Exciting Updates from the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer

It’s raining. It has been for a while now. We are on stand-fast because it is raining so much. That’s Peace Corps terms for happy weekend; don’t leave your site. A volcano erupted Thursday, covering the capital with black sand and not so much as a peep from Peace Corps, but it rains without stopping for a day or so and we are on lock-down. So much for my plans for a haircut.

The rain makes me feel extremely lazy, which is a bad thing because we are only one month in to a five month rainy season. The rain also makes the water muddy. I get water at my house every other day, and the past few days my pila has been brown. Four days ago we didn’t even fill it up the water was so dirty, today it was a translucent light brown. I just made sure to dry my dishes really well. Apparently this is normal for the first month of rainy season as the rain water is washing up all of the dirt…or something like that. I guess that explains mal de mayo (aka excessive stomach issues in the month of May).

So for now I am rained in. Tonight I took advantage of this situation to watch gross amounts of West Wing and make home-made pesto. If I come away with only one thing from Peace Corps it will be cooking skills, aka “the importance of a blender as a cooking implement.” I haven’t been able to find basil in the market, and was giving up hope when my landlady gave me a tour of our garden and I discovered a GIANT basil bush right outside my back door. We also have parsley, mint, eucalyptus, and various fruits. When it is not raining at night (rarely), the fireflies come out and I feel as if I live in an enchanted garden.

Another exciting thing to update you all about is my trip to the dentist. I’m sure it isn’t just my mother who has been worried about my tooth that was chipped in the line of duty while accompanying my site-mate to the hospital. I was a little nervous about getting my tooth fixed here because I have seen how most people come out after a trip to the dentist. But after more experienced volunteers assured me that I would emerge from the experience without any extraneous gold adornments in my mouth, I sucked it up and made the appointment. Everything went smoothly until the end when she let me hold the mirror to see how I liked my newly repaired tooth. All I can say is thank god for that mirror; otherwise I would have come out like some character from Twilight. From there it went something like a hair cutting appointment: a little shorter, a little off the back, oh my gosh too short! Etc. I was a bit nervous when the dentist answered her cell phone while drilling down my tooth and the assistant failed to register the panic in my facial expression, but I came out alive, and those who have gotten bored by now and stopped reading will never know the difference.

So as you can see, life here is pretty exciting. And, if I haven’t made it clear enough already, it continues to rain. Maybe I should look into getting a boat instead of a bicycle.