Heeby-Geebies

Two life changing events have happened at site already. The first: whilst dressing myself the other morning, I got stung in the boob by a scorpion. Yes, a scorpion stung me in the BOOB. Let me preface this anecdote with the fact that if you know me, you know that I love all god’s creatures, I really do, but scorpions are one of the ONLY invertebrates that haunt my dreams - NEVER in my life will I ever want to come anywhere close enough to a scorpion for it to touch my skin. I would rather be bit by 354 non-venomous snakes than be stung ONCE by a scorpion… and this I’ve thought about a lot here in Panama knowing it was just a matter of time before this fear became a reality. I haven’t met one volunteer that hasn’t been stung at least once by a scorpion. The weirdest part of this story tho, other than the location of the sting, is that I was even THINKING about scorpions as I was getting dressed because my host sister had found one in her clothes the day before. I was thinking “hmm, I really should start checking my clothes before I put them on. It would be just spectacular to go these 2 years without – ouch – what the hell was that? Ouch, OUCH OUCH – MY BOOB IS ON FIRE” And I looked down to find that little p.o.s. ready to fight 5 inches from my face, perched on the piece of cloth right above the ball of fire that was now my boob. A little dramatic I know, let’s just say I momentarily became the world’s fastest contortionist as I ripped that sports bra off without letting it touch my face, arm or shoulders. Impossible? Definitely not. Then I pulled a Jess move and felt too bad to kill it, so I left the room as my host parents did. Sometimes I wonder? But nevertheless, this has been a fear of mine since childhood and if you are going to get stung by something that scares the shit out of you, what worse place than in the boob? So I guess I got that fear over with pretty quickly. And if you thought I took forever to get ready before, you should see me now … especially because of my 2nd life-changing-event:

This one isn’t so painful, just really f*ing gross. There really isn’t much explaining other than last night I reached into clothes drawer without looking (terrible decision #195 in the tropics) and grapped a GIANT cockroach instead of a pair of socks. Now I’m sure you are thinking “ew cockroaches, that sucks” but I want you to fully understand the size of this thing. Look at your hand … yeah. It’s literally that big. Its not even the same species as the ones we are used to. And yes, it flies. So the other volunteer at my site walks in my house as I’m ready to stab it with my machete sharpener, and I suffer another Jess moment and have him do the dirty work. And if that doesn’t give you the heeby-geebies, later that night as I was preparing my now very fragile psyche for bed in the bathroom, which is totally across the house from the kitchen, and I hear a scratching in the kitchen sink. The second I heard it, I knew, it’s another one. They are so big that they can’t even crawl out of sinks. *shudder*

But anyways, these two life-changing events that were really not so life-changing just made me realize I need to toughin up a little bit because this country is full of the creepy-crawlies. God bless you Panama and all your idiosyncrasies.