Last night was one of the first nights where I actually slept well. It has been difficult for me to get used to all the sounds here. Firstly, it seems like our area is overcrowded with stray dogs because they don’t seem to belong to anyone and they keep on barking during the nights. Then there are the cats that are running on our tin-roof making sounds like a grown person is running back and forth on the roof. First night I got really scared until my housemate told me that it was just cats running between the roofs of the houses. The fact that we have a tin-roof does not help when it rains either, it gets almost impossible to watch TV and if someone calls you don’t even have to bother to pick up the phone, you won’t hear a thing anyways. Going to sleep while it rains is not an easy task but believe it or not, I have gotten used to it and I am a terribly light sleeper. Maybe it is not that strange that I have gotten used to the sounds afterall, I have been here for a month now, as my housemate reminded me of the other day. In addition to the other sounds in the night there is the occasional 4-o´clock-in-the-morning out-break of music at the neighbours place. The first time it happened I woke up and I got really annoyed. Then I heard it was really nice Bachata music so I turned around and fell asleep again. The first week I could not for my life see how I would get used to it, now it is the sounds of being home.

This morning, before I left home, I ran into our cleaning lady (yes, the living standards may be low but the ones who can afford it have someone cleaning their homes and wash their clothes). She is a fragile-looking beautiful old Doña (you use this title together with the first name when you want to show respect) and I always feel bad that she “has” to clean our house. But she says that she loves coming to our house to clean and have some nice conversations, and of course for her it is an income.

At the moment, it is rain/low season here (goes from July-November approximately) which means that it is almost always cloudy, humid and around 30 degrees Celsius. The only thing that can get to you sometimes is the humidity but it is not an unpleasant climate. This morning when I was on my way to work, the sun was shining and I could see the Mombacho volcano rising up behind the city. It was beautiful and it became more striking since in reality the volcano is always there, just that I don’t see it because of all the clouds.

The past weeks I have been busy putting together a training program for the kitchen and restaurant staff in the hotel. Next week the hotel will be closing for 4 days of maintenance (the first session of maintenance, we have another maintenance at the end of September). At the end of next week I will have to instruct the staff in hotel standards of the Western world… in Spanish. I have to admit that I am a little bit nervous. I am not too fond of speaking in front of people and definitely not in a language I do not master.

But I´m sure it will turn out fine…