3/6

The past 24 hours have been…colorful.  Let’s start with last night.  It’s around 7pm as I light my candles, switch on my headlamp, and begin cooking a really exciting dinner (the vegetable truck came that morning) as I listen to my niños play hide-and-go-seek outside of my house.  Now, you should know that there was a leak in my gas tank earlier that day, which I thought I had fixed.  Anyways, standing in my 4’x 5’ kitchen, nervously preparing this glorious dinner, I hear something start crackling under my stove, where the gas tank sits.  My mind flashes back to my sad attempt at fixing this “leak” using a butter knife earlier in the morning, and I quickly turn off the burners, grab Plum, and run to the next room as I picture this 100 year old house passed down through generations exploding in front of our very own eyes (That would without a doubt be a one-way ticket OUT of the country).  After a bit, considering nothing was on fire yet, I bravely ventured back into the kitchen and discovered that the “crackling” I heard before was just dry pasta falling off the table onto the floor beneath the stove.  Aye dios mio.  So I start up my meal again.  Not 3 minutes later, as I’m looking for Plum’s food bowl, I discover a giant centipede crawling all over it.  This thing (no exaggeration, really) was probably 8” long by 1” wide.  EW.  So I scream for Darinel, my 10 year old friend who kills things for me.  All the kids come running (“Jessie, is it just another frog?! Chill out.”).  Darinel takes one look and asks for my machete (Yeah, that’s right. I told you this thing was big).  Everyone is disappointed in me when I say I don’t have one (yet!).  During this exchange, the monstrous centipede escaped to a still unknown location.  The boys spent a good 20 minutes unsuccessfully searching for it, while worrying aloud that I would not be able to sleep if they didn’t find it.  Haha oh my niños.  I quickly finished my dinner, bathed (found a cockroach and mini-tarantula spider in my bathroom ughhh), and securely tucked myself in to my mosquitero by 8:30 assuring myself that all would be well as soon as I got my hands on that machete I’ve been putting off buying.

The next morning, I wake up and am kind of sick.  Just a little bit of a cold or something.  Despite that, I decided to go to the river for a baptism and a nice swim to follow.  Of course it was an evangelical baptism, but I knew this going in and, therefore, wasn’t too overwhelmed.  Nonetheless, within 5 minutes some older lady was shaking and falling all over the banks of the river.  I kept reminding myself to just look at this as one more interesting cultural exchange.  6 people were baptized in the river (including my doña!).  Around the 6^th baptism, I start to not feel so well.  Oh crap, I am either being overtaken by the Holy Spirit, finally making my doña proud to call me her hija, or perhaps I’m just sicker than I thought initially.  I kneel down on the ground, trying to get my balance, as I search for someone from my family to tell them I’m heading home.  I high-tailed it out of there, trying to avoid fainting or throwing up in front of half of my town. (I was successful).  I spend the next several hours in bed, as random neighbors come in to peek at me, and offer me rice.  Come 3:30, I’m thinking, oh crap I have a charla to give about teenage pregnancy at 4.  I try to find someone to take my presentation to the other side of town without luck (seriously, where all of the 20 year old muchachos with motos when I actually need them?).  So I walked.  Here I am, sick, sweating, in the same clothes I’d been napping in for 3 hours, hair pulled back, headband on…and I think I got more unwanted attention in one 20 minute walk than I ever have before.  What is it about the blonde hair?  I’ve been here for 4 months, guys.  I had a 70 year old man stop me and tell me I was beautiful.  Thanks grandpa.  I had another 50ish year old man stop me to tell me that I needed to marry a Dominican.  “Yes sir, if God wills it.” (They love that one).  And lucky me, I ran into my crazy friend who insisted I come visit.  I smiled and waved, while on the inside I was screaming to myself to just start running…I can’t do this, not today.  So here I am, securely tucked in to my mosquitero once again, hoping tomorrow is a bit less colorful.