Day 9: Dia de la muerte

This title is appropriate because today I feel like death.
Those worms from last night... I think they got me.
They stole my intestines, along with my happy and optimistic outlook.

I could tell it was really getting to me cuanto I was at school. I wanted to leave, to be back in America where everyone speaks English and I have my own car and air conditioning and you can go out for fast food at anytime of night. I was not myself at all, so I decided to go lay down in Fito and Sol's extra room y excused myself de clases para la dia.

So, I wind up sleeping the day away, awaking only when lovely peopl were bringing me comida y medicine. Vicky brought some medicine that she used when she was sick, and told me to take a pill, along with a really disgusting tasting solvent that I had to mix with water. So, I take the pill and it turns my teeth black. Gross. Now, I'm reluctant to also take the packet of medicine, since Vicky has warned me that its flavor is repulsive. I'm imagining some unholy mixture of carbon and charcoal that would attempt to choke me on the way down while screaming "I´m really only here to help!"

I finally buck up and decide to take the medicine, only to find out it tastes like a chopped up Fun Dip stick. You know that big white stick that everyone secretly wishes they would produce in mass quantities, so you could eat sticks until your hearts content... This is exactly what it tastes like. Disgusting? No. It is delightful, and I´m looking forward to taking more.

One of the really cute things about today though is that I wake up in a hazy, medicine-induced stupor to see little faces popping up in the front window. Then, they´re suddenly all moving to the open window by my bed, running adn screaming "Hello Miss Summer. Good Morning! Feel better! I LOBBBBE YOU!"


Kids can be a perfect kind of medicine.

However, this is also the dia de la muerte. The bad has not even yet begun.

Today, my little first graders start complaining about a bad smell. I smell it too and it is fouuuuul. I do a quick pit check just to make sure it's not me, before start searching around the classroom. Turns out it's coming in from the open window... and I spot our gray school rabbit, Princessita, not moving just under the window. I have no idea what to do. In America, this is one of those fragile moments that could easily damage a kids psyche, but here in Honduras... death is a part of life they're already exposed to. So, they kids aren't sad or upset, they're kind of excited. They´re making up stories about how it died involving snakes and ants. Unreal.


(Our rabbit Princessita is in that green plastic bag.)

Also, my great-grandmother died today. We all knew it was coming. She was 95. She lived a long full life. She saw two world wars, the Great Depression, 25 great-grandchildren, and could still remember all of it, until those last few days. It's weird being so far away because it doesn´t really seem real. I don't think it will be real until I drive to her house and realize she's not sitting inside. I was lucky enough to see her before I came back from school. I stayed for a weekend with her. I thought about staying longer, and I kind of wish I had, but the past is the past. You can't go back.