On August 28, we flew from the coastal city to a smaller town in the interior.\u00a0 We spent the night at the best hotel in town.\u00a0 Unfortunately their best rooms were taken, so we got a \u201cbusiness class\u201d room–meaning no air conditioning and the bathroom down the hall instead of in the room.\u00a0 At least it did have a queen-sized bed (which all four of us shared) and a fan mounted on the wall to keep us cool, so we got some sleep.\u00a0 The next morning we shopped for vegetables at the open market, loaded our boat, and headed upriver.\u00a0 Due to a leaking boat and motor trouble, our trip up was long and eventful.\u00a0 We would have preferred the trip to be boring, but we were thankful to finally make it \u201chome\u201d to our house in the jungle.<\/p>\n
In the week and a half since then, we\u2019ve been trying to get settled in and get used to life far from \u201ccivilization.\u201d\u00a0 Here are a few of the things we\u2019re adjusting to:<\/p>\n
–Early to bed, early to rise:\u00a0 Our village is hours away from the nearest public utilities.\u00a0 We\u2019re blessed to have a generator, which we usually run for a couple hours in the evenings.\u00a0 But once the generator is turned off, we all go to bed so we can get an early start the next morning.\u00a0 Nights here are pitch black and filled with jungle sounds.\u00a0 Sometimes it can seem like being on a completely different planet.<\/p>\n
–Monkey wars:\u00a0 The nearest \u201cgrocery stores\u201d are 3 hours away by boat, so we grow some vegetables and fruits around the house.\u00a0 Any of you who\u2019ve ever fought with rabbits over a garden may understand something of what we face to keep our produce for ourselves, except that rabbits can\u2019t swing in from the treetops to snatch away bananas, cassava, and pineapple tops.\u00a0 Yep, the monkeys have discovered our bounty, and nothing seems to deter them from helping themselves.<\/p>\n
–Language:\u00a0 This is a huge one for me (Jennifer.)\u00a0 While most people in the village can understand some of the national language, many of them aren\u2019t comfortable speaking it even on a basic conversation level.\u00a0 And even the national language\u00a0words that they do use often have different meanings here than elsewhere.\u00a0 If I\u2019m going to be able to build friendships here and eventually talk about spiritual things with these people, I HAVE to learn their heart language.\u00a0 For the last few days, one of our neighbors has been coming in the afternoons to help me start learning Hobongan.\u00a0 Right now I\u2019m just learning basic words for things like numbers, colors, body parts, and household items.\u00a0 Even that is exhausting work.\u00a0 Pray for me to have perseverance as the language learning process is long, exhausting, and sometimes painful.<\/p>\n
Thanks for all your prayers and support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Any of you who’ve ever fought with rabbits over a garden may understand something of what we face to keep our produce for ourselves, except that rabbits can’t swing in from the treetops to snatch away bananas, cassava, and pineapple tops. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/dj-searcy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}