I got into the clinic just in time to join the other nurses in a meeting with the Religion coordinator about tomorrow. He handed out Bibles to all of us and my first thoughts were Oh crap, he's going to ask me to quote something, I won't be able to and then he'll realize I'm not religious in the least and take away my leading role! Luckily that didn't happen and he was kind enough to use page numbers instead of passage numbers so I was able to read along without issue. Turns out that this is a much bigger production tomorrow than I realized, I have to memorize lines and everything! It's just a short conversation that Jesus has with Pilot before he's condemned to crucifixion. My Bible is in Spanish of course, so I don't know EXACTLY what I'm saying, but I know that he's asking me if I'm a King and I'm saying that he's calling me a King, that's not the word that I've been using. Every time I read the dialogue, the song from Jesus Christ Superstar starts playing in my head. But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths, are mine the same as yours? (Crucify him! Crucify him!) The fact that I've been playing JCS non-stop for the last two days probably isn't helping...
So aside from my lines, I also get an awesome costume to wear. It's an old priests robe with a sash, I seriously did feel very religious with it on. Mom, you'll be happy to know that the robe fully covers me from my neck to my ankles, so no worries about me scaring away children with my flowing mane of chest hair. I got to practice the stages of the cross with a tiny cross they had in the office, including my three falls; gotta say this is going to be my best performance ever. I'm really glad I get to do this with the rest of the clinic, everyone there is super laid back and we were laughing a lot today. It's nice to be working with awesome people.
After the meeting I brought two kids to a med run in Chimaltenango. It went really smoothly but took FOREVER. By the time I got back half the day was gone. Waiting for me at the clinic was my cross!! This thing is gigantic! It's about seven or eight feet tall and HEAVY. They made it by cutting down two trees and nailing them together so it has a cool rustic element to it, but that also means I'm carting around the weight of two friggen trees for a mile or two. Hooray for exercise!
Okay, enough about my Jesus escapade. Other things happened today too. Remember I was talking yesterday about those traveling clowns that were teaching about HIV? Well the school refused to let them perform today! While I was at the med appointment they arrived at NPH and were apparently turned away. Tia Rosa told me that the principal at the school thinks that they're too vulgar and therefor inappropriate for the kids (because the said "vaginal fluid"!! Um, guess what? Vaginal fluid is a real thing! I'm going to try to talk to the director and get her decision overturned because I think that's bullshit. If I don't have luck and I end up having to give a much-more boring version of their HIV inservice, my goal is to talk about drippy vaginas as much as possible. There are girls in this school who have HIV and want to have sex, they need to know this stuff! Totally pissed me off.
After that I had another meeting with the supervisor of the Baby's House to plan all my inservices there. I have a ton of things to teach to her staff and she was super sweet to me, so it put me back in a good mood. The rest of the day was pretty good, I went into town and bought huge, fresh avocados which I promptly turned into the most delicious guacamole I've ever had. I love that avocados grow everywhere here; they go from tree to my belly in the same day, perfecto.
Speaking of fresh veggies, just have to share my haul from this weekend. This was purchased for a total of $6
Unlike American supermarkets, you always know what's in season here based on what's available. These little goodies were new to me, these are Jocotes (pronounced like Ha-Coat-ee). There's a neighboring town called Jocotenango which is famous for them (the suffix -tenango means "place of". Jocotenango means "Place of Jocotes". The story goes that when the Spanish came to this town they were so impressed by the number of fruit trees, they named the town for it. It was my first time trying them so I was pretty excited. Have to say that I was mildly disappointed, though I still ate an entire bag. They are the size of large grapes and have a big pit inside, so you eat just the skin and a tiny bit of flesh surrounding the pit. I've heard that they taste like mangos but that's not what I was getting from it (pretty good thing since I don't like mangos). This sounds really weird but it's so accurate that I have to say it. It smelled/tasted EXACTLY like the hair salon in JCPennys at the Rockaway Mall. I've always loved that smell, I go out of my way to walk by the salon. Whatever chemicals they're using there to treat hair are awesome. Anyway, that was the very first thing that popped into my head when I was eating them. They were kind of sweet but tangy to the point of being inedible. Hooray for new experiences though!
(I should add that I don't really know what signifies a ripe jocote, so I might have been eating ones that hadn't reached their prime yet.)
Okay, this has nothing to do with anything but I've had it sitting here on my computer waiting to be posted for days now. I thought you might like to see how floors get mopped here (since it's a little different than in the states). Enjoy!
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