Well here in town I have made many friends; little children, old ladies, middle aged women, old men, teenagers, etc... I have also made some not so common friends:
My latrine—I'll spare you all the details, but beginning the first night that I arrived I have had some stomach problems, and so me and my latrine have become very good friends, I am happy going to it for help at all hours of the day and night, and it accepts me kindly.
My cell phone—this is obvious, it keeps me mildly in touch with the rest of the world, and whenever I need a break from my host family I tell them I'm going to make a call and go into the countryside where I get better signal, and a break!
Recently I have had several friends that would not go away when I wanted to sleep: I had mice in my bedspring. For about a week now I could hear them scurrying around somewhere under my bed. My host mom put some poison in my room and we found one dead next to the poison the next day, but I still heard the noises. Last night my host brother saw a rat scurrying towards my room, and so my host mom put a rat trap in my room. At about midnight I heard “snap!” and then rodent shrieks, then the sound of the metal scratching around on the concrete floor, and then nothing. I knew the mouse was dead, but I didn't want to see it. I tried to sleep and I woke up again early in the morning to the sound of more scuffling under my bed. In the morning I went outside to listen to the radio (where it gets better signal) and told my host mom that a rat had been killed in my room. I am trying to be independent and prove to my family that I can do normal Dominican things such as cook and clean, but I decided to leave this chore to one of my family members—I'm not that brave yet!
As I was sitting outside she came out with the rat trap—the rat was pretty large and pretty dead, which was a relief. Unfortunately, I still knew that there were more wandering around down there. This afternoon my host sister informed me that she had seen a dead mouse in my box spring, and finally we got the courage up to try to get it out. My host sister and I moved the mattress out into the hall and with our neighbor we tipped the box spring up, and there was not one but three mice scurrying around and one rotted mouse head sitting there on the floor. I never thought I would be one to scream when seeing a mice, but me and my neighbor and my sister shrieked a little, and the children came running to see what all the fuss was about. My neighbor yelled for a stick to kill them and my host sister came back with a machete, but my neighbor wanted something large and blunt. A boy ran in with the handle of a broom and my neighbor batted around a little, but in the end the mice ran into the next room free. At the very least they are not in my box spring anymore....
A couple minutes later the pastor of a church came by to inform me that they also have a mice problem, and that mice seem to be infesting a lot of the houses in the area. Great...I'm gonna keep looking around for a cat, it seems the only way to keep these mice away!
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