I’m continuing to enjoy life here. I’m trying to be brave. Things happen that I would freak out about at home, but here, you just have to suck it up and be okay. Like when I was a counselor at a junior high camp and we had mice in the cabin, and I just had to be the adult and pretend everything was okay, and eventually it becomes that way. Last week, I was going out to use the latrine before I went to bed. Turned on the light, opened the door, and saw a rat running around inside. I shut the door and went to use one of the inside bathrooms instead, resolving to just deal with it in the morning (meaning get someone else to deal with it in the morning), but then realized that would need to use the latrine before the rat was removed. So got my flashlight and searched the compound for one of our guards, and managed to communicate enough that he followed me to the latrine with his bow and arrow (they don’t really speak English). I don’t know if he understood that I was trying to get him to kill a rat, but he certainly figured it out as soon as we got there. I didn’t watch, but he took care of it and signaled to me that it was done. I was trying to call one of the cats over to come and take the body, but the guard motioned that this wouldn’t be a possibility, as the rat had gone down into the latrine pit. At this point, I tried to find out whether the rat was actually dead or whether he was going to crawl out at a most inopportune moment (all done with hand signals), and the guard drew his finger across his throat and taught me the K’jong word for “dead” or “killed” or similar (I don’t know the particular meaning, but certainly got the gist of it). Anyways, yet another interesting cross-cultural experience.