The evenings here are very quiet and end very early. At home I rarely crawl into bed before 11 or 12 pm. Here I'm up in my room most nights between 7-8. Next to the language it's the biggest change for me.
Xiani prepares dinner and serves dinner anywhere between 5:30 and 7. (it is also dark by 6 pm.) After eating and doing the dishes, Donald and Xiani curl up together on the coach and watch tv, preferably football. They don't really talk and it doesn't seem like an appropriate time to ask "Como se dice?" "How do you say?" They also don't tend to stay up late and usually call it a night by 8. Megan and I would take this time to shower, if we hadn't already and then head to our rooms. (We did stay up a little longer on Saturday to celebrate Megan's last evening and drank our cervezas on the patio.)
It's in my room at night when I feel like I'm at summer camp? I sit on my bed, cross legged, under my mosquito net with the lights off. Keeping the lights on is out of the question because it only attracts bugs, especially nasty flying beetles. Even just using my iPad attracts some small bugs that somehow manage to get past my net. I found some duct tape and covered all the holes and rips in my net. When I crawl into bed I make suse I have all the essentials- my iPhone (alarm- just in case), iPad, earplugs, headphones, flashlight, cortisone, and water bottle. Once I get the net fixed around me I don't want to have to get out if I can help it. I even watch the amount of water I drink because I don't want to have to get out of my cocoon. And it's really dark going downstairs to the bathroom, hence the flashlight. So I sit in my bed and pretend I'm back at Girl Scout camp, only Angella, Kristen, and the others are only with me via Facebook.
Going to sleep early does have its advantages. The sun comes up around 5 am and breakfast is served around 7 if we are staying on the farm for the day. Also, there is no telling how restful the night's sleep is going to be. There is a pond right outside my window that sapos (frogs) like to jump into. I quickly learned that the smaller the sapo the noisier it is. Some nights it's just worth it to get to sleep before they start croaking. Or the geckos start screaming. Or the crickets and countless other bugs outside start making a racket.
And then there are the dogs. Lucky and Tara bark at everything. Lucky's doghouse is also right under my window. Some nights he barks or whines (or both) before I can get to sleep. He also likes to bark in the middle of the night. And at 5:30 every morning. He drives me absolutely insane. He is lucky I don't strangle him. Some nights are so bad I have to put in my earplugs and headphones to try to drown out the noise. On Wednesday night I think I got about 3 hours of sleep. It was awful but I did sleep thought the night on Thursday out of pure exhaustion.
On Friday I got my first set of bug bites- 16 to be exact. Megan got even more. They don't itch quite as bad as mosquito bites back home but they look worse and ooze. Of course when they do itch it's in the middle of the night. Or maybe I'm being woken by bugs actually biting me. I do have 23 bites now. Maybe I should check for more holes in my net.
Sunday night I had a hard time getting to sleep, probably because I had such a lazy day. It was close to 11 before I shut off my book and tried to sleep but it was too late - the frogs were out. I decided to try something new. I downloaded some soothing oceans sounds and put my headphones on. That did the trick. I was able to drown out the noise and fell into a peaceful sleep. I woke about an hour later just long enough to turn the headphones off. About 4 am I heard something and felt the house shake. I didn't quite wake up but thought- 'hace viento', it's windy, one of the words I had learned early in the day. I could faintly hear Donald and Xiani downstairs but I was too tired to figure out why. I rolled over and went back to sleep. At 6:50 I went downstairs to set the table for breakfast to learn that it wasn't wind at all. We had experienced a 5.6 earthquake. Donald was yelling to make sure I was ok. This was my first experience in an earthquake and I barely registered that it happened. As my friend Sue in CA says- "I'll take an earthquake over a tornado any day!"
