Tuesday, the craziest day in the jungle

           Tuesday, one of the most eventful days of my life. Okay so my head had started getting pretty itchy on Sunday and was super itchy on Monday and continued being itchy on Tuesday morning. I was pretty sure that I had…. lice. On Tuesday morning after staff worship, I asked Daniella if she would check my head for lice. All of the staff crowded around and sure enough, I had lice. It’s kind of funny that I ended up getting it because I had literally just said in my previous post that I my roommate had lice and I hoped I wouldn’t get it too. Anyways, Daniella and Andrew searched through my hair to pick out the lice and their eggs which was so incredibly nice of them. Having lice is awful! I had scratched my head so much that it started to hurt in different places from scratching it raw. Also, hearing that you have eggs and living creatures on your head is honestly quite disgusting. I already use lice preventing shampoo and conditioner, but Karol also gave me some stuff to pour on my hair that night to kill them all. I desperately felt the need to go wash my hair and on my way back to my house I saw a lovely tarantula hanging out next to my front door. And as if a normal tarantula on my house isn’t bad enough, this one was pregnant. Ew gross!! I do not want baby tarantulas in my house!

My day continued to be eventful. After lunch I had to wash all of my sheets and things because of the lice and as I walked across campus to the one staff washing machine, I saw a goat standing in my way. Familia Feliz does not have a goat. Actually on Monday apparently this goat showed up and even chased Andrew and Kevin. So anyways, as soon as I saw the goat I froze. I don’t know if goats are friendly or not, but I didn’t really want to take my chances. The goat began to just stare at me. So here I am, lice in my head, tired, standing in the hot sun, and having a stare off with a goat. I decide that I don’t want to get attacked by a goat in Bolivia, so I began to walk backwards. The goat begins to walk towards me. I take a step, he takes a step. This goat is pursuing me. I began to walk faster and faster and so does the goat. Miguel, our director, was walking to his house and sees this happening and just yells across campus, “He can smell fear!!” Haha, thanks Miguel. I remembered that Andrew was close by working on the motorcycle so I started calling out for him. “Andrew. Andrew. ANDREW” The goat and I are practically running at this point and I continue calling, “ANDREW! ANDREW!” I finally make it to where Andrew is and the goat just stops. I had no idea what to do. Two boys show up and say that they have it under control. One of them distracts the goat with a stick and the other one grabs the goat’s horn. They dragged it away, Andrew and I laugh, and then I go do my laundry. Man, there is no way that anything else abnormal can happen to me today. What a crazy day.

Well, as I am putting some of my laundry away and messing with things in my room later I look around to see if there are any tarantulas or anything. No tarantulas, thank goodness. Wait, why is there something directly above me that looks like a snake pattern? Is that a…? Oh my word, there is a huge snake lying on the rafters in my ceiling. How long has that been there?? Is it going to fall on me?? How are we going to get rid of it??? I get really really freaked out and run over to the kitchen where I know Miguel and Andrew are. I was literally so frantic and emotional when I told them that I thought there was a snake in my room. I think I almost burst into tears. Miguel laughed a little bit at how freaked out I was and said that everything was going to be okay. Apparently I got super pale because I was so freaked out. Miguel said that we would send some older boys over to my house to go check it out. We all go over to my house together and all of the boys honestly got slightly freaked out as well. They ended up getting a huge long stick and the plan was for one of them to hit the snake down with the stick and then another boy was going to chop its head off with a machete when it fell. The plan commences. As David is trying to hit the snake down the snake begins to slither its way to a different part of my ceiling. It did not want to come down. David keeps jabbing and jabbing (and putting holes into my ceiling) and the snake keeps dodging. Finally the snake ends up somehow going through my ceiling and getting onto my roof, so we all run outside to get it. It turns into this process of the snake going back and forth between my ceiling and my roof. During this process we also discover that I have a hornets nest in my ceiling because every time David hits the ceiling with the stick, a bunch of hornets fly out. Anyways, the snake finally comes out onto the roof and slithers over to the edge. It tries to get onto a nearby tree (which is actually really cool) and it falls off in the process. Literally as soon as it hits the ground there is so much chaos and screaming, but Carlos is able to cut the snake’s head off!

Oh my goodness it was crazy. Really though how long was that venomous snake in my room for? I could have died. We called the other staff over afterward and took some pictures and videos with the snake. Man what a day. The rest of my Tuesday went relatively normal thank goodness, but that Tuesday was a memorable day for sure.
           For the record we ended up trying to get rid of the goat 3 times and it continued to come back, so we just tied it to a tree for about a week. Kevin and I gave it water a couple times and it tried to bite us. It ended up ramming one of our younger kids, so Andrew took it to town on Thursday morning and sold it for 70 Bolivianos (about 10 bucks). RIP goat.
           Anyways, I have a million more stories to tell, but no time to type them all out. But, something interesting is that I was sleep talking in Spanish the other night. Good stuff. It's almost time to go back out into the jungle! I hope you enjoyed reading about my wonderful Tuesday!!