Life, Normal.

After more than a month back in Tabuga, we're finally reaching the point where it stops feeling like an adventurous vacation and more just like normal life, where the quirks of living in a bamboo quasi-shantytown on the coast of Ecuador just seem the same as the quirks of living anywhere else in the world.

As I idly picked a tick off my neck this morning while enjoying my morning coffee in our front-porch hammock, I thought briefly that I ought to share that moment, and some other weird ones, with all you folks out there on the interwebs who may have different definitions of normal.

Normal for me is picking a tick off of someplace on my body, pretty much every day. I don't mind too much, as they don't carry Lyme disease here, and I don't get itchy from their bites like some other folks. They're about as harmless and annoying as mosquitos for me now. I'd like to emphasize, however, especially to people who are thinking about visiting -- not only is this past month high season for ticks (the upcoming rainy season they dissapear) but also that we've been walking through forest and jungle every couple days as part of the processes in our upcoming (hopefully) land purchase. For those who don't know, we're trying to buy quite a lot of primary tropical forest for quite a little bit of money, with some very cool goals in mind, which may or may not happen but has been really cool to look into. Expect a full post about this from Andrea or I in the weeks ahead. Regardless, the ticks don't infest my house, so don't think that -- I've kind of been actively searching them out.

Normal for me is a cold shower -- I've only had one warm shower in the last 30 days or so, and that was our first morning in Ecuador when we were at a friend's house in Quito. I live on the Equator, walking distance from the ocean, so luckily a warm shower is not very necessary, and I've come to love our cold straight-from-a-spigot shower.

Normal for me is only being able to understand around 60 percent of what my Spanish speaking friends and neighbors are saying. I'm a work in progress.

Normal for me is a broken mototaxi and a 50cent bus ride to get anywhere with cell phone service or internet.

Normal for me is a cat named Waldo that we only brought on board because A) he was going to be thrown in the ocean (that's how they deal with unwanted litters here) and B) we may have a family of rats living in our roof, and a good cat is the best and cheapest way to deal with them. Waldo is going to be a hell of a mouser.



Normal for me is Gito being huge now, but being constantly flea-infested because we can't stop him from playing with the neighborhood dogs. The fleas only rarely become a problem for us humans.


Normal for me is using a composting toilet, which is 'dry' and has to be constantly filled up with sawdust or woodchips. The payoff is that one side of our toilet is almost ready to be harvested for compost, which we'll be able to use in our garden! Only gross if you think too hard about it.

Normal for me is all of our greywater going into a banana circle, and the four banana trees circling the pit growing visibly taller and stronger with each passing day.

And, of course, waking up each morning to donkeys braying, roosters crowing and Cumbia music blaring is very, very normal. I dig it.

Come visit.

AJ