End of week 1: Our home
We are settling in and we have a very nice home. Our caretakers, who own the home, live right next door. They come to check on us everyday. While we can’t pronounce or understand their full names, they are Tutsi and Suki to us.
I regret not having a picture of the night we arrived. They had opened the home and turned on every light. The doors were opened wide for us. They took the time to show us our new home and explain the basics. We unpacked and tried to settle a little and then tried to get some sleep. We struggled.
We have logged into Netflix once and we watched our church PC3 service on Sunday night on YouTube.The wood in the house is Teak and it is beautiful. We have 4 bedrooms and we are basically using the 2 downstairs at the moment. Marshall’s work clothes are in the other room’s wardrobe.
The house is one year old. They have had a few guests but no one staying as long as we are. I feel they they are learning too We had plates to begin with and no bowls so we had cereal and yogurt in our coffee mugs. The next day she brought us 2 bowls. Yesterday she brought 2 small plates and small finger bowls.
Our dining room has become Marshall’s virtual work office. He goes into the office from 9-5 and then comes home and has calls with the US office. He is still figuring out how much time to allow to get home due to traffic at different times of the day.
We have struggled with sleep all week. The house only has AC in the bedrooms. Basically we turn it on when we go into our room at night. It took us 3-4 days to find the comfortable temperature. We were freezing initially. Basically there are no real covers. We have a fitted sheet and then a lightweight bedspread (Marshall calls it his grandmother’s tablecloth) I put on socks and a 3/4 zip one night because I was so cold. We think we have landed on a good temp and we have brought in 2 bedspreads and we double them and use them individually so we aren’t keeping each other awake all night. Our challenge has been that we fall asleep initially, we struggle in the middle of the night and then fall into a deep sleep in the morning. Our alarm always scares us.
Another challenge is our power switches. Each panel has multiple switches and it’s hard to determine which switch is for what. We have learned the fan switch which is next to the dial. I typically turn on all the fans in the morning. In the bedrooms the first switch is the light. We have to turn on the plugs for electricity and that switch is next to the plug.
Cooking has been an adventure too. We have 3 burners on our gas cooktop. The first night I couldn’t get the burner to turn on. I had to walk next door and ask Tutsi to help me. We have no igniter so she brought me what is basically a spark stick to light it. We have 3 pots and most meals I have used all 3 and it gets very hot in our small kitchen. Of course no dishwasher so we hand wash dishes and the drying rack is the cabinet above the sink. Oven? Definitely not as that would make the kitchen way too hot.
Our favorite place is our pool. I sometimes swim in the middle of the day but many times I sit on the edge and put my feet in the water. It cools my body temperature greatly. We take a dip together at the end of the day. It’s quiet at night, we are surrounded by palm trees and there is no light pollution. Floating in the pool, the stars just pop. (And there are planes flying overhead because we are 5 km from the airport and in the major flight path)
Overall, we have a very nice set up and have room for visitors. Anyone want to join us?
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