Scorpions, cipro, and shitting in a cup! Oh my!

Well, another week has gone by, and that means, you guessed it, another scorpion adventure. Que divertido! At least this one doesn’t involve someone being attacked while they’re sleeping. So a few days ago, Chris called me up to meet a “friend” of his. Turns out, it was a decent sized scorpion at the foot of his bed. It had actually been there for a day or two and Chris had been sleeping next to it. I told him he was nuts. “What? It was outside my mosquito net,” he said. Nuts. Anyway, we decided to take him out with extreme prejudice. We mobilized the family and gathered around Chris’s bed. I grabbed him with my leatherman and Iris the Scorpion Queen looped some string around his tail. We snipped his stinger and lo and behold, we had ourselves a pet scorpion for the night! Everyone took turns walking him around and then, drunk with confidence, we started putting him in our hands to pose for photos. When it was my turn, Consuelo, aka Yoda who is always right, suggested I put him on my forearm. Thinking it would be a cool shot for Steve to have a scorpion crawling across my ALS wristband, I did it. Well, before I knew it, the f*cker made a break for my sleeve! If only you could have heard the girlish scream I let out. Especially when I could feel him grabbing my skin tighter as I flapped my arm like a wounded bird. Eventually I flapped my little chicken wings hard enough to get him off, but my heart was racing harder than any skydive I’ve ever done.

In other news, apparently I’m a filthy bitch. After a few days of feeling really, really weak, sweating bullets, and not sleeping very well, oh yeah, and a lot of the dreaded D word, I casually mentioned it to the PC medical officer when I went in to get what seemed like my 20th vaccination. Irma, an amazingly sweet woman, smiled as she just as casually asked me to step into the bathroom to sh*t in a cup so they could send it to the lab. Um, skipping over the next part, she said it’d be a few hours for the results. Meanwhile all my PC amigos enjoyed the fact that I pooped in a cup. What, you haven’t? And the results… drum roll please… parasites! But wait, it gets better. A gastro-intestinal infection to boot! Turns out it was some sort of free spirit parasite (actually, it was E. Coli for all you medical freaks) and apparently it got bored of me after a few days and left. But I just finished up cipro for the infection and it’s worked wonders. Plus, I feel like I can eat anything since cipro is like bleach for your stomach. Yay!

In the end, I think these experiences are helping me a ton with my fear of many legged creatures, which can pretty much be traced directly to the Temple of Doom. Thanks Dr. Jones!

By the way, I LOVED hearing from you guys last week. Keep sending what you can and letting me know how you're all doing.

Okay, signing off for now.

Here we go...

When I first set out to create this blog, I had planned to do with it what any new blogger tries to do - write quasi-philosophical, totally unpublishable junk that seems like pure gold at the time, but is usually just sort of internet nonsense. But stuff is just happening way too fast for me to sit down and write amazing entries for, and it’s already sort of piling up. So I’m going to cruise through a bunch of things here and play a little catch up. I´ll probably edit/add to them later.

Goodbyes

Somehow they ended up being bittersweet. I was thinking, everyone should go away at least once in their lives. Even if it’s for a couple months. Actually, it doesn’t even really matter how long it is, just as long as it’s real. The conversations you get to have and the parties people throw are amazing. It’s something I’ll never forget. More on this later.

Training – Washington DC

What would you do if the government gave you 160 bucks to spend on your last two days in the states? Nuf said. You’d have kickass meals and toast potable water as much as you could. Also, quick shout out to the people at PC Washington who are reading my blog to make sure I say nothing bad. Hola! No, seriously, imagine trying to assemble 40 anxious kids (except for one 28 yr old, one 30 yr old, and one 69 yr old) in one room and make them feel confident and unified in just a day and a half. Pretty awesome. Three cheers to Abi and Emily for pulling it off despite doing everything but flat out tell us to quit the Peace Corps more times than I can remember.

San Salvador

Where do I start?!!! Okay, I’ll start with the easy stuff. As I’ve mentioned to a few of you, our training for the next few months is in a small town outside of San Salvador called San Vicente. I live with a large family in a town called La Virgen (haha!) just outside the city. There are eight people in our family, not including the four kids and adults who drop by every day or the old guy who lives in a shack behind the house who the family never talks about. Seriously. I actually live with another PCV named Chris, a cool guy from Chicago who studied IR and Criminal Justice and first heard about the Peace Corps after he googled it while watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith (apparently Anjolina’s character lies about being in the PC) and who I’ve found out can pretty much make himself throw up just thinking about our pit toilet. It’s hilarious. He also loves tow trucks. Also hilarious. He lives in a house just off the road and I live lower down on the hillside in my own mini-house closer towards the center of our family “compound.” I have electricity, which rocks, and a decent amount of space.

We have training in San Vicente twice a week. One day for health and technical training and another usually for general PC training. When I think of the PC training center, I think of air conditioning, flush toilets, and good stories. Usually I haven’t seen people for a few days and there’s always something to share. Here´s a (crappy) photo of what it´s like.

Okay, that’s the quick lowdown. But here are some random things you guys might also find interesting.

1. I started a “last hombre standing” pool to see who will get the sh*ts the last. The logic is that everyone’s going to get them, so let’s have fun with it. The buy in was 2 bucks and 19 people entered so the winner takes home 38 bucks! That’s an insane amount of cash here (my 20 minute bus ride to/from my village in the hills is 50 cents). I am already out of the pool. More on that in my next post.

2. My roommate in DC was a 69 year old man who they’re making an Italian documentary about. He’s turning 70 this Sunday and I’m planning his bday party. A really cool guy.

3. I’m woken up literally 20 times a night by the sound of dogs barking/fighting or roosters crowing ridiculously loud at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, and of course, dawn. It’s AMAZING how horrible the sound is, especially since they’re right outside my door, or standing on top of my roof when they do it. There’s absolutely nothing romantic or farmy about it. It sucks. Sleeping with my ipod and loud classical music seems to help. With my new camera, I can record sound, so I’m planning on recording a video and uploading it so you guys can experience the weirdness that is a night en el campo.

4. We caught that little bitch scorpion that tried to kill me last week. Oh, you mean you haven’t heard? My first night with my host family, I woke up with a scorpion crawling across my back. Made for an interesting adventure trying to find the little f*cker (I couldn’t) and go back to sleep (also, couldn’t). Anyway, we found him the follow day. He was hiding at the foot of my bed, or as I like to think of it, waiting for me at the foot of my bed. Eeek. Anyway, he gave a satisfying squish when we stepped on him and then fed him to the ants. And speaking of my host family, it’s only fitting that I introduce you. Sorry I’m photo dumping but people keep asking what everything looks like so I’m including a bunch at first so you all can get a sense of it all.

Consuelo

The closest thing to yoda I’ve ever met. She talks slow, she moves slow, everything slow. She’s also amazingly cool and makes me feel very welcome. She´s had four PCVs before us so she´s great about sensing my vibe. I swear she has the force.



Iris (pronounced E-ris)

Consuelo’s daughter who lives in the upper quarters with Chris. Very cool. And clearly a badass. Note the utter lack of fear on her face.


Nemesis

The cutest thing since baby monkeys were invented. She’s five but one of the best Spanish teachers I’ve ever met.


Dani

I think somehow Dani got a hold of some US grade pixie stix otherwise I have no idea how he has this much energy. For the first few days, the only word I could think of to describe him was “mono” which sort of means cute but is actually the word for monkey. Nuf said.


Okay, what else? Oh yeah, I love hearing from you guys, even if it’s a quick hello to let me know what’s going on back in Lake Wobegon. Know that for these first few weeks, my days are planned for me way in advance and my internet time is extremely limited so it may take me a week to get back to you. But I do read your emails and save them onto my flash drive to respond to back at my house. Okay, that’s all for now. If there’s other stuff you guys want to know about, just let me know.

It goes without saying that I miss you all very much!