My moldy house

I just want to start out again by saying that I was chased by a cow again today. Why am I so attractive to cows?

Anyway, this week was good. I feel like as long as the weeks follow the routine, they always go pretty smoothly. The only thing I really had to struggle with was my house. The lady I rent it from told me that it was ready, so I went in there to try to clean it a little before moving my stuff. I pulled all the furniture and stuff out of the room (and by furniture I mean the tiny shelf I keep my things on and the mattress), and my room was totally empty except for the bed frame. I decided to try to mop the floor, but the floor is made of stone…the type of stone that you might normally see on a patio or something. As you can imagine, the mop didn’t really do much. Then I realized that there were huge clumps of mud caked to the floor, and I couldn’t get them off. I finally had to get a kitchen knife and scrape the mud off the floor. It was really hard and tedious though, and I finally just plopped on the floor, feeling really defeated. I had no idea how I was going to live there. I couldn’t believe someone would rent a house that dirty to me. I still can’t believe I slept there for several weeks. It's really no wonder that I got sick. I had to stop working on it because my whole body was aching and I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all. I just had a bunch of muddy water on the floor. I tried to wash the mold off of the wall, and ended up taking off a layer of paint. Just to emphasize how poorly painted this wall was…I used the soft, yellow side of a regular house sponge to wash the walls. It was outrageous that the paint came off like that.

So anyway, I felt really overwhelmed. Yesterday morning, though, I walked to school with one of our neighbors and she told me that she would come over on Saturday and look at the house with me. So this morning, she and another neighbor came over, armed with soap and brooms. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but they opened my door and one of them exclaimed, "Que barbaro!" Which, directly translated, means "how barbaric!" She said that there is no way I should have been living there and that if they don't fix it, I'll keep getting sick. So I watched, fairly overwhelmed, as they sprinkled this soap on the floor, put water on it, and then started going crazy with their brooms. They were literally sweeping the dirty, soapy mud around the floor, and then they swept it right out the door. Then they proceeded to bring all my stuff back in the room and organize it for me. I felt really overwhelmed by how kind and willing to help they were. They totally fixed my room! I just really hope it stays clean, at least for a while. The whole housing thing has just been really exhausting to me, but it's a big relief to know that I have a dry room to sleep in tonight.