Movin' on Out

I guess in one way or another we were evicted from the little house on the beach. The place with black sand, swaying coconut trees, and various farm animals is in the past. The living arrangement we had was always a little precarious and I guess it came tumbling down about a month ago. We came back from a trip and there were four more people living on the property and we felt it was a sign to move on. We made the decision to move into town for the sake of convenience and cost. We found a place easily with the help of one of Rebeka's teachers; it is a four room townhouse about a ten minute walk from all that our town has to offer. The transition has gone smoothly besides the shock of our new environment. Instead of having the faint sound of crashing waves, we have the immediate sound of motorcycles and instead of being surrounded by green, we are surrounded by people. I guess we might have been a little spoiled in the other place, maybe it didn't give us an accurate picture of living here or at least it provided a more refreshing picture. Things at our new place aren't awful by any means but it will just take some time to adjust. One of the most discerning things is a kid that lives next to us that seems to spend most of his day crying. He is about four or five years old and seems to have screaming fits regularly throughout the day. The main showing is usually at 6:30 pm and lasts for an hour. The most stressful thing is we have no way to remedy the problem. The other kids on the compound have a different hobby which is to play peeping tom with us. We'll be sitting around not doing anything interesting and then notice two, four, six or more little eyes peering in at us through the window. It's always a little startling when you look up and see you have an audience looking back at you. However my favorite neighborhood activity is the true inspiration for this entry. The other day I heard a group of dogs fighting outside the house and after listening to it for ten minutes decided to see what was going on and there it was: an informal neighborhood dog fighting show. The first thing I noticed was that there were seven dogs all attacking one dog and then my eyes wondered to the peripheral of the fight to see every person in the neighborhood watching the fight. There was the grandfather with his granddaughter on his lap watching from their porch, the teenage boys standing in the street for a better view, and our neighbors watching from behind our fence. The dogs started to get bored with the fight and then a little kid out of nowhere started hitting the dogs with sticks and his sidekick was throwing rocks at them. This instigated another round of fighting among the dogs and laughter from the crowd. I decided at that moment that I had seen enough of the day's featured event and went back to reading my book with the lovely sound of barking and snarling in the background. Ah, home, sweet, home.