Rats!

The exiting thing last week was that we found out what has been making noise in our ceiling for a couple of months. We all had our guesses: a mouse, a bird, a lizard, a gecko, nothing. But we had a trap put up there to catch whatever it was (someone went up before that to take a look and told us it was a small tikus, which could be a big mouse or a small rat). Anyway, as you may guess by the title, it was a small rat. The great part about it is that it does not wake us up at night anymore and we don't hear anything scratching around up there anymore. The bad part is that it sat in a cage in front of my house before someone came to take it away and kill it! The bad part about that is that I went to look at it and I thought it was kind of cute in it's own way. It definitely has beady eyes! Anyway, that was about the most exiting thing to happen around here and is still a topic of conversation for us.

The actual rat, and a random snail friend in the corner.

Now the only thing we hear in our ceiling is an occasional drip from the rain. It's rainy season here right now, which does not mean that it is cold. The temperature is pretty much the same as always. The difference is that usually every day it rains for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, maybe again around sundown, and then often during the night. The ground is always wet and mud is abundant. Sometimes we have floods when the rain is particularly heavy which makes traffic even slower. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get home from work a couple of times last week. If there isn't much traffic, like on a holiday, it only takes about 1/2 hour for me to get to work. Most of the vehicles on the road are motorcycles and the rain doesn't stop anyone from driving them. They just put on their rain gear, take off their shoes or sandals and sometimes even drive with their feet up high on the stem  of the bike below the handle bars. Motor bikes still get around faster than the cars since they weave in and out of traffic and cars, not just down the lane between cars but also between the cars as in the tiny space between the back of one car and the front of another until they're at the front of the light. Many of them then don't even wait for the light if there is one and just go if there is any break in the traffic and they think they can make it. It's pretty cool but also a little scary to watch sometimes.
Church is sometimes a bit challenging too. Today none of the Elder's Quorum presidency showed up (it's been weeks since they've been to a priesthood meeting). Today is supposed to be the lesson taught by the presidency. Since I conducted the opening of the priesthood meeting I felt like I should help out. I asked if anyone had been asked to teach and no one (out of the 5 in attendance) spoke up. I was pretty sure that no one had been asked so I started a discussion about something that seemed relevant. It seemed to go okay, but I did get a lot of looks like they were really concentrating to try to understand me. I wish I could speak this language better, and I'm sure they think the same thing!