My swingin pad!

Here it is folks, the moment you've all been waiting for: the inside look at my hosue in glorious Union de Piña! As far as houses in PC Panama go, its pretty solid. And I mean that litterally. Not everyone is lucky enought to have a house made of blocks like mine. It has a zinc roof, which doesn't leak (Woo hoo!) and a zinc surroudning for my porch so the chickens can't get in and my Panamanian baby can't get out (HAHA, just kidding. I let him run all over the town). Here is a shot from the front yard, with one of the orange trees in the foreground and the other to the left side of the house. Note the clothing hanging up to dry after a day of work in the monte which I am more often than not too lazy to wash.

Below is a picture of my gourmet Panamanian style kitchen, complete with pilas (pots), gas tank, unused water filter, and typical Panamanian fare such as plantains, rice, sugar (for making chicha from my oranges, and, of course, plenty of coffee.

This is the reading area. The bookshelf and the two sillons came with the house, otherwise it would have been completed with my books on the ground a couple of plastic chairs. It was at one point infested with ants who apparently gnawed their way through my concrete walls. It was strange.

My bedroom, which has a bed that I miraculously fit on ( If i lay diagonally and move the pillow almost all the way off of the bed. I'm still looking for a clothers container thing to get my clothing off of the ground. But I do have a fan, and for a house that's in a small ravine type area, that's what really matters.

The best part of the house: INDOOR PLUMMING! Now, it may not look like much to all you statesiders, but we Panamanians know that this is as good as it gets in our communities. The toilet is a little old, and it smalls like raw sewage when you fluch it, and it wasn't working for the first week I lived there (I ended up snaeking into the neighbor's latrine or timing my trips with days out of site), but it flushes. After 3 or 4 tries. Sometimes more. And no, noone was shot in my shower (comment made by some wise guy in the city last week about the stain on the back wall). Plus I now know that I have what Caitlin calls a "Tail-less whip scorpion" living in there who makes appearances very early in the morning, to whom I say "I'm too lazy to find something to kill you with right now, show yourself again after I take a nap in my hammock." He doesn't show up for the rest of the day.

The guest bedroom. Not much to look at, but I can string my hammock up from the roof and have people stay the night if they can't get back to their respective communtiies while visiting me. The house had 2 other beds in it when I mvoed in, but the owner snatched them out the day I moved in. Drats!

This area is around the left side of the house. It has my sink for washing dishes and shaving and a fairly decent sized supply of scrap wood, which I may or may not one day use for a fogon (a cooking fire, much more work than my self-igniting gas stove).

So there you have it, my place of residence for the next 1 year and 8 months, give or take. I hope some of you will be able to come and see it in person, rest in my hammock, and maybe even help me find and kill that elusive scorpion in my bathroom.

BONUS COVERAGE:

The following picture is of my right forearm, and may at first appear like leprecy but I can readily assure you that it is not. It's just an allergic reaction to freshly cut rice stalks. We use a tool called an airplane, which is a piece of an old machete attached to a piece of wood, which is held in the hand and strapped on by a piece of rubber around the back of the hand. You can cut multiple rice stalks in a short time by using it and it makes the work very easy. However, you have to pass your arm across the freshly cut stalks to reach the following ones, which I did without realizing it would do this to me. I've learned to wear long sleeves since then and the effects have cleared up.