To continue with my last entry, it really is surprising how much things have changed from the days when I was living in the United States. Yesterday, I came home from spending a night away having a movie/Mexican food sleepover with my sitemate Savanna before she leaves on vacation. I went into a cleaning spree, coco-broussing my floor, painting a small part of the remaining 2.5 walls that are still colored with this light blue that my predecessor loved so much; me not so much. As I was organizing my bedroom, I noticed some green stuff on my bed frame. After closer inspection, that green stuff was all over my bed frame, and it was mold. My new line in country is “if this had happened four months ago…” and I tend to use it frequently. If this had happened four months ago that you wanted me to bike 30k, yea I’ll pass. If this had happened four months ago that I found my puppy playing with a cockroach as a toy, I would have quit. If this had happened four months ago that you told me I would have to live without running water, a sink, or a bathroom, I would have asked if you were dreaming (and to be honest again, I knew what I was getting myself into when I joined Peace Corps, it just didn’t seem real at the time). If this had happened four months ago that I found mold growing all over my bed, I would have cried. Not saying I didn’t, because to be honest I had a moment of five minutes where I turned back to my California just go out and buy another ways. However, reality kicked in, and that isn’t the type of luxury I have here. I can’t buy a new bed frame because one, it is not in my budget, and two, I don’t really have a mode of transportation and no way of carry that bed frame back to my house. So I used some of my coveted internet credit and researched what to do, walked to my friend’s house to speak to her brother-in-law, and texted my unofficial counterpart. I scrubbed the bed with warm water, baking powder, and bleach—which while it did clean the bed, in reality I just moved the spores all over my house…oops. Google, you failed me. But Bona and Hashmira helped me—and when I mean helped me, I mean I stood there watching and they did the actual work—sand down my bed and lacquer it so the mold will not grow back. My bed still has the stains from where the mold was, and while I was planning on painting over it with the lime green paint I bought in Fianar a few weeks ago, I think for right now, I’m going to let it stay and be a daily reminder of the normality of absolutely absurd things (shout out to my last blog post) that is now my life.

So long story short (or more like long paragraph short), and the lesson of the story, make sure your furniture is dried properly and not still wet when you buy it, hence creating this lovely situation I just experienced.