What to do when you have over 100 bug bites...

Thank Dios I haven´t had very many, if any, health problems while I have been here. I´ve heeded the majority of the directions the nurses gave us, and I´ve been lucky with the whole food situation (guess I have a strong stomach, as some might say). However, the one thing that has been bugging me....hahaha.....are the bug bites. I generally wear pants or capris (shut up, Scott) and the occasional skirt. This weekend, though, the mosquitoes decided to have a Thanksgiving feast on my Gringa legs.

Chris came into Yantzaza to visit me and as we were crossing the bridge, the town drunk/president, Washington, invited us over for a beer. It was a beautiful day, the river looked great...one beer lead to a few more...and Chris jumped off the bridge! He wanted to try out these new pants his mom sent him, so what better way than to jump into an Amazonian river, right? Well, he did go with a local, if that counts for anything....anyway, he was fine and totally pumped after the jump.

I, however, in that span of three to four hours at the river bar, got over 100 mosquito bites on my legs! I woke up yesterday morning and they were beet red and super swollen. Last night, I seriously wanted to chop my legs off they were itching me so bad. I had Monica look at them, to make sure they weren´t an allergic reaction, and she told me they were just bug bites but to ask Polivio to ¨cure me.¨ Being the feisty, resourceful little Ecuadorian that he is, I figured it couldn´t hurt.

So he comes into my room, assesses the situation and excitedly says, Nunca he curada una gringa! (I´ve never cured a Gringa before). He comes back with a water bottle filled with some type of liquor, I think, that smells strongly of herbs...it smelled really medicinal. Thinking he was going to instruct me to just slather the stuff on, Polivio tells me to stand up and face him. He then takes a swig of this bottle and SPITS the drink all over my legs. Like no joke, he literally spewed this concotion all over me. At first I was like WHOA BUDDY! I don´t think you´re supposed to drink that, but he said that you are supposed to sopla (literally=blow) the trago on the infected area. It was kinda like when someone tells you something really funny or really ridiculous and you spit your drink out mid-sip. So he did this about 4 times to my legs, and then an otra vez.

And oddly enough, it worked! I slept for most of the night...it was awesome. Who knew that spitting could be a good thing....

Today I gave my first charla on nutrition. It was really fun and I think it went really well. I was happy I had had some practice while I was in training, it made some of the bumps a little less of a surprise. For example, I was doing an ice breaker and asked someone to name two food groups from the food pyramid and I have never seen a blanker face in my entire life. Some other women couldn´t grasp the fact that yuca AND rice shouldn´t be served in the same meal, as that´s two carbs at once. But I think I´ve become a lot more patient and understanding that people just don´t have this type of education about nutrition. Betty, the nurse I spoke with, was really impressed at my knowledge of the food pyramid. Honestly, I had read through things that morning and the rest was from what I remembered from 6th grade.

However, today totally validated my being here and made me feel like I will be able to teach people something.