Rhianna Banana

Kiss from a mosquito

Even after living here for a year and a half, some things still continue to surprise me. Last week, a mosquito bit me on my lip. As Trent would say, What the fart? I didn´t even know a mosquito could bite me there. My lip swelled and stayed that way for about a day, which was rather embarassing. My friend Lucy told me that I better not tell Pierre that some other creature kissed me. Of all the things. . . I would have preferred a frog! Miles said my lips looked really “full.” This is only the second time since I´ve been here that some bug did a number on my face and made me look a little deformed. When I first got to my site, I was being lazy and didn´t put up my mosquito net. One morning, I woke up with a swollen face. Something had made a bite mark trail across my face. Just another time that I felt like hiding in my house all day.

After my lips returned to their normal size, I went with Maggie back to La Esperanza to visit our host families from training. I haven´t been back since we swore-in as volunteers, but I had promised my family that I would visit before I finished up my service. Last week seemed like the perfect time since we were both in town for a Peace Corps meeting. We visited Maggie´s family first, and met her host sister´s new baby, who was adorable and smily. Then we went to my family´s house. I was pretty nervous, because I was afraid they were going to give me a guilt trip, or the whole thing would be awkward. But it was fun, and I´m glad I went. My host mom at first couldn´t believe that it was me. She kept saying, “You´re not Ariana.” Then she said that I was much smaller when I lived with them. Which is a little bizarre because I haven´t gotten any taller and I think I weigh about the same or a little less than when I was in their house. Maggie says maybe I just seemed smaller then, since everything was so new and kindof scary. I told them about Pierre and our wedding plans, and that I was planning to move to New York City and sell empanadas in the park and make babies. My host mom and I had this little joke when I lived in her house that I should go to the park and sell empanadas. I´m not sure why she thought that was so funny, but she thought it was funny again when I brought it up. I am not really planning on making babies as soon as I get back to the U.S. I figure I still have a few more years of freedom before that!

Maggie and I were staying at another volunteer´s house, but we didn´t want to offend our host families by refusing to stay with them. I learned that Maggie and I should figure out our stories before we start fibbing. First, we told our families that we were staying in Ibarra because of our meeting. That was just a bad lie, since La Esperanza is closer to our meeting place than Ibarra. Then I tried to salvage our story by saying that I just didn´t want to carry my backpack around with me when we were traveling, so my backpack was already in Ibarra. My lying skills and/or Spanish proficiency completely failed me, and my host mom had no idea what I was talking about. She said, “Your backpack is on a bus by itself to Ibarra?” Um, no. Anyway, I think she knew we were lying, but didn´t make us feel too bad about it.

My school garden is doing well! We´re going to harvest some more vegetables next week. Some of the kids know more than me about gardening, so I feel like we are learning together =)

I have recruited my Thriller dance team; Miles is MJ since he is tall and a boy and already knows how to dance like MJ. Maggie is the damsel-in-distress and Katie, London, me and maybe Trent are the zombies. I know that doing the dance now would be completely unoriginal after the Pinoy dance performance, but I am obsessed and want to learn it. I´m not sure where we will perform it. Maybe as a welcome to Ecuador dance for my family in January? I have plans for another, different dance with the same dance troupe, perhaps for our last Peace Corps meeting. We´ll see how that turns out.

posted by Unknown @ Saturday, September 22, 2007