Two recent memorable stories...

Ok. Don´t kill me. I´m still alive...I´ve just been really busy and haven´t been motivated to write anything when I have time. So...a few recaps.


IMMERSION WEEKEND TAKE 2
You (and I) thought my immersion day experience was memorable. (See here if you don´t remember it.) Well, I got to have another one. Sort of.

Two new volunteers who are in training came to my site to have their immersion days. I selected 2 families in 2 different locations for them to stay with. Both locations want a volunteer, so I figured it would be good to hear from new people what they thought about the locations.

They arrived early to my town and started asking people if they "knew where the gringa lived". Apparently, EVERYONE that they asked was like, "Oh! Michelle lives up the road." or "Oh! Michelle left her house this morning at 9:00 and walked down this street and then waited for the bus."...etc. And when I finally arrived at the place and time for our meeting, like 5 community members saw me and were like, "Your friends have been looking for you!"

Natalie and Jen (the two trainees) said that in training they learn that people get to know the gringa and everything that she does, but they didn´t actually believe it until coming to visit me. They were like,"Yeah. EVERYONE here knows EVERYTHING about you!!!" And I, of course, asked, "Did anyone say anything bad?" They said no...

Anyway, we ended up hanging out a bit in my house until early afternoon when we left to go to their host families´ homes for the next 2 days. We visited Jen´s family first. We left her bag there, and started the journey to host family #2. Of course, as we started walking, it started pouring down rain, and Jen had left her umbrella in the host family´s house, so the 3 of us walked in the rain to the bus stop, Jen and I sharing an umbrella.

We reached the bus stop, got on the bus, and I saw that my khakis were DRENCHED to the point of being able to see my skin! Now THAT is pretty wet. But no big deal...whatever. We arrive in the next town where Natalie is staying and start the trek up to her house. Again, in the pouring rain. Through muddy roads/paths and all. Finally, we arrive at her house, but it´s all closed up (due to the downpour). So we´re all standing out on the road in the pouring rain looking at the closed gate and I decide to start yelling the name of the kid that lives there to let him know we´re there. So there I am, shivering under an umbrella with Jen, with water POURING down around us, screaming, "MAR-VIN!!! MAR-VIN!!!" This lasted about 10 seconds. Surprisingly, he didn´t hear me. (Hmm...maybe it was all the rain pounding down on the tin roof that makes it sound like a train is right next to you....)

So, I decide I´m just opening the gate. Again, this is difficult because the fence is made of wood branches standing vertically with wire running horizontally between them. And the door opens with someone removes the wire that ties the fence to the posts. (I don´t know if I explained that very well...it´s much easier to see it.) Anyway, I had to undo the loop at the top of the last branch and at the bottom. Still, while rain is falling in buckets. FINALLY, I get the fence open and Jen and I run up to the door where there is cover (while apparently Jen decides to close the fence again) and I start pounding on the door, again screaming for Marvin. No one comes to the door.

I was like, "OK....Maybe since it´s raining, Marvin couldn´t come home from school yet." So I decide to ask the next door neighbor if she knows where Marvin is and, AGAIN, have to open and close that stupid fence! But, when I got to her house, she was super helpful. She said, "Oh no!! Well, I´ll go over there with you and we´ll find Marvin!" So she gets her umbrella, and we walk back over. As we approach the fence, I start to tell her I can open it because I´ve just done it like 10 times (ok, a bit of a stretch) and just as I am yelling this out to her, she approaches this tin metal thing next to the fence and presses on it with her PINKY (ok, maybe it was her entire hand, but whatever), the door just easily swings open. I just stood there with my mouth HANGING OPEN and the trainees got a glimpse of what happened and just started ROLLING laughing! That WHOLE time, there was a DOOR that I could have just BLEW on to open up, and I was messing around, getting covered in mud trying to open that stupid fence!!! I REALLY wish I had a video of all that.

Anyway, once we FINALLY stopped laughing (about 10 minutes later), the neighbor (who didn´t really ever understand why we were dying laughing I don´t think) finally located Marvin and he told us he left to buy something and was stuck there because of the rain. And we ended up waiting about 30 more minutes for his mom so I could explain everything to her - why Natalie was there, why she might not be able to eat much, etc. By the time we finished with all of that, it was dark outside and I had to still take Jen back to her community! We found that there were no more buses running, so I called in a favor from my neighbor, who graciously assisted us by driving us to her community. Thank goodness for awesome neighbors!!! :)

Anyway, I felt like it was an excursion and something they probably won´t forget for awhile...


ARAÑA DE CABALLO
Here is something I never want to talk about again, but, probably will. :) Arañas de Caballos. Translation? Horse spiders. Does anyone know what these are? I have photos, but don´t have my flash drive at the moment, so you´ll just have to look it up until I can post the photos. These are the NASTIEST spiders because they´re HUGE, and furry, and I swear, they have brains.

As I was talking on the phone to a student planning our meeting the next day, I see this big, black...creature...start crawling into my kitchen. And my reaction...in mid sentence...is, "AH!! WHAT is THAT??!!" He stopped talking and I immediately said, "There´s an animal in my house. Have to call you back!" and hung up the phone. I get my "kill anything that can move" strength RAID and start approaching this THING. I spray like half the can on it, and it´s STILL MOVING!! So I get my broom out and start pounding it while probably yelping a bit each time because I´m so grossed out. FINALLY, it more or less, stops moving and I sweep it outside. I noted that I was probably yelping a bit, because the majority of my neighbors were standing outside their homes trying to see what was happening with the crazy gringa. When I saw them, I started waving my arms like crazy screaming, "VENGA VENGA VENGA VENGA VENGA!!" ("Come here! Come here! Come here....)
The woman across the street shows up and I point to the convulsing creature and say, "WHAT is that??!!" And she bends over and says, "Ah...¡una araña de caballo! ¡Que grande! ¡Muy peligroso." (Ah...a horse spider! It´s huge! Those are dangerous!") Then she informs me that they live in holes in the ground and she and her son start scouring the land for where it came from. I´m like, "Oh, so you think the FAMILY lives here?" KIDDING. And she´s like, "Maybe." GREAT.

What do they find? THREE HUGE HOLES in the ground in front of my house. And inside, they see MORE of these things. UGH. So we spend two HOURS pouring water in the holes (that supposedly is supposed to make them come out) and stabbing machetes into the holes (that supposedly is supposed to kill them). And when I say "we", I really mean I got buckets of water and observed (while snapping a few photos) from afar while THEY did all of this. No more emerged, so after this effort, we (and I mean they) stuffed big rocks into the holes to block the creatures from leaving. So I was like, "Good. My awesome neighbors got rid of those nasty things."

Yeah. That´s what I thought until the other day another one emerged and I had to kill it. Again, impossible to kill, so I wounded it so it wouldn´t move, and then smacked it with my shoe and watched this yellow trail of nastiness (it appeared to be brains) fly out everywhere. Yeah. Nice, huh? I have photos of that too. And yes, I´ll definitely send them. And I´ve proclaimed to all the creatures outside that I don´t like things with brains (especially SPIDERS) in or around my house, unless they can speak MY language!!!

Nastiness, I tell you.

Well, that´s probably enough stories for the moment. If you´re wondering what the heck I´m up to at this moment, visit here.