Snow!!!!

Probably the only post I'll ever make about snow during my Peace Corps time. But here I am with my brothers in our (their) snow fort during my Christmas Vacation. whoo!

At Anna's House

Tim and I went to visit Anna in her genuine Nipa hut in Capiz, on Panay. This is the traditional Filipino house in our area, and it's really cool to live in one. This one was custom built for Anna.

Peace Corps: Where Nightmares Become Reality

For years now, I have had a recurring nightmare. I’m asleep, and feel ants crawling all over my bed. I’ll jump out of bed, throw the covers off, and turn on the light. Then I see there are no ants in my bed, and I go back to bed. That was before Peace Corps. Now there really are ants in my bed. There’s nothing like facing your fears, though. For one thing, the ants in my nightmares are big, and all over the bed, everywhere. In real life, they are usually the tiny red ones, although sometimes the bigger black ones find their way onto the bed. And they are never ALL over. I’ve gotten used to just flicking them off my sheets, and it hardly even bothers me anymore. Not that I like it, but it’s not the stuff of nightmares.

But I suspect that when I go back home I will have new material for my nightmares. For example, I’m sleeping, and I’m awoken by the sound of something like a plastic wrapper or plastic bag being crunched on, or maybe, chewed. I go into the next room and turn on the light, and a rat the size of a house cat dashes off into the CR (bathroom), leaving behind a bag of snack food taken from my kitchen table. That could come up in a nightmare sometime.

Or I might have a nightmare where I’m eating dinner with my host family, and I take a piece of pork from the bowl and put it on my plate. It’s hard to cut, and I feel stupid working so hard at it. I flip it over and realize I am trying to eat a pig snout, hair included. That one has nightmare potential.

I just hope that the good experiences I’ve had come up in dreams too. I could handle a recurring dream about lying in a hammock under some palm trees.