Our house is a very very very fine house

I’ve always liked that song by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.  One of the joys and challenges of moving a lot and living in different countries is setting up house, and trying to make it a fine house, again and again.  Bob is kind of tired of that, but I still love it!  Bob says that one of my talents is making a home cozy.  This time around, that process has been particularly challenging.

With only four more weeks left in our home here in Sri Lanka, we’re starting to think about packing up once again.  We’re thinking back to the things that we’ve gotten used to in this home, some of which we will miss and some of which we will not.  Here are a few of them.  (Our internet service, unfortunately, does not allow me to upload photos at this time.)

• The kitchen, dining room, and bedroom floors are cement, painted red. 
• We defrost the freezer every few days because ice builds up quickly with this humidity. 
• Our kitchen cupboards were not custom-made by my brother-in-law, but they do the job.
• We don’t have drawers in the kitchen, but silverware standing up in a plastic container works.
• There is no hot water in the kitchen, so we boil water for washing up greasy dishes.
• We bought a semi-automatic washing machine.  I feel like we’ve gone back in time, but it’s kind of fun to manage the spinning cycle and it’s easier than washing clothes by hand, which I did when I lived in a convent in Egypt.
• The mattresses are all made of coconut fiber, so we bought a foam mattress for our bed.
• We use cardboard boxes for night stands beside our bed, just like in college.
• The windows are opaque, so to get a view (and to keep bugs out), we put screens on some of the windows.
• Half of our outlets are plugged and unusable because of the dirt the ants bring in.
• When we first moved in, there was an entire eco system living inside WITH us.  After months of effort, we still have bugs, but nothing like we had early on.
• When we first moved in, we burned our garbage, since that’s what our landlords do.  Now our landlords take care of that for us.
• Our landlords are constantly burning something, sending black smoke inside our house.
• With the rainy season and extreme humidity, MOLD is now growing everywhere—on our sandals, our clothing, our sofa, kitchen towels, wooden spoons, coasters, used tea bags, refrigerator, in the cupboards.  I’m still working on that one!

We vacationed in Sri Lanka two years ago.  That’s when we grew to love the country.  But we’ve been reminded that traveling in a place and living in a place are two different things.  In any case, it’s still amazing to have lived in this house in the jungle.  We will not forget it.