A Green House, More Dust and July 4th.

Did anybody else notice (besides my hubby) that instead of using the word "billboards" I used the word "bulletin boards" in my post yesterday??? As insignificant as this sounds I feel like I'm one step closer to adjusting to life overseas. Before I had a hard time understanding how Jonathan or other missionaries could forget a certain word in English and now I've joined the ranks! Yahoo.

As we were helping C & E (sister-in-law and bro-in-law) get set up on Tuesday I kept thinking how easy moving is in the States compared to moving here (and I'm not even talking about the hours and hours of driving on dusty/bumpy roads!). For the most part when you purchase or rent a house here it basically comes with...well, the structure of the house itself. Most of the time there are sinks...one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom (JUST the sink...no type of cabinets). More often than not there are no light-bulbs (perhaps no light fixtures), no shower head, no closets and no cabinets of any kind. C & E were grateful to find that the owner left the shower head in the shower! And even though a few were missing there were some light fixtures left as well as 2 light-bulbs. Hallelujah! The bummer was that out of the 10 total electrical outlets in the house only 8 worked. And if the shower was running the voltage went down to 100 volts. We spent a good time brainstorming on the possibility of having the frig, stove and microwave plugged into the kitchen area. I'm still not sure if that will work out or not.

So the main thing that C and I worked on was unpacking and organizing kitchen items. It gave me a great heads-up on how it will be for us to move and scared me a bit! Since we've been living in an American-made home that came with cabinets we have never purchased anything of the sort. If we end up buying or renting a house without cabinets (most likely the case unless we're able to buy a house we looked at a few months ago!) then we'll be putting our cardboard boxes to good use for a while:-)

Here is a picture of THE sink that came with the kitchen
(the small cabinet you see to the left is one that we brought on the trailer).

We were so glad we were able to bring a few shelving units the guys could put together. This one was used in the pantry for pots, pans, etc.

A picture of the front of the house

C would probably want me to inform everyone that she had no choice when it came to the color of the house:-) I'm including it even though it's out of focus because of the dust particles (which are probably the reason it didn't focus). Their house is at an intersection of 4 different dirt roads. You really can't imagine how fine the dust is there, since it's dry season. You can feel as the dust descends down into your lungs as you breath in. C is already looking forward to rainy season. Mud is better than dust!

A few more random thoughts for today...

Happy 4th of July! We wish there were some Americans around to celebrate with us. I think J will go into town and get some fireworks for tonight. There are always fireworks going off in town so nobody will know that anything special is going on, but it will be fun to see what Karis thinks.

Karis' new phrase is "I can do it by me-self". My little Irish girl.

We are working on getting things packed up here at the house. The plan is for Karis and I to fly out on Tuesday (maybe Wednesday) and begin the house-hunting ordeal. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what our options are!