Here are some interesting and fun
stories of things that have happened to me over the past couple weeks that I
wanted to share!
August 21, 2015
- The Rat
Friday
night. After a crazy week of being in the kitchen, having no free time, and
finding the snake and many tarantulas in my house, I was ready to be alone and
journal. I sit on my bed, get comfy, open up my journal, and literally as I
start to write ZOOM. Something scurries across my room. Oh goodness, please
tell me I did not just see a RAT run across my room. Yeah, that was definitely
a rat. I put my journal down and walk straight out of my house to go to the big
house. I know that I need to tell my roommate Candace and probably have someone
come over to get rid of the rat. It’s kind of funny because my roommate had
been saying how she isn’t really afraid of tarantulas or snakes, but that she
is terrified of rats. Well, I walk into the kitchen where Candace and Kevin are
and tell Candace not to freak out.. but that there is a new creature in our
house. She instantly knows it’s a rat and basically freaks out. Jancy, one of
our staff members from Venezuela, walks into the kitchen and I tell him about
it. He says that he will get one of the older boys and that we will go into my
room to kill it. I didn’t really want them to kill it, but I guess as long as
it’s out of my room. Jancy, Josue, and I travel back to my room and I show them
where the rat went. I honestly wasn’t scared. It’s just a rat. Well, as Josue
is moving things around and looking for it on the opposite side of the room the
rat bursts out of Candace’s unzipped suitcase and runs straight towards me. Oh
my. So what I said about not being scared is no longer valid and I start
screaming and screaming and trying to find something to jump up on. In the
process of me trying to find higher ground the rat brushes over my foot! It all
happened so fast. The guys look at me and we all laugh. They continue to search
the entire room and the rat is nowhere to be found. They search and search and
search and this rat is not showing up anywhere. This was a little unsettling
because I definitely don’t want to sleep with a rat, but at the same time I
guess it’s nice because we’re pretty sure it ran out of my house. The rat never
showed up again so I guess in all of the excitement it did run out of the
house. We can now add rat to the huge list of creatures that have been in my
house, and let’s keep in mind that I’ve only been here for 6 weeks.
August
25, 2015 - The Brave Roommate
One
night Candace and I are in our room chatting while all of our girls are getting
ready for bed. They are being kind of loud and crazy, but then they all scream!
These kids don’t really get freaked out by too many things, so we quickly rush
over. They all scream and point and there is a tarantula quickly scaling the
wall in the kitchen. I guess as an adult of the house I am supposed to be brave
and get rid of it, but as soon as I see it I start screaming too. I literally
join right in with the girls in freaking out, but thank goodness for Candace!
She grabs a broom and dustpan and tries to scoop the tarantula into the dustpan
to take it outside. Well, what ends up happening is Candace knocking the
tarantula onto the floor on accident and the tarantula charging straight for me
and all of the girls. Oh my word did we scream and run. We all ran into the
girl’s room and I even jumped up onto one of the beds for extra precaution.
Candace continues to be brave and chases the tarantula until she actually gets
it into the dustpan and takes it outside. I’m not sure how long it will take me
to get used to the tarantulas, but maybe one day I’ll be the brave one. Maybe.
[The first tarantula I saw at Familia Feliz]
August 29, 2015 - Sleep
talking
I sleep
talk a lot. My roommates in high school and for my first year of college would
often have funny stories of me sleep talking. Well, one Friday night here my
roommate stayed awake a bit longer than I did to type up some things on her
laptop. Apparently she hears me yell, “LIBRO LIBRO LIBRO!” in my sleep. Libro
is the Spanish word for book. She starts laughing so hard, but obviously tries
not to wake me up. Why I was yelling book in Spanish I have no idea, but yeah
that happened. Then later that night she said she woke up to use the bathroom
and hears me angrily say, “Maribel, it’s the same! Mismo!” Maribel is one of my
students, so I guess I was getting upset with her in my dream which is very
accurate to real life. Also I think it’s quite impressive that I said “it’s the
same” and “mismo” because mismo means “the same” in Spanish! Haha, so yeah I’m
speaking Spanish in my sleep! I’m glad my roommate was able to catch that.
[Here is a very angry Maribel in class]
August 31, 2015 - RIP
Phone
It was
just another normal Monday in class, or so I thought. At recess one of my
students, Rodrigo, grabbed my cell phone off of my desk and asked me if he
could use it for math. Sometimes I let him just mess around with the calculator
on my phone during recess, but I told him no because he had been acting up in
class that day. He continued to try and unlock my phone, but I just ignored it
because I knew he would never figure out my password. I got preoccupied with
who knows what, until Rodrigo later comes running up to me showing me my phone
screen that had a little android bot on it and said “erasing” at the bottom. Erasing. No no no no. Apparently Android
thinks it’s a good idea to have your phone delete everything when someone gets
the password wrong too many times. Why?? Yeah that’s a great idea, let’s just
give whoever stole the phone a clean slate as if they bought a brand new phone.
Well, since I’m in Bolivia it’s not exactly easy to just re-download all of my
apps because the WiFi is awful. Thank goodness that the previous week I put
most of my photos onto my computer, so my photos aren’t gone. But I lost all of
my contacts, music, and apps. Hopefully I will be able to at least re-download
Facebook messenger and things so that I can continue to communicate with my
friends and family. But for now, RIP phone.
September 11, 2015 –
Not as much RIP Phone
Kevin
and Ashley had to go back to Santa Cruz this week to finish the rest of their
year residency stuff so I sent my phone with them. The WiFi is much better at
places in Santa Cruz, so I gave Kevin a list of apps I wanted back on my phone
and hoped for the best. They just returned from Santa Cruz today after about 4
days and he gave me my phone back with most of the apps that I asked for on it!
I am so incredibly happy! I don’t have everything that I want on it, but I at
least have the necessities. I also hooked my phone up to my computer this
evening and put my pictures back onto it. My phone may not be quite the same,
but I am much happier with it now than I was on Monday! Now I will just have to
work on slowly getting my contacts back when I get the chance.
September 7, 2015 - The
Tarantula During Worship
So, we
are in a circle having worship in our house. It’s just a normal little house
worship with our 5 girls. Worships in my house usually consist of 3 or 4
Spanish hymns, prayer, a Bible story or devotional in Spanish, and then another
prayer. Literally while our oldest girl, Victoria, is reading a Bible story a
tarantula just falls from the ceiling RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR CIRCLE. Okay I
almost died. Every single one of us screamed so incredibly loud and we all ran
for our lives. It was so close to landing on me it’s not even funny. What would
I do if it landed on me? I think I would drop dead right there. Anyways, we all
freak out and run and scream and then one of the girls grabs a broom like she
is going to get the tarantula out. But no, as she’s about to try she hands the
broom to my roommate Candace and Candace saves the day again! I don’t know what
I would do without my roommate. Yeah now I’ll always be looking up in my house
because I guess you never know. I’ve learned that the snakes and tarantulas
like my house. As long as no one gets hurt, it’ll be okay.
September 10, 2015 –
The Oreos
So in
the town that we go to on Sundays, Rurrenabaque, there are places we can buy
Oreos and this week I happened to get some. They come in a big package that
contains 6 smaller packages and each smaller package has 4 Oreos in it. I’ve
been slowly eating them throughout this week, but making sure not to eat them
all at once so that I will basically have 1 package each day. This morning I
wake up to find only 1 package of Oreos left when there should be 2 and also
the remains of an empty wrapper for the package. I thought maybe, just maybe I
ate more packages than I thought I had eaten and that I left the wrapper there.
I figured it was okay. Well, this evening my roommate says to me around 9pm
that she is missing an entire package of M&M’s that she bought in town. I
began to think the same thing I did when I first saw my empty package this
morning, one of our girls came into our
room and ate it. I quickly go over to where my last package of Oreos is and
THE PACKAGE IS OPENED WITH ONLY 3 OREOS IN IT. Castigo. Okay for real though
why would one of our girls come into our room (which they know they are not
supposed to do) and steal our food?? By the way, “castigo” means “punishment”
in Spanish. So yeah seriously castigo. We
had all of our girls go outside and machete right then and said they would
machete until someone confessed. Finally one of our girls came crying and said
she ate my cookies. They macheted until 10:15pm, which is really late for
Familia Feliz considering we wake up at 5 every morning and usually go to sleep
at 9pm. It kind of sucked for Candace and I as well because we got eaten alive
by bugs while we were holding our lights for them so they could machete. We
still don’t know who ate the M&M’s, but I think they learned their lesson not
to steal from us. As for the girl who ate my Oreos, she will have to work all
day tomorrow in any free time she would have had. Man, this all sounds really
harsh. These aren’t my rules; these are the rules of Familia Feliz and kind of
just how things work here. Last week the older boys had to machete late into
the night for eating Andrew’s granola, a couple days ago the middle aged boys
had to machete at midnight because someone took some of Jonatan’s food, and
earlier this week all of the girls in the other house had to machete late at
night because someone stole all of Karol’s chocolate. I guess it was only a
matter of time for my house..
[My family for 10 and a half months]
