Hello again! Here I am with a baby raccoon for sale (along with apples) on the side of the road on the main bustling market street of Chinandega. Unfortunately I couldn't take this little critter home with me because 1) I'm pretty sure I couldn't take him back to the states no matter how many rabies vaccines 2) I didn't have the dollar fifty on me to buy him.
Anyway, I've been sick for about 2 months now. I had been feeling great for the better part of 6 months (no parasites, bacterial infections, food poisoning, unusual rashes or fungi, etc) but I suppose it had to come to an end sometime. It could be the climate change (freaking hot to freaking hotter) but I've had at least 3 full blown respiratory infections recently (we're talking starts in your throat, moves to your sinuses, and ends in your lungs). And then about 3 weeks ago I got this mysterious bug bite while I was in the shower. It was on my butt of course, the best place for a mysterious bug bite that you have to show everyone so they can try to figure out what kind of bug it was. I went to the public health center and dropped trou at least 7 times. PIC: First aid cart at the health center. Notice betadine and rubbing alcohol in Powerade bottles.
Anyway, the thing gets infected so badly that I could hardly sit or lie down, so they gave me an oral antibiotic, which I promptly had an allergic reaction to. I had welts all over my thighs and back. So then I started rounds of benadryll and prednazone, which is a steroid. All I wanted to do was go to the gym and eat like 6 times a day. Unfortunately, the more I sweat the worse the rash got, so I just ate like 6 times a day. Oops. Long story short, I guess my defenses were already down when I tried to eat a cashew fruit for the first time a few days later (fyi I only licked it before I realized there would be extremely undesirable consequences if I were to ingest the thing completely) and my tongue fell asleep for 2.5 hours and the top layer of skin peeled off my lips over the course of a week. I vowed not to try anything new ever again. Maybe it was just "after shock" of the cashew fruit, but a week after the exposure I broke out into the worst hives of my entire life. And believe me, I know hives. I was allergic to "Runts" candy as a kid. Especially the banana flavored ones. I outgrew it, thank goodness. OK, back on track. So I have hives and weather.com says Chinandega is at 99 degrees "feels like 109". I get on the bus to Managua to have the PC doctors check me out. I suspected the doctors at the public health center were tired of seeing my ass every other day (literally) and they probably would have just told me to put lime juice and salt on it (in Nica that seems to cure everything from minor scrapes to diabetes). I was quarantined in an air-conditioned hotel room for 2 days with a friend from a neighboring department who had dengue for the second time during her service, which prompted me to count my blessings. A week later, I'm still a little blotchy, still on Prednazone and Allegra, but the desire to skin myself has decreased slightly. PIC: My tattoo is swatting away the hives.

Moving right along, last Saturday I went to a quinceanos (Latino version of a Sweet 16 birthday party). It was only my second quinceanos in almost 2 years, and very fancy. They slaughtered a cow for the occasion. And I'm telling you, the girls were dressed to the nines. I kind of felt like a bum...I mean I know I looked fine but almost all of these chicks looked like they came straight out of a music video with their stilettos and trendy tube dresses. I don't know what it is about Nicaraguan girls but they must have a genetic immunity to frizzy hair. I haven't even bothered trying to straighten mine lately because it turns into insta-mop before I even walk outside, but they were dancing around and everything and still looked like exotic little Farah Fawcetts! I wish I had pictures, but unfortunately I thought it might look a little weird if I were 1) the only white person, 2) the only person who didn't know a soul besides her date, and 3) the only person frantically taking pictures.

In other news, about 3 and a half months left of Nicaragua. Sometimes I can't wait to go home, other times I feel tears coming on just thinking about leaving. Is it possible to miss a place before you've even left? As annoyed as I am daily by little inconveniences and cultural discrepancies, will my life ever be this carefree again? Work is relatively stress free, for the most part strangers treat me like a princess, the food is cheap and delicious, my aerobics/ethnic dance class costs less than 50 cents a pop and I'm addicted, and I'm finally making good, solid friendships. But on July 16 give or take a week, the proverbial Peace Corps plug will be pulled. More thoughts to come.
For now, random pictures:
1: Jimmy, a student student from my community English class, fetching me a coconut to drink.
2: Prehistoric treadmill at Woman Gym, my muchachas-only gym in Chinandega.
3: Iguanita. Tried to keep it as pet but it got away and I think it's raising a family in my ceiling. I guess I did keep it, in a way.
4: Flor de Abispa at my school (not sure if that's spelled right)... is that Hibiscus in English?

Napoleon "The Rubber"

Well, I just had my first sports-related injury since my peak as a tennis player at age 14 when my tennis coach made me clean my knee-skin off the court. I've been going to the gym ("WOMANGYM", it's called) to step aerobics class 5 days in a row for 3 weeks now, so when I got to the beach this Friday to help chaperone Amanda's youth group field trip my calves were a little tight. Don't get me wrong - I'm not doing much heavy lifting or traditional training. Most of my calories get burned dancing around with 3 lb hand weights to the beat of some Ace of Base or Celine Dion techno remix. Anywho, that particular Friday we'd finished up the class with a little ethnic dancing (Palo de Mayo) as a treat to congratulate ourselves on a full week of attendance. Fast forward about an hour and a half and I'm at the beach kicking around a soccer ball with 12 year olds. I didn't think I needed to stretch because I figured I was loose enough after all that booty shaking to tie my legs in a knot around my neck backwards. WRONG. Maybe it had something to do with being barefoot in the sand but I started to run towards the ball and heard a "POP"! Ouch.
The 12 year old who usually sells me fried fish and plantains at the cabana bar was nice enough to lend me a chunk of ice out of her fish cooler to put on my leg to slow the swelling. About an hour later, coconut in hand, I hobbled across the road to wait for the next pimped-out school bus to take me back to civilization. Now, a gringa with a gimp leg is apparently quite a sight to see. I kept having to answer questions about what had happened. The Nicas on the bus were quite generous with advice and suggestions for home remedies. The most recurring piece of advice that I got was: "tienes que ir a que te la soben". Which is essentially: "you have to go find someone to rub it". As a matter of fact, I learned that "leg-rubber" is quite a popular trade for Nicaraguan men, especially over the age of 60. Go figure.
So I ended up at the bus driver's dad's house because apparently he is a renowned "rubber" in Chinandega. We knew he lived near the Rosario Cathedral and that his name was Napoleon. Napoleon "el Sobador" to be exact. So as we approached the church, the taxi driver slowed down and asked a woman sitting in her rocking chair, "Are we getting close to Napoleon's house?" "Napoleon 'the Rubber?'" she replied. "Yeah, Napoleon "the Rubber." "Three doors down on your left."
We see a tiny, hunched over, wrinkly little raisin of a man sitting on a stoop drinking out of a plastic bottle of rum. You might have already guessed. It was Napoleon, my bus driver's 83 year old dad. He sat me down, asked me what happened, found the knot in my leg. He sent his grandson (great grandson?) down the street to buy some Vicks' Vapor Rub which he then slathered on my leg. The best part: he whipped out a glass Coca Cola bottle and started pulverizing my leg. Excruciating. This lasted about 15 minutes. Then I paid him a dollar went home.
It's Sunday, and my leg feels better. I'm almost walking normally. I probably won't make it to aerobics tomorrow, and it will be the first class I've missed in over 3 weeks. Boo.

<3
Elizabeth