4 months later...

Sooooo sup guys…

Apparently I actually have readers!! So here is a new post!

First of all, as many of you know, I just went back to the states. Now I don’t want to over-dramatize this so let me word it as eloquently as I can… IT WAS SO FFFFFFFANTASTIC. Granted, I am very happy to be home where life has the slower pace I am now accustomed to, but I had a great trip back home. What was the best part you ask?

The friends?

Yes.

 The food?

 Yes.

The beer?

Yes.

 So all of it?

 Pretty much.

I have received some flack because while only being home for 7 days, I ate Mexican food twice. All I have to say to you haters out there is, you’re not from Texas, clearly you just don’t understand. I should have eaten fajitas with guacamole and salsa that is actually spicy and not glorified tomato chunks at least 4 times. So yeah. You’re wrong. ;)

Also I went to a Keith Urban concert. It was soooo much fun! Although I was surprised to see how the fashion has changed in the states. Suddenly it seems like under-wear length jean “shorts” are appropriate as long as you are also wearing cowboy boots and a lacy top? I disagree. There were a few too many cheeky ladies out there if you catch my drift. But I am all for the boots and tops, so I guess they’re at least halfway there! And the concert was great. Keith (we are on a first name basis) is so good live. You could tell he loves what he does when he absolutely kills it on stage! Nicole was really sad we weren’t able to meet up and chat, but she has a very busy schedule and neither of us were in Dallas long enough to find a time that worked for both of us.

And now I’m home! I had an amazing homecoming with all my muchachos being thrilled that I’m back and by basically getting mauled by dog hugs. I swear, if Inigo wasn’t touching me he didn’t feel like he was close enough. Which was cute until he played with the pigs. Let’s talk about that smell for a second. Or not actually. I’ll leave it to yalls imaginations.

So now it’s back to the grindstone. Grant writing. Manual writing. Other manual writing. And just general all around kicking peace corps ass. It’s what I do.

So that’s my short and sweet post to get back into the game! I will (maybe) update more frequently in the future!

 

Peace kids.

annnnd the mosquitoes are back

At my friend’s advice I have decided to give the giant spider in my bathroom a better name than “mother of all spiders”. It has gotten bigger by the way. Anyway these critters are less surprising and, let’s face it, scary when they have names. Kind of like when I named the mouse in my house Andre. May he rest in peace. So I would like to welcome Maximilian to the (out)house. May he also rest in peace soon.

So now for some good news! I went to the dentist last Friday (yikes) and I have no cavities or anything! Sweet. I had a “stain” but she put a sealant on it and now I’m good as new. I’ve even been flossing and this was the first time in maybe my entire life when the dentist hasn’t looked at my teeth and patronizingly asked “Do you floss?”. So I scored some universe points there. But that’s good because I had lost some MAJOR universe points the day before. I had gone for a run. It was lovely and I was halfway done (re: as far away as I get from my house before turning around) and I was in the next town over.  A little girl had been calling out to me, “Sarah! Sarah!” and I had stopped to chat and explain that I am not in fact the super extremely long haired blonde who lives in Banica, but rather the short haired way less blonde who lives in Pedro Santana. And my name is Virginia. So we chatted a bit (as much as you can chat with a 3 year old who is absolutely convinced you are Sarah) and I took off running again. My dog loves to follow me on my runs which is adorable by the way. But he got spooked by some other dogs and came running up behind me and straight up took me out. He came barreling into the back of my legs and I ATE IT on the gravelly street. I cussed like nobody’s business in front of the children, oops, and ran home. I stopped to visit with my friend Ramona and as luck has it, she has an aloe plant. So she took some leaves, crushed them up inside a cloth, and squeezed the juices over my cuts. It did not feel good. Then I got home and poured salt water over them. That also did not feel good. Then the next day at the doctors I had the wonderful experience of Lisette taking a pair of tweezers and picking out all the dirt from my hand and knee. That REALLY didn’t feel good. Anyway what it boils down to is that I was due for some positive universe points. PS I haven’t gone running since and my knee is still at least 4 colors.

And yesterday was a very fun day. My friend Matt, who is COSing, came to visit and I gave him the Banica/Pedro Santana tour. We spent most of the day walking around outside in intervals and recovering from the heat in my rocking chairs. Somehow I managed to get a bit burned. You would think after so much time here I would be past burning, but you’d be wrong. Which reminds me: my friend informed me the other day that I am no longer American because my skin isn’t the right color anymore. So I asked him what I am then, and his response “not American.” Ha. But I really loved showing off my town because people are always impressed by how cute it is. And beautiful. I live in a small community, but it still has a town-like feel to it. Well it is a town, but it does not have a super-campo feel despite the fact that it is way smaller than a city. Our empanada stand even put some tables outside! So know we basically have a restaurant. And ice-cream. Recently I think I’ve been feeling down on this place, so it was really nice having someone come visit because it made me feel happy and lucky to be here again. Which is how I should be feeling, because it’s true.

Wanna know the other reason I’m lucky? People have started fighting to see who can bring me the best mangos.  And now one of my muchachos is frying a banana in my house. Life is good.

i still exist i swear

So here’s my list of “oh man my life is different moments”

·         Hanging out at the colmado while my friend is killing and cleaning chickens to sell.

·         Losing the skin on my finger from sweeping my lawn and then still having to wash my dishes in super chloro-ed water.

·         When my neighbor has impromptu cock-fights in his backyard

·         When bathing my dog becomes a barrio-wide activity

·         I’m looking for a cat to keep the rats away

·         Covering the “stove” in my “kitchen” with foil so it’s easier to clean. And yet still finding rat poop under the foil.

·         Cooking by candle-light

·         When chickens (right now)/ puppies/ lizards/ goats (only once) randomly come into my house

·         Hitch-hiking on a weekly basis

·         Napping in a puddle of my own sweat (it’s as gross as it sounds)

·         Loving the bachata and the merengue

·         Judging prices by how many jumbos it would cost

·         Having naked kids come sit in my seats and demand mentas

·         Having my dog follow me on my runs, even when he doesn’t have a leash on

·         When I reached down for a small rock to throw at the rooster sneaking into my house and was like…whoa, ginny, whoa…

·         CHLORO EVERYTHING

·         Buying “flea and tick powder” for my dog and then realizing I got totally gipped. It’s baby powder.

·         Washing machines are for wusses.

·         When I ate the produce here for the first time and realized what I had been missing. Mangos.

 

And the “my life isn’t so different moments” list:

·         Still completely freaked out by cockroaches

·         Still in love with game of thrones, Friday night lights, new girl, and any other tv show that can save me from going campo-crazy

·         Loving dancing

 

Fyi I just took a shower after my run and my bucket of water slipped a bit. As it was slipping in my hand I realized the water was gonna fall on the side of the tank by the wall where Pedro Santana’s biggest spider has been living. So I flipped a bit and tried to hop out of my “shower” quickly just as the spider did in fact come out from behind my tank and start scurrying up the wall. But I didn’t make it very far. Instead I slipped around for a bit, jammed my shin into a cement corner and almost completely ate it. Then I started drying myself off with my towel only to find that ants were all over it. Now there was no electricity, so how did I know about the ants? Because they started biting me all over my body. Then I made it back to the house, not quite dry (like I was gonna keep using that towel…) and it stars to rain. My shin is killing me, I’m out of drinking water, there is no electricity, it’s raining, and a year is feeling like a very long time. Tomorrow will be better though!

so here's something none of probably ever thought would happen...

Alright I’ve been putting off and putting off and putting off writing a new blog post because I have been really busy and I guess it just wasn’t on the top of my list of priorities. I guess I just needed a little kick in the pants, you know? A little inspiration.

Well, color me inspired. Let me tell you why:

You know how sometimes you have one of those days in one of those weeks when you’re working really hard, not seeing the outcomes you want, but seriously putting in the time anyway? So you’re working all morning on revamping your literacy manual and then all afternoon trying to force vowels into your students’ heads, and heading home to either plan/have a youth group meeting or work more on the manual at night. And this has been going on for a solid week and a half, and finally you just have one of those days. One of those days when you wake up early to put pictures on someone else’s facebook and end up just sitting in the office for half an hour because they didn’t even bring a computer. Then you go to the next town over to crunch out some new worksheets despite your Word trying to deter your every move. It takes longer than you planned, so when you get back home you don’t have time to nap before school starts, so you just go ahead and get ready instead of bailing, which you really want to do. Sadly you decide to go for the shoes that a cockroach had recently inhabited (upsetting discovery—there are very few experiences as bad as sticking your foot into a not so vacant shoe. But there are some worse experiences…details to come) and while it is this time a safe shoe, it does end up pulling on your skin so much that it essentially cuts you (important detail). By the time recess rolls around you are fed up with your students and life, suffering from a killer headache and a mild fever and just decide to call it quits and go home. You cancel the English class that was supposed to restart that night and sit down to once again work on the new manual. After a few visitors, half an hour of watching Up with the kiddos, you finally have your house to yourself again and sit down to work on a worksheet about farm animals. It’s dark, you’re finally calming down, Word is pretending to work and then WHAT THE WHAT a rat starts nibbling on the cut on your big toe. A rat that I swear to all the gods was not there even yesterday. Now it’s not a huge rat, but who the fuck cares. So you freak out and curl up in your rocking chair trying to deny what just happened, but when you see the rat later on the stand you just can’t deny the truth any longer. My poor feet.

Never, ever in my life have I ever even considered that this would happen to me. Mostly because, despite our little jokes about living in the goonies out here on the border, I am not actually Laura Ingles Wilder. So while I never thought the day might come when I could start a sentence with “oh yeah I remember this one time when a rat was nibbling on my toe…”, it has come. Just when I think I’ve gotten used to life here, the universe throws a curveball my way. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining and do love my life here, but I could do without some of these little surprises that come my way. Life in the peace corps certainly keeps you on your toes! Roach tainted, rat nibbled toes to be specific.

So yeah. That’s my life.