Monkeys: Check

Wild monkeys woke me up yesterday, along with my host brother making monkey noises to lure them closer-- not that they could get any closer. There were about a dozen white and black monkeys hopping all over the house, swinging from tree to window and asking for peanuts when they saw people. I jumped at the chance to feed them, despite my host sister's warning that "If you move your hand one centimeter before they are finished eating, they will scratch and scratch until your hand is theirs." Apparently my host grandparents are the only ones brave enough to feed the monkeys, but I wound up feeding several for about half an hour without incident.
The monkeys come to the house roughly two times a month during rain season. Rain season is no joke here-- 50 hours of continuous rains stopped just this morning. I welcome the rain because I've got a terrific raincoat and like seeing all the rivers gushing, but anything more than 20 hours and the locals get nervous about their crops getting destroyed and not being able to ride a motorcycle from one place to another due to flooding. It's fair to say that their reasons for disliking long, heavy rains are much better than my reasons for liking them.

I at last have the camera cable and will be posting pictures hopefully this evening. Talking about monkeys is only so meaningful compared to the pictures, and even those are unspecial compared to actually being there.