I got some money cuz I just got paid... now how I wish I had someone to talk to!

My Saturdays here in Honduras are a little different than my ones in the US. First difference: In the US, I try to sleep to at least noon, but usually shoot for 2. Here, I get up at 7:30 (on my own, without an alarm clock :/) and do something productive. I now understand why my parents always suggested that we do our Saturday lists as quickly as possible, without putzing, so we could enjoy the rest of our day responsibility free! The last few Saturdays, however, have been busy with our Fiesta Tipica, trips to Santa Rosa, and end of the quarter grading. I was feeling pretty stifled in my messy room, not to mention the fact that I again let laundry get out of hand. So, I woke up with the intention to do some pretty intense cleaning.... and that is exactly what happened! I took pictures so you could be a part of my productive Saturday!!


First things first, I decided to sweep out our kitchen. There was a box in our corner that has been there since we moved in and since I was doing the intense cleaning session, I moved it! Behind the box was this... a black, gross-looking thing attached to our wall by a webbish looking thing, surrounded by this weird yellow tint....




After dousing the unidentified object in Raid to make sure it wasn't a spider, (although, looking back, I'm not sure why a spider would be trapped in its own web) I pulled the thing off the wall and brought it out to investigate with my Exact-o knife. It was a cocoon! There was a butterfly/moth waiting to be metamorphosized inside!! It was pretty cool; kind of a bummer that I accidentally killed it, but I brought it to show my kids at school so it ended up as a learning tool :) I've also decided that if I could choose my life path over again, an entomologist (vocab word this week... a scientist who studies insects :)) or some other outdoorsy scientist might be a close second to teaching. :)





Catelin and I always get up early on Saturdays and make yummy milk-sugar-cinnamon rice. mmmmmmmmmmm so I ate some of that :)


Our neighbors offered to let us use their washer, so I collected all my school uniform clothes and combined them with Catelin's, Jennifer's and Shelly's. Catelin went next door to supervise. The family doesn't have a dryer, but after the clothes are washed, they keep them in the washer on spin cycle without water before hanging them on the line. sweet!



I decided to organize/rearrange my room. This is the before picture...


While cleaning, I had CSI on... I'd never seen the show, but this summer, I found seasons 1 and 2 at Half Price books for 10 bucks each! Now I'm addicted!!


Mopped and swept (I almost said broomed-darn lack of English! hahaha) the living room...



We decided to have a massive kitchen clean. All the roommates joined in! We dusted; we swept; we organized our food pantry....



We even cleaned out the fridge! While cleaning, Catelin knocked the olive oil lid behind the refrigerator, so she moved it and found a very, very mushy pineapple. Don't know how long it had been there haha




Our pila faucet decided to break this morning. Gushing water everywhere...



Here's the guilty party. The PVC pipe just randomly broke apart. And the key of the faucet fell off.



Burning garbage!!




I did some laundry of my own, and then Catelin brought over the laundry from the neighbors to hang up!




We solved the gusher by turning off the water (I did learn something about problem faucets last year...), stuffing a plastic bag down the pipe, and covering it with another plastic bag, and covering with tons of duct tape. The result looked a lot like a bird, specifically an eagle. We put some eyes, a beak, and named him George Washington. :D He lasted for a few hours...





Shelly and I wrung out a sopping wet, very heavy comforter. In the middle of it, I was quickly reminded of a scene from Swiss Family Robinson when Fritz wrestles an anaconda in the river. LUCKILY, Shelly was also raised on this movie and kindly re-enacted the scene!!!!




We have some metal chair and couch frames that are strung with this elastic string to make the seats. GREAT invention but... the metal legs do not sound that great scraping across our tile floor. So, Jennifer and I used the handy duct tape and cardboard to make some protectors. Perfect!



We add blankets to make it look more homey and comfortable :)



Saturday nights we have 'Favorite Movie Night'. We began with Tyler's favorite, "Tombstone", then Shelly's favorite, "Rookie of the Year", Jennifer and Catelin's fav "Wizard of Oz" and Maggie's favorite "The Notebook". This weekend it was my turn and all my favorite movies are epic three-four hour, so we constructed a massive bed to sit on. (Despite appearances, those couch things are NOT that comfortable :))



MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TEN COMMANDMENTS!!!! Unfortunately, we got about 20 minutes into it, and the DVD decided to stop working, so we switched to The Godfather. Still good, and Marlon Brando is great but.... you just can't beat Charlton Heston! :/



All in all, it was a pretty eventful day. After I loaded all these pictures onto my computer, I fell asleep, kicked my camera onto the ground, and it promptly stopped working. Unfortunately, that means I can't show you my 'after cleaning' room picture, but I promise it looks much better. Little disappointed about the camera :/ I'm not sure it's going to come back to life, but if not, I suppose I can add it to the Christmas list along with a new Ten Commandments DVD :)