Our New Home

Next week we complete our training and on June 6^th we will move to our new home in Chinandega, Chinandega.  I am excited about this new home.  Here is a picture of the outside:

Ours is the little pink one in the middle.  We call it our “Casita Rosita.” Here is the floor plan:

The area is about 320 square feet.  It’s not very big to say the least.  We have been fantasizing about living in a Wee House so this is our chance to try it out.  For several years our son Jesse and his partner Lexi lived in a condo that was 550 square feet with their dog and two cats.  That was snug.  We will be snugger but have the advantage of not having everything we own with us.  Right now we have a bed (with mosquito net – it protects us from malaria and dengue and chikungunya which is really nasty - http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/), a refrigerator and a two-burner gas hotplate. When we return next week, we will tackle completing the kitchen and getting some living room and dining room furniture as well as some arrangement for our clothes.    

I almost forgot, we also have a fan.  Chinandega is really hot so the fan is a basic necessity of life.  In the short visit we had last week, I found I was most comfortable if I took a shower (we only have cold water which is just fine) and did not dry myself completely.  I then stood naked and damp in front of the fan and that felt GREAT!

Another unique feature about our new home is that the front door is in a direct line with the bathroom door.  When we are home, we leave the front door open to allow for more air circulation and close the wrought iron gate for safety.  If we forget to close the bathroom door (which we are prone to do), anyone walking by our house can see us on the throne.  We have our work cut out for us to change our relaxed attitude about toilet use. 

Water access is also interesting.  There is an outdoor sink with faucet for washing clothes and dishes and a small hand sink in the living/dining area.  There is no water access in the kitchen and no sink in the bathroom.  We plan to buy a water filter with a reasonably sized holding tank, which we can fill with tap water giving us access to filtered water for cooking and drinking in our kitchen. 

Hopefully within a few weeks we will have some pictures to post of our newly decorated and furnished home.  I am sure it will be a work in progress for the next two years as we accumulate more things.  John is already planning a mural for one of the walls and we have purchased some traditional and locally made masks to display.  We are very excited about this next phase.