Since we have come to our new home, we lookout for (how people refer to their relationships with animals): One chicken named Tobias (like Lucas' baby host brother, but the chicken was named first), one puskat, who is currently sitting on me and making it hard to type, AND the coolest edition to our tropical noah's ark: A BABY FLYING FOX/BAT (we;re not sure which one).

Lucas' host papa, Bob, brought it up for us on a branch a few days ago. The bat was either abandoned by her mama or her mama died somehow. She now lives on a tree close to our porch. We feed her rotten mangos and rotting papayas. She is the cutest ever. She can't fly yet and we're pretty sure she's only a temporary friend...but it's still pretty special! We worry that the cat will eat her, but so far so good.

Today, Lucas and I made a delicious black bean/mango/pineapple/onion salsa over Spanish rice for Brunch. We've gotten pretty creative at cooking and are learning how to fuse Aelan kakae (island food) with what we're used to eating...So what ends up happening is that we bemoan the fact that we don't have something we're used to cooking with readily available, and then go to the ginger patch and pull up some fresh ginger and somehow, it's okay. We've made some tasty dishes and there have also been a few flops. Lucas and I cook every meal over a fire these days...it's really fun.

Our garden is coming together. Lucas planted 100 Spring onions (!!!) both in the Karen on top and by our house. We have manioc, taro, bananas, kumula (like a sweet potato), aelan cabbage (like spinach and a staple of our diet), a few pumpkins, silverbeet, and basil on the karen on top...the lemon grass, ginger, and cilantro have life at the karen by the dispensary and most of our seeds have sprouted in our tin nursery on the porch.