Sunrises and home baked Bread

The last couple of weeks have been really good. I've started focusing on the things here that I love rather than what or who I miss from home, and I've found that I've stopped missing a lot of material things. Not having electricity or running water was definitely a difficult adjustment at first, but now I find it kind of satisfying having to do everything by hand. Though I wouldn't kind skipping laundry. I also am really enjoying cooking things from scratch, I've gotten really good at baking bread. And knowing exactly where all my food has come from is a great change. I've almost become a vegetarian, meat is just so hard to get and keep. My room is as cold as a refrigerator (I can make jello by leaving it out in my room!) but I don't trust storing meat there. But eating meat only once every two weeks isn't that big a switch for me, I like eggs and milk better anyways.

My favorite time of day is now at sunrise. I used to hate getting up early, but without electricity my life revolves around the sun and daylight a lot more. Sunsets mean that I have to hurry up and get home to lock myself in my room for the rest of the night. But sunrises are beautiful, everything is so calm and the animals are all starting to wake up. I love hearing the cowbells at sunrise and sunset as they go to and from grazing fields. I'm not as big a fan of the roosters, they not only crow at sunrise but all day and usually in the middle of the night.

Probably the scariest thing that has happened to me so far was when I saw this giant insect with pinchers. I showed my eight-year old sister and she told me to kills it, I was wearing slippers so I told her to kill it, but when we looked back it had disappeared. It turns out it was a scorpion and we have no idea where it went. Now I always shake out my shoes before putting them on. At least I don't have rats like some of the other volunteers. (And dad, there are no poisonous snakes in Lesotho). I feel very safe here, although my host family has made me afraid to go out after dark, but they also believe that there are invisible men that hide in corners of houses (it's why traditional houses are round). The only thing to be scared of is the dogs they use for protection, at night they get really aggressive, one volunteer has already gotten bitten. I've definitely gotten a bit tougher skinned since I first got here. Last week my host father was butchering one of our pigs that he had just killed, next to me as I was doing laundry and I wasn't grossed out at all, I was only worried about getting bits of pig in my clean laundry. And it turned out to be the best pork I've ever tasted.