Top 10 Things I Really Really Appreciate About Town Living

As I was reading over my last effort at a blog post for typos, I was bored senseless. Which may just be because it's old hat to me now, but I'm going to go with, No, For Real, This is Boring. And not post that.

We'll jump that ship of Things I Learned in the Village For My Future Village Living, because really it's just housekeeping stuff, and, unless you care, no one cares.

So moving on!

Top 10 Things I Really Really Appreciate About Town Living

Not all of the following are untrue of village living, per se. But they were things that we were without during the village living portion POC (and many of them POC, too!) Hopefully, #8, 6, and 2, at very least, we will have in our village living time when we allocate.  But in this moment, right now, these are the things I'm appreciating.

10. Microwaving Rice
    We had a single burner kerosene stove. So it was no joy to occupy it with a pot of rice, more than doubling the time we would spend cooking our meal in the already too hot hauskuk. 10 minutes in the microwave and it's perfect every time and waiting for us to hurry up with the entrée already!

9. Driving
   Can I even express how much having a car makes me feel like an adult? PBT has lent us one of their fleet for driving around town while we're here and it is sooo nice to grab my car keys and walk out the door when I want to go somewhere.

8. 2 Bedrooms
   This extends past village living, past POC, past our three months in Dallas, to the entirety of James' life. With the exception of a couple homes that we briefly stayed at on our PD trip across the world, James slept in our room. There was always worry of waking him. And now, we keep it down, of course, but there's no need for silence.

7. Stores
   You know when you're like, "I would really like _________" so you jump in your car and head to the store and grab what you want and go home? Yeah, in the village that doesn't happen so easily. Now there's no Walmart here and I fiercely miss being able to stop at one store and get everything I need and go home, but compared to village living, many things I need are just down the road.

6. Power
   We had an ill-equipped solar charger in the village. It could only get enough power from the sun each day to charge my phone to 60%, though it's battery was capable of doing much better. Constantly fretting about whether my phone was in flight-mode or off and if I would have enough power for those Kodak moments… It was stressful. I'm not used to limited resources. (Even at POC, we had one outlet and one plug adapter.)

5. Free WI-FI
   We got internet in the village and at some points it was even faster than the office internet, but the office internet is free and when you're paying for the mb (THE MEGABYTE! For comparison, cell phone plans are sold by the gigabyte (1024mb in a 1gb) and home internet plans are sold on the speed with UNLIMITED INTERNET! We don't have that) free is so so nice.

4. Indoor Plumbing
   When your options are going to a spider infested outhouse down a muddy hill or using a bucket which then needs to be emptied in said outhouse, a toilet really does look like a porcelain throne.  Also not having to worry about the water, that was hauled a 10 minute hike uphill, running out when washing dishes or drinking is really nice.

3. Morning Sounds
   The ocean is two blocks from our house. I can see it through the palm trees on days when it doesn't perfectly match the sky. …I guess even then I can still see the ocean, I just can't discern the ocean… But the sounds of the waves crashing on the rocky shore wafts through the silence to greet us in the morning and it's much more lovely to wake to than roosters, who do NOT say cock-a-doodle-doo, but scream like a woman being murdered right outside (and many times under) your house.

2. Cushions
   This was another thing that in the village, we were like, "we cannot leave for village living again without:" cushions. I mean, I can sit on the ground or a wooden bench as well as the next guy, but not all day every day forever. I would wake up in the morning, sit on a trunk to drink coffee, and moan at the soreness that had not alleviated during the night. Here, the cushions aren't great. I can still get sore. But comparatively?  Really really appreciated.

1. The Refrigerator
   Guys. Friends. Supporters. Loved Ones. I can not tell you. how many times. in the village. I have said. "Everything would be so much easier to handle if I just had ice." I mean, really, village life wasn't overwhelmingly rough but there were some key stressors and if I could just have some cold water, or Pepsi, or Mio enhanced water, or whatever, I could really say, "I hear you annoying me right now, but I really don't have time to focus my attention on you because right now I have an ice cold glass of water that demands my appreciation."
   Pulling a pitcher of water out of the refrigerator here...
   Guys.
   Friends.
   Supporters.
   Loved Ones.
   I had forgotten water could be that cold.