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.
