day six

Reading your comments makes me feel really good. Really, really good. Some of you asked for our address, truth is I don't know it yet, there are no house numbers and it doesn't make sense. I think I can use a neighbors box but have to clear it with her first. It's on my list for the next day or so and I'll get back to you by email then. My reader is probably also impossibly full and I don't intend this to be a one way thing. I just can't manage coming your way till I can get online at home. Oh, and thank you. I mean that so much. Thank you.

I sit in an internet station with a tin roof. The rain is falling, falling, falling. I sit here and wonder if the connection will hold out till I hit publish. I sit here because internet at home will take awhile no worries mon it'll be soon and I try and sum up all the ways I feel right now. Maybe a list will suffice:

Pros
1. It's unbearably beautiful
2. It's not humid, not yet
3. Our neighbors are lovely and open and generous and kind.
4. In my new home the doors are wide open all day long and there are always different children underfoot.
5. 2 dogs have already adopted us. M has named one of them Sasha. I don't know who they belong to but they rarely leave our porch.
6. Shopping takes hours. One place to see the nail guy, one place for the chicken lady. Beer over here. Milk at the corner. Eggs from the guy on the bike. Don't even get me started on the tortillas or you will hate me simply because they are that good. I can imagine it wearing on me but right now I like it a lot.
7. Thankfully their one brand of beer is pretty damn good.

Cons
1. Cooking takes three times as long and nothing feels really clean. Bottled water for everything.
2. Bugs. I can't help it. They bug me.
3. I don't know my way around outside of the village without J and that is so unlike me I can't stand it.
4. Here's the big one. This place is so patriarchal. The women serve the men. The men, the local ones, they talk to J. They are nice to me, but for decisions, they look to him. It makes me want to kick them. And makes me think about how to raise a girl here.
5. M's having some trouble, a bit anxious and fearful. But every day I notice her getting better. Yesterday she ran out and picked oranges from a grove next door with a friend, she scampered up a tree and looked like a million dollars. But she misses some things. Goldfish crackers are at the top of the list.

So how am I, you ask? I wake up happy and am busy all day. After dinner my bravado falters, I sit in the jungle noise and quiet and wonder what we've done. J sees this all as a wide open book. But I don't know how to read it. I stumble a bit in the dark so I crack a beer most nights and sit on the porch. There are so many fireflies I lose count. I cry a bit and feel better. I wake up happy and am busy all day. As I finish typing the rain has stopped. It's like that here, the rain. The sky open up and weeps and then forget she ever cried.

I relate to the sky here, I think.