Today as I helped Edgar and Victor clean the apartment, I realized that I truly do live in a developing country. Then again... maybe it's just this apartment that is 3rd world.
Here in this apartment, I don’t have many of the things that I have taken for granted my entire life. We are without a washer or a dryer and if you want to wash your clothes, you either do it by hand and dry it on a line in the house or pay a lot of money to go to a Laundromat (Laundromats here are not cheap, so everyone in the household washes their clothes by hand- who does that these days?) We steal someone else’s internet and 65% of the time it doesn’t work. We don’t have heating or air conditioning. Dish washers? What are those? I almost forgot to mention them because I have been living without one for so long. Oh, I wish I was joking. We also don't have clean water, so we have to buy our own water bottles every day to stay alive. There are no screens on the windows here (I don’t think I have seen a single one since I came to this country). Our chairs are made of wood from the 1950’s (most of them are broken) and the beds here are broken. I don’t even have a bed. I don’t know what I sleep on, but it is somewhat comfy, so it’s okay. We are without a microwave as well, and sometimes the stove randomly breaks. We don’t even have a mop- we tie a creepy looking rag to the broom to clean the floors.
And yet I am happy here. I am happy washing my jeans in the shower and cleaning all of my dishes by hand. I am happy waiting days for my clothes to dry. I am happy cleaning the floor with a really nasty rag tied to a broom. I am happy without heating or air conditioning or a bed. I am happy to be sharing a small apartment with 5 other people (not counting the random guests who come and go and spend the night). I am happy to be living in a corner of a room which I share with two men who sleep in the same bed.
I am so, so incredibly happy here in this crappy, broken, drama filled Brazilian apartment. The happiest I have ever, ever been.
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