I can get over a hair in my food. Enough bugs have landed in my beans by now that I'm able to scoop them out and eat around the affected area. Staples, however, I don't think I am going to be able to get used to. As you probably figured out by the title, twice now I have come within centimeters (yeah, I'm on the metric system now) of swallowing a staple.
In the middle of devouring a Subway cold cut trio at a mall in the capital, I bit into something crunchy. No one bothers to take bones out of fish, chicken, or anything else they put into sandwiches in the village, but I figured Subway would have a bit higher standards. I tongued the as of yet unknown object in my food(this story is getting sensual) and it poked me rather unpleasantly. So I spit it out and said, "Oh my, a staple, how strange," except that I replaced the first two and the last two words with nineteen variations cuss words in Spanish and English.
Apparently word got back to the other staples about the tongue-lashing I handed out and they were out for revenge. Riding a bus from the market in Usulutan back to my village, I finally relented to a tiny little man who always hands out free samples of sugar coated peanuts and appears increasingly irritated everytime I refuse him. "Huh," I thought, "These are actually kind of good." I handed him a quarter for two small bags and started eating right away. Halfway through the bag, I encountered a particularly crunchy peanut. The thought even crossed my mind that it felt kind of like a staple, but I had a whole mouthful of sugary goodness and I brushed that thought away as paranoia caused by my trip to Subway a couple months before. I chewed a bit more and there it was, staple number two in between my molars.
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Manuel, mentioned a few months ago in another blog, got cut up by a machete a week or two ago. The story that I've heard (which is likely to be partially untrue considering there are usually at least three conflicting versions after incidents like this) is that one day he was riding in the back of a truck with one leg hanging out the side. The truck passed by some other guy, and Manuel proceeded to kick the guy in the chest from the bed of the truck. A few days passed and the guy came looking for him with a machete. Manuel also had a blade, but it was a shorter one. The other dude cut his thigh first and then went for the kill shot with a swing at the neck. Manuel put his hand up and blocked it, but came close to losing three fingers in the process.
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I'm trying to figure out a Central American vacation for December once the school year ends. Travel restrictions into Guatamela are being lifted in October, so I'm considering Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Before then I'm hoping to visit the Mayan (or maybe Incan?) ruins on the other side of the country and make it to another beach or two.
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Very brief work update:
teaching computer classes, organizing a youth group of 5th-9th graders, applying for funds to put together the soccer tournament I mentioned in another post, fundraising to help a disabled kid buy glasses, serving as treasurer of WYD committee of volunteers from all over the country to provide scholarships to high school and college students.
