First week randoms

Tomorrow is the first day of school.  New kids had orientation today, so there were lots of students and families around the campus today and it's really happening!

Tomorrow we all have to wear matching t-shirts with the school motto on it.  It's light grey, the perfect colour when you are a super sweaty lady in a tropical climate.  I wish someone would have thought that through a bit better.  It's not making me feel any better that I had to get (I kid you not) a lady's size XXL because I am distinctly NOT Burmese sized.  Others opted for the men's t-shirts which I should have probably taken to help my self-esteem.

I was looking around in the storage room yesterday for an unused couch to put in the library to make it a little less dentist-office like.  If any of my former colleagues are reading this, right now their mouths are hanging open because I spent most of my last job trying to move all the comfortable furniture OUT of the library.  I seem to attract couples who like to make out right next to my desk when I provide things like couches, but I am going to take a risk.  Growth mindset! Anyway, I was talking to the head of maintenance and he was asking what my job was.  I told him I was a librarian and he said "I've been working here for 23 years and all librarians are old ladies!" I will take that as a sign that the humidity is giving me a constant youthful glow.

We've had a few "developing country" instances in the past few days.  While watching the sun go down from our nice balcony, I also got to watch a nice big rat mosey out of the neighbour's palm tree  (that hangs partially into our yard) and drop on the roof of their out building.  Better them than us I guess.  While giving my sister a skype tour of the house, we flipped on the light in the kitchen to see a nice big cockroach (flashback to my Paraguayan days!).  Bet you can't wait to visit Katie!  Not unrelated, we are having an issue with garbage.  We have no idea what to do with it.  And weirdly neither does anyone else, including locals!  Everyone has a cleaner who must deal with it somehow, but we haven't hired one yet so we are starting to get quite worried.  I don't want to just leave it outside and invite Reggie the Rat to take up residence with us, but the overflowing bins are getting ridiculous.  And just this morning I noticed that the water pressure dropped dramatically to just a trickle as we were getting ready to leave for work.  All the houses here have water tanks on the roof and I guess ours ran out of water.  There is a complicated system of switches to flip to pump water back up there.  I managed to figure it out, but not without my typical overreaction and unnecessary panic.

We have yet to find a grocery store than carries the majority of what we normally cook, but we have found the cheapest place possible for beer that we can walk to.  Called Mickey Mouse Bar (pictured above), the beers cost a whopping £0.47 each, are ice cold, and we technically can take the dog, although the waiter is clearly scared of dogs and I have to fetch the beers from him while he stands a respectable distance away.  They also serve food, which I want to try at some point.  Burmese food is a delicious blend of Indian, Chinese and a little Thai-lots of curries.  My eagerness to try some really authentic local food is outweighed by my eagerness not to poop my pants at work during my first week.

Anyway we are here and weirdly it feels like a lot more than 5 days since we have landed.  We are still living with no furniture and our shipment isn't due to arrive for a while, but we are making it home.  We are loving our evenings and early mornings on the balcony and just trying to laugh when we slip and almost die on the deadly mossy moldy stuff that is all over all the sidewalks here (when there are sidewalks).  It's all part of the adventure and the weather right now will make us appreciate the amazing weather come October.  My sweat glands will be so sad they are on hiatus!