Nightmares

So my worst nightmare finally came true: I was stung by a scorpion… It was a Tuesday, the day was young, the sun was hot, and the books were dusty. I was working on getting said books ready for high school kids next year so we could get ready for the Maya Youth Coalition Art Week (more on this in the next blog) and I reached across the picnic table to grab a book. I rested my leg just below my knee on the bench of the table and thought I had ran into a sharp nail. I looked down and to my utter surprise saw a little scorpion smiling maliciously at me. Don’t worry though; I wiped that smug look off of his face real quick. The pain… was… really not that bad. It was my right leg and my whole leg beneath my knee started to sting and then it just went numb for like an hour or two. After that time the actually sting itself tingled for the rest of the day, but I was fine enough to play football for about 2 hours that night. 

 Li xook' about 30 seconds after he stung me (sorry it is blurry).

 Li xook' about 1 minute after he stung me.

Speaking of football I have been playing football almost every night with the kids in my town (by football I mean soccer, and this will remain true for the remainder of this blog unless otherwise specified).  It is fun but very tiring. Also, the field is more or less all mud because it is the rainy season and the field does not drain at all. Besides the mud, there are lots of thorny weeds, so playing barefoot hurts a lot. The kids have taken to calling me Lionel Messi whilst on the pitch, which I fully embrace (his left foot may or may not be a little better than mine, but I think I got him on height). The other day we were playing and one of the kids called me that again and a kid that hadn’t played with us before looks at me and in a dead serious voice goes “no real!?!?!” It was then that the charade was over….

I also taught them American football the other day which they seemed to really like. One kid now always greets me with a “touchdown” instead of the standard “hi.” We only played two hand touch because I thought teaching them tackle would be a bad idea, but I think it would be fun to try and figure out a way to make flags for them.

Other than playing sports in the evenings I am just trying to stay busy now that school ended three weeks ago. Another teacher at the school I work at and I have decided we are going to get back into shape this summer so we got a gym membership and are now trying to go to the gym almost every day. I also got a nice new Gary Fisher so I can bike the little over 3 miles into town in order to work out. An example of a day I had recently is as follows: I woke up around 7:30, ate breakfast, watched Alice in Wonderland with my host mom (which was hilarious because watching TV with my host mom is great… “this is all happening in Disneyland right Jay? It isn’t real”), ate lunch, biked the long way (about 5 miles) to a huge hill, climbed the hill, biked the short way home (about 3 miles), and then played football for an hour and a half until I was just too tired to continue.

 My sweet bike.

 Views from the hills we climbed.

 Cave we are going to eventually explore, that is looking down into the ground.

 Random bug.

I will now talk a little more about my situation since I have not elaborated more on this. As I alluded to before, I have it made. If you remember I was recently living without running water and electricity in Armenia, but this has changed dramatically. My new house has current, I have hot water, I have cable, and I use silverware now. When I was given a knife with my first meal I almost didn’t remember how to use it. I don’t think you all fully appreciate silverware. Also, I am trying not to watch too much TV but having cable again is nice. I get odd channels, including Shotime, HBO, Starz, Comcast, and WGN. This means I was able to watch the Brewers/Cubs series the other week, and also the Brewers/Twins series was on last week (sadly both series weren’t the best for us). I also am able to watch the new season of True Blood (yes I watch True Blood, it is a guilty pleasure of mine) and I also saw a preview for the new season of Dexter the other day, so I am going to be real excited if I can watch that. Finally, I also saw an episode of Flight of the Concords the other day which just made my weekend.

I will leave you by showing a few more pictures and telling a short story with one of them.

 These two were at our swearing in. As you know this is the Q'eqchi Armenia group, only in their Sunday best.

 One more of the cutest 4 year old in the world just for good measure.

 This is Lova Boi. My host brother owns a night club in my town (I forgot to mention that in my living situation, but besides all that crazy stuff I also get to go play pool on the weekends at his club with my host cousin) and Lova Boi, who is like the most popular singer here right now, came to it the other day so I got to meet him. I like this picture because he is trying to act hard and I was just trying make the most ridiculous smile I could because I had no idea who he was. And yes, I am completely sober at this time (about midnight), I just look like a mess because it was a long, hot, rainy day. I will end the story here and not say more about him because otherwise I do not think I can stay culturally appropriate/sensitive. Instead I will just tell you all to look up his "Slow Tornado" song and know that 5 year olds here dance that dance...