Oh my, today was a long day. Let me tell you in all the ways I was spent this hilarious day of ups and downs.
It started out innocently enough with a drive down to my new home on the scooter with the boss. The weather was nice and cool at the beginning as we left at 7am.
We stopped at our half way point, a restaurant in the middle of the island, and had our lunch. Of course while there, my new neighbors, the only other westerners on the South side of Flores (there are 3 of us, me and them) showed up at the same restaurant. Small world! All the locals were miffed. 3 foreigners in one place?? AND they all know each other?? Lho.......
By the time we left, the day had heated up and it was oppressively hot outside. But that's just another day in paradise. We drove along the rice fields and through the mountains. We only saw 1 roadkill snake this time and worked on our sunburns.
We stopped off at the beach on our way to the next beach(rough, I know) and walked around a little. I found the bathrooms, which if there was a park ranger, they would have condemned them. Each toilet had a beautiful bee hive built on the wall right above it and the entire septic system had imploded. It was charming. But the beach itself was far more charming. There were vines and pink flowers running all over the white sand, the island stretches out as far as you can see, and the water is brilliantly blue.
We headed on our way and traversed with some water buffalo, crossed the bridge that becomes less stable every day and continues to have huge chunks disappearing. We arrived at our home and got to decide where the house will be built and stared at the beach from on top of the cliff for a while. How relaxing!
Then we spent 6 treacherously hot hours participating in cultural misunderstandings, translations, and niceties with the village we are working with. They are enthusiastically teaching me their language, Manggarai, and effortlessly welcoming me into their family. In one week I will be living and working with them, and hopefully drinking excess amounts of coffee. The coffee by the way, they grow, harvest, and roast. That's pretty good for Indonesia, land of instant coffee packets!
After hours of sweating and translating we went on our as the rain storm was headed directly towards us. This was my chance to practice driving on the treacherous roads. I only dropped the scooter on top of myself once and scraped up my leg on the river rocks just a little bit....... but fortunately the rest of the obstacles were navigated with ease, there were a lot of people watching. All the locals bathe in the rivers and like to laugh at you when you inevitably bite the dust.
Eventually the rain and the darkness caught up with us. We had 2 choices, be cold and miserable or be cold and joyous. The obvious answer was to be cold and have fun. So we bought some moonshine at a store in the middle of the jungle that had no electricity except a battery powered rave light (multi colored disco ball) which is all the rage at most every house you drive by. And we continued on our merry way giggling and honking at nothing in particular while a lightning and thunder storm performed loudly above us. Boss got hit by bat once and then lucky me, got a mysterious something straight into the eye.
I tried to ride out the incredible pain in my eye for as long as possible but couldn't do it any longer and had to pull over so I could wash my eye out. Seeing as that it was already down pouring, I was soaked. This made washing out my eye easy because I didn't have to worry about getting water everywhere, which I did. But to no avail, the eye remained in pain.
After a soggy 3 hour drive we got our bruised, burnt, aching, and itchy bodies home. We tried to flush out my eye for about 30 minutes which was truly entertaining........for the flusher, not the flushee. It was good we bought the moonshine because it was the only thing that pulled me through that experience.
Since the flushing didn't work we decided it was time to go to the doctor. I really thought my first time to the doctor would be for something far more dramatic than a thing stuck in my eyeball. But such is life.
I have never had more fun at a clinic than I did tonight. The clinic is literally one giant room with numerous beds and scarce medical equipment scattered around. There is only a little bit of blood on the walls and they speak just enough English to tell me that my eye pain is completely normal and it happens all the time. I accepted that as the truth I would be handed for the evening and with that he offered up some numbing drops for the pain. I owe them a grand total of $1.21. They didn't have change for the $10 I had on me, so I have to go back tomorrow and pay. I waited in no line. I gave them 0 information about myself. And they shined a flashlight in my eye. I couldn't be more impressed. Also, doctor was wearing a chef coat and high waters.
So now my right eye is numb and has very little vision, but at least it doesn't hurt. And I am very excited to fall asleep in my dry and spider free bed (for now) to wake up and do it all over again!
It started out innocently enough with a drive down to my new home on the scooter with the boss. The weather was nice and cool at the beginning as we left at 7am.
We stopped at our half way point, a restaurant in the middle of the island, and had our lunch. Of course while there, my new neighbors, the only other westerners on the South side of Flores (there are 3 of us, me and them) showed up at the same restaurant. Small world! All the locals were miffed. 3 foreigners in one place?? AND they all know each other?? Lho.......
By the time we left, the day had heated up and it was oppressively hot outside. But that's just another day in paradise. We drove along the rice fields and through the mountains. We only saw 1 roadkill snake this time and worked on our sunburns.
We stopped off at the beach on our way to the next beach(rough, I know) and walked around a little. I found the bathrooms, which if there was a park ranger, they would have condemned them. Each toilet had a beautiful bee hive built on the wall right above it and the entire septic system had imploded. It was charming. But the beach itself was far more charming. There were vines and pink flowers running all over the white sand, the island stretches out as far as you can see, and the water is brilliantly blue.
We headed on our way and traversed with some water buffalo, crossed the bridge that becomes less stable every day and continues to have huge chunks disappearing. We arrived at our home and got to decide where the house will be built and stared at the beach from on top of the cliff for a while. How relaxing!
Then we spent 6 treacherously hot hours participating in cultural misunderstandings, translations, and niceties with the village we are working with. They are enthusiastically teaching me their language, Manggarai, and effortlessly welcoming me into their family. In one week I will be living and working with them, and hopefully drinking excess amounts of coffee. The coffee by the way, they grow, harvest, and roast. That's pretty good for Indonesia, land of instant coffee packets!
After hours of sweating and translating we went on our as the rain storm was headed directly towards us. This was my chance to practice driving on the treacherous roads. I only dropped the scooter on top of myself once and scraped up my leg on the river rocks just a little bit....... but fortunately the rest of the obstacles were navigated with ease, there were a lot of people watching. All the locals bathe in the rivers and like to laugh at you when you inevitably bite the dust.
Eventually the rain and the darkness caught up with us. We had 2 choices, be cold and miserable or be cold and joyous. The obvious answer was to be cold and have fun. So we bought some moonshine at a store in the middle of the jungle that had no electricity except a battery powered rave light (multi colored disco ball) which is all the rage at most every house you drive by. And we continued on our merry way giggling and honking at nothing in particular while a lightning and thunder storm performed loudly above us. Boss got hit by bat once and then lucky me, got a mysterious something straight into the eye.
I tried to ride out the incredible pain in my eye for as long as possible but couldn't do it any longer and had to pull over so I could wash my eye out. Seeing as that it was already down pouring, I was soaked. This made washing out my eye easy because I didn't have to worry about getting water everywhere, which I did. But to no avail, the eye remained in pain.
After a soggy 3 hour drive we got our bruised, burnt, aching, and itchy bodies home. We tried to flush out my eye for about 30 minutes which was truly entertaining........for the flusher, not the flushee. It was good we bought the moonshine because it was the only thing that pulled me through that experience.
Since the flushing didn't work we decided it was time to go to the doctor. I really thought my first time to the doctor would be for something far more dramatic than a thing stuck in my eyeball. But such is life.
I have never had more fun at a clinic than I did tonight. The clinic is literally one giant room with numerous beds and scarce medical equipment scattered around. There is only a little bit of blood on the walls and they speak just enough English to tell me that my eye pain is completely normal and it happens all the time. I accepted that as the truth I would be handed for the evening and with that he offered up some numbing drops for the pain. I owe them a grand total of $1.21. They didn't have change for the $10 I had on me, so I have to go back tomorrow and pay. I waited in no line. I gave them 0 information about myself. And they shined a flashlight in my eye. I couldn't be more impressed. Also, doctor was wearing a chef coat and high waters.
So now my right eye is numb and has very little vision, but at least it doesn't hurt. And I am very excited to fall asleep in my dry and spider free bed (for now) to wake up and do it all over again!