ration-alizations.

I got paid today. I've had 190 lempiras in my account for about a week and a half now (thats a little less than ten bucks) so I've been rationing things like crazy. I haven't called anyone from my phone because I figured I'd better save my few minutes for an unforeseen emergency and ... that got me thinking. I do quite a bit of rationing here :) I'm pretty sure most people ration money so I don't feel like I need to go into too much detail on that one but here's a list of somethings that I might ration out a little more here than I do in the States. :)

Water: This isn't always an issue, but at least once a week our water gets funky and stops working or trickles. We keep our pila filled up in the back and, as a new and fun development, Shelly's and my toilet has stopped working so we have to keep a bucket in there to self-flush. So sometimes I (I don't know about Shelly, I suppose I should inform her of this before posting it on the world wide web) but I go with the 'if it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.' philosophy.... I don't want to have to be filling up that bucket every time! So I ration! Also along the lines of water, I'm sure faithful followers, and anyone else that has been to a Latin American country knows... we CANNOT drink the tap water. So, we have to ration our filter water. I usually bring a water bottle to school and make sure to fill it up before I leave for home :) I think between the four of us, we finish 2-3 five-gallon waters a week. That's not so bad right?

Books: I just love to read. But I have to ration out my books because I only brought so many. I've been reading "Snow" (sorry fellow grammar teachers, I can't underline things in my blog :( ) by Orhan Pamuk but I have to read it SO SLOWLY because I don't have a library to go to after I finish all the books my roommates and I brought :/ I also have some audio books so maybe that will keep me going for awhile but really... who likes to cuddle up with a hot chocolate, a blanket, and your itunes book library playing? :)

Movies/TV shows: along the same lines... only have a certain number of movies to choose from and no redboxes nearby :) The girls and I have been watching Smallville almost every night for fun, and we've also started Glee but... we have three seasons of Smallville here and only half a season of Glee so we REALLY have to ration those out. I think our first night we watched three episodes and Catelin (our Glee Nazi) told us we had to limit Glee to like one episode every three weeks. HA. thank you Smallville for your distraction :)

Sweet things: Ahhhhh. This is the hardest for me. I'm trying to keep a tight budget so I haven't done a lot of 'frivolous' spending- like on chocolate, pop, cookies... all the things I crave all the time :) So I've conditioned myself to get a Snickers on Wednesday when we go down into town, take a bite and then keep it in the fridge and ration it out for the next week. Pretty impressive huh :) Another thing that keeps rationing alive and well in our lives here is the fact that we really can't buy things very often. So if we want two grilled-cheese sandwiches for supper, that's fine but then that means we probably only have enough bread for one more meal, or maybe for a slice of toast one morning. OH the decisions....

Computer power: Along with our water, our power goes out all the time, so I am often left with a computer with, at the most, three hours of power left so I have to decide what I'm going to do with it and when I will spend it all up - for a two hour movie? three hours of music? journaling?


I think that's all I can come up with on the top of my head. (OK. rewind. OFF the top of my head.... I'm just going to keep that in there to show you how terrible my English is getting haha) We didn't have school Monday or Tuesday this week because it's rained everyday and the road up to our school was way too muddy for the buses to bring the kids up so today was like a Monday which is great because Friday is still in two days! Things are going well at school; still like it :) Enjoy your not-so-rationed lives this week!