September 19: Day 18

Coffe with ants please!

Coffee here is not exactly what you would you get at your local starbucks. For one, it is all instant. For two, it is about ½ milk (powdered or boxed of course…canned if I am lucky) ¼ sugar and ¼ coffee. And for three, this morning in my “coffee” there were two ants taking a bath. But that is not where the ants stop. I had peanut butter on bread and there were ants that came out of the jar and I know I ended up spreading them right onto my bread. Extra protein right? It is very interesting how you just get used to these things. At first I tried to pick the ants out of my food, but now I just try to go with it. Sometimes I get a little grossed out with the ants and I kill them or try extra hard to keep them off my plate. For the most part it is part of the routine. Avoid bugs.
I don’t know if I mentioned this before but Pohnpei, actually Micronesia, is incredibly rainy. You would think that there would be TONS of bugs from all of the rain, but there really are not that many. My host father, Makansi, says that the only poisonous but here is the giant centipede…and I have not even seen one yet!
On a different note, I do not think my family used toilet paper. They bought me some and gave it to me when I first got here, but I have not seen any in the outhouse at all. And I never see them take any with them back there. In fact, there is a bag hanging with scrap paper in it. I think my host sister, Q-vera, old tests from school. I’m pretty sure they use that instead…each to their own…