Here Come the Bugs

We've been in our house for a week now, and the bugs have arrived.  There are tiny black ants all over, mostly in the bathrooms, although most of them are dead because the owner had the house sprayed just before we moved in.  And we have these gross cockroach-looking bugs everywhere, but most of them die really fast too.  Miranda had an unfortunate incident with one this morning, she absolutely freaked out and ran around screaming like her entire body was on fire.  I wish I'd had the camera rolling.  Jackson puts everything in his mouth so I have to do a quick sweep a couple of times a day.     

There were a couple of really cold days last week where the house got down into the 50s.  I spent a lot of time on the floor because it is heated.  It was windy, too, and the air seems to blow right through the roof since there is no insulation.  Silly me didn't pack any sweatshirts and all the ones here look like they came from 1992, so I have increased my sweater collection.  That seems to be the clothing trend for the ladies here: Long sweaters, scarves, tight pants, and boots.  Can't seem to find any shoes bigger than an 8 so far, but I'm still looking.   

Housing codes are very different here.  There are no outlets or light switches in any of the bathrooms, so you have to turn on the light outside the door and dry your hair in your bedroom.  There are also no smoke detectors.  Seems odd with a thatch roof and all, but there are several fire extinguishers strategically placed around the house.  But we will be installing some soon.  The walls are all concrete and brick so the electrical wires are in weird places.  The light switches are very interesting as there is no rhyme or reason to them.  We still can't figure out what some of them do and it took a whole week to find out which ones turned on the lights by the front door. 

I am still having a lot of trouble communicating with the locals.  As much as I try to tell them I cannot understand what they are trying to say, they just keep repeating themselves without slowing down or enunciating.  Sometimes I just have to walk away.  I think next time I'll start saying all the Spanish words I know and see how they like it.