Moving Day

In my posts I have talked about my housing prospects. Well, I finally decided on something and am going to move out this weekend! I will be moving about a block and a half away from my host family´s house so I will still be located in the ¨center¨ of Corinto. It is sort of like a townhouse in the sense that I will share some things with my neighbors. It is two small houses attached to each other, sharing a patio and a shower. My house is two small rooms. There are two toliets in the patio (one for me, one for the other family) and one shower that we share. I will also have my own lavandero, or washboard and sink in the patio. Most of the houses here have their toliet, ´kitchen¨ and shower out on their patio with just a roof over it to protect it from the rain. A Nicaraguan kitchen usually consists of a lavandero and a gas powered hot-plate stove. The lavandero serves to both wash the clothes, and also as your only sink and place where you wash your dishes. Sort of hard to explain, so once I move in I´ll take pictures.

Anyways, the finding a house process was annoying to say the least. Basically I just asked every Nicaraguan I knew if they knew of anybody renting a house. Then random people would come up to me and say ¨I hear you´re looking for a house to rent, do you know who´s renting a house? Carla, who lives two blocks down from where Don Julio lives, do you know where Don Julio lives?¨ ¨No.¨ ¨Don Julio lives one block north and two blocks down from the church.¨ Then I would follow those directions to find Carla and ask her about her house. (Quick note about directions here: the streets don´t have names here and people dont have house numbers. Your address here is in relation to a landmark. For example you might live, two blocks west and one block north of the central park. The Peace Corps Office address is ¨Two blocks north of Hotel Brandt¨. Also, sometimes they are in reference to things that don´t exist. Your address might be, two blocks north from where the bank used to be. Basically it just means that you have to be always asking questions as you go to a destination). As you can imagine, I often brought a Nicaraguan with me to help me find the places and also to ask about prices.

The one good thing about the house searching process was that I realized how nice the Nicaraguans are. I told a casual work acquaintance that I was having problems finding houses and on the weekend she came to my house and led me ALL around Corinto to people she knew asking if they knew of houses. She spent 4 hours with my looking for houses. I kept telling her that she didnt have to do this for me, and she said, ¨You would do the same for me if I was in the U.S. looking for houses.´ And no doubt, after this experience I would. But I was thinking, if some random Nicaraguan (or any foreigner) got a job at my office in the States and was complaining about lack of good housing in Chicago, would I spend my saturday afternoon contacting real estate agents and asking friends for available housing? I wish I could say yes, but probably I would just sympathize with them and move on to the next topic of conversation. Not only did this woman help me, but the next day a friend of mine did the same thing, taking me around to people he knew to ask them about housing. I was impressed by the help I was given which really made me feel welcome here. Granted things are a bit different in the States, but try to show hospitality to foreigners living in the U.S. as repayment for them helping me here. A small gesture goes a long way to help someone feel welcome in a strange place where they dont even have addresses!

Anyways, I found the place I´m going to move into through a friend of a friend. I am hoping to only live in this place for a few months while I continue to look for a more private place, where I will have my own shower and own patio. I move into my new place this weekend. I am most excited about being able to cook for myself (this excitement will probably fade immediately after I make myself a huge veggie omelette that I have been craving). I dont have that much stuff so the move shouldn´t be too difficult, I´ll keep you updated on how everything goes. Have a good weekend!