I itch more.

I am in a losing war with bedbugs and am running out of ideas. I am confused as to how everyone else who lives in the sierra just deals with this problem, but that is true of many things.

It's been an up-and-down couple days here at site, and this will be a shorter blog entry due to the first down: my keyboard going absolutely haywire and pretty much rendering my laptop useless for things unrelated to iPod charging and use of Microsoft Paint. I blame the dust and the culture shock. My keyboard is unacostumbrado to all the Ñs and Ás.

My laptop has, however, proven quite useful in providing me with an outlet for my mad Microsoft Paint skills in designing a flyer for the upcoming compost sales in the campo. I lack an adequate design program on my computer and Juan wanted it done for next week, so Paint it was. One black-and-white, oversimplified diagram of a functioning compost pile, coming up. The part of me that remembers all the hours I spent in the 3D lab last winter on the virtual reality project is dying a slow death.

There are two roosters running around the computer lab right now.

Humberto's cousins painted my room yesterday and today, and I am now the proud inhabitant of a light blue adobe dungeon. Granted, everything I own is a little bit splattered with paint (note to self: when you come back from work to find the dudes painting your room passing around cervezas, take action), but it probably vale la pena. That room will improve poco a poco. Someday, maybe rats won't fall through the roof, but hey, I'm not holding my breath.

Amidst all these issues, I had perhaps the greatest conversation I have had in Peru with Juan today, second only to perhaps when my host dad in Sta. E. acted out Ghostbusters.
Me: Juan, how are we getting all this compost up the hill?
Juan: Oh, a burro will carry it.
Me: Whose burro?
Juan: Our burro.
Me: WE HAVE A BURRO?!
Juan: (sudden, uncontrolable laughter)

Seriously, whose idea was it to NOT tell the Volunteer that her new project comes with its own donkey. And that the donkey is named after a nearby mountain.

It has come to my attention that this blog insufficiently explains what my project actually is. We collect trash. Before, the people of Santo Domingo had no choice but to throw their trash in the river, which is pretty rank as it is. Now, the people separate it into organics (for the compost, to be sold in the campo starting in February-ish), and inorganics. What can be sold for recyclables of the inorganics is, and the rest of it...well. Juan has the plans and is applying for a sanitary landfill to put on his farm. Currently, they are still burning the trash. We added a new neighborhood to the collection this week, so I have been walking around with Juan, handing out buckets and bags, and instructing people on how to separate their trash. Oh, me and landfills. Destined since every Take Your Daughter To Work Day of my childhood. Thanks, Dad.