Animal Under My Skin and other normalcies.

10-27-09

So, today the thing that I’ve been dreading the past 8 months actually happened. I got pique. That’s right; the little animal that climbs into your foot and lays eggs under your skin—that was my foot, my skin. More specifically, the little bugger was under my left big toe, almost under the nail and another on my pinky toe of the same foot at the base of the nail. I was told that it probably happened a week ago, so I blame my little visit to Guarambaré. Anyway, I’m definitely exaggerating all of this. It wasn’t bad at all. The idea of this happening grossed me out much more than actually having it did. I went into the salon in Limpio and got a nice little pedicure. The only thing that differed from your normal, run of the mill pedicure was the fact that the woman pulled out a needle (that was (surprisingly) threaded and seemed straight out of a sewing kit) in order to dig out the pique from my foot. I am pleased to report that the extraction didn’t hurt one bit! And so, now I am pique free and purple toe nailed.

In other news, I had a really productive and pleasant day on Friday when I went to Asuncion to run some errands. By the end of the morning I had 144 free condoms for sex ed (thanks to an NGO who does AIDS work and awareness), a handful of maps of Paraguay and the world along with some teaching tools (also free, thanks to a Paraguayan newspaper), 72 toothbrushes and 24 tubes of toothpaste (unfortunately not free but cheap!), fishnet stockings (Halloween is coming up), and a wonderful lunch date with a Peace Corps compañera who had just returned from a visit to the states. It was fabulous. The dental charlas will begin tomorrow with the comedor kids. I have a big set of teeth that I’ve borrowed from the Peace Corps office to demonstrate how to brush correctly. They’ve been a big hit among guests just sitting on the table in my main room. I have a meeting this evening with the parents’ group where hopefully we’ll talk about the dental chats and gardening.

The weekend was slow. Highlights include: getting my bike fixed, realizing that I really need to learn Guarani if I have any interest in figuring what is going on at the meetings with the squatting community bordering my neighborhood, meeting with my younger youth group 3 times, and finding a new neighborhood in Limpio that is totally full of lawn sculptures. It was odd. In the squatting community meeting (I dislike this term in English but can’t figure out what else to call it), there was some sort of an argument and trying my damnedest I could not figure out what it was about because it was all in Guarani. It was quite frustrating. There is already trouble in paradise with my new youth group—the president who is exceptionally enthusiastic and a natural leader just found a job working at a grocery store so he is stepping down as president. This is happening after a week of the group being formed. It’s unfortunate. On another strange note, today I saw an ostrich in a fairly small yard of a really fancy house. Don’t they need space to run? And aren’t ostriches notoriously ill-tempered??