It’s Story Time!

It’s been raining for five days now, and I’m going a little stir crazy. Plus I just made myself a hot mocha, then tried to make a cold mochaccino, so I also have a bit of a sugar high going on!! So, I’m going to share a few funny stories that haven’t made it into the blog to entertain you, and more importantly this afternoon, myself.

-One day I was sitting on my front porch and saw a pig get run over by a bus!! It twitched and squealed and was bleeding out of its mouth for a few minutes, then finally died. The neighbors came out to check it out, there was some discussion about whose pig it was, then they picked it up and loaded it on the back of a girl’s bike to bring it home, where surely they enjoyed a delicious asado (barbecue) that night!

-More bus stories – the old school bus that goes to Horqueta has wooden slats for a floor, and once it was so muddy that as we went through a puddle the mud sloshed up THROUGH THE FLOOR and onto my feet.

-More killing animal stories, though this one actually belongs to my friend Sarah but I don’t think she’ll mind if I tell it – once she was riding her bike in her site and ran over a chicken!! She said she thought it was going to run away as she came towards it like all the others, but it didn’t. Later she went back and paid the family for the loss of their chicken, which they ate anyway.

-Another friend of mine works in a rural health center, where she gets to do all sorts of crazy things like perform PAP smears and sew up a cow’s udder using a needle and dental floss.

-I went to Horqueta to help the PCVs there with their summer camp and somehow got left alone with a group of 3 year olds who barely spoke Guarani, let alone Spanish. After learning the colors for about five minutes, they were done with sitting and I couldn’t get them to listen to me or play a game or do anything (we did manage to make a fun choo choo train for a few minutes, but it was all downhill from there). Magically, a teenager arrived and the kids started yelling to play some game, so he said he’s show me how and immediately the kids started to behave. They all squatted down and put their arms around their legs and clasped their hands behind their knees, and then I had to wander around them and say something like “Hmm, I want a jar of water, which one should I buy?” Then I picked a kid and the teenager and I each grabbed an elbow and had to carry the kid a few feet and put him/her on the other side, without him/her ever losing the grip and letting go. Then I had to go back and pick another kid, and it sounds like the silliest game ever but it WORKED, these kids would have stayed quiet for hours. I wish I could remember what it’s called..

-People steal things out of my bathroom if I forget to lock it or put the stuff away. I padlock the bathroom door at night now. It’s annoying that people aren’t stealing things of real value but just taking advantage – lightbulbs cost 2mil, a little more than a piece of candy Twice someone’s stolen my clothesline, three times my lightbulb has been stolen, once someone stole my shampoo from the bathroom (but fortunately left my fancy US face cleaner), and once someone pooped in my toilet.

-Fun recipe that’s moderately healthy or at least not as bad as cookies or cakes – heat 1C sugar, ¼ C milk, 2T butter (or 1T oil 1T water), 2T hot chocolate mix or coffee, 1t salt, 1t vanilla extract, then add 1 ½ C oatmeal. You’re supposed to let it cool to form “unbaked cookies” but I like to eat it warm. Yum! New favorite morning beverage – hot water with half a lime from my lime tree!

-You know that Norah Jones song that has a line “I wanna wake up to the sound of rain falling on a tin roof”? It’s bs. Do you know what rain really sounds like on a tin roof? It sounds like noise. Loud noise. So loud I can’t even hear my music and I’ve got the speakers turned up as loud as they can go. You can’t “wake up” to rain like that, because you’ll never fall asleep in the first place. Guess I ran out of funny stories, moved on to just random thoughts. Sorry.