The sun receives it's first point

5.18.11 

Soooooooooo…. I laid out in the sun on Sunday…. And got a little burnt. Okay I lied, A LOT burnt! The sun wins this time.

Sooooooo I laid out in the beautiful sun on Sunday and got a little burnt(okay, a LOT burnt). I laid out for 2 hours. Every time I've laid out here in Cuenca, I've laid out for this long.... but this time I got FRIED, like an egg. I was beat red after I got out of the shower Sunday afternoon, I didn't feel like I was burning when I was laying out and I put sunscreen on TWICE even. The only difference I can think of is that I normally lay out in the afternoon, but this time I laid out in the morning from like 1030-1230. I have no idea what happened, but I'm a lobster, and it hurts like hell.

After I was showered my host family and I went to the store to buy a piece of an aloe plant so I could bathe myself in that! And then later in the evening my host mom made me some home remedies for sunburns... beaten egg whites to put all over my burns (to take away the soreness) and shredded carrots to put on my face (to take the redness out). I beat the egg whites until they were foam and she shredded the carrots. I was directed to put the egg whites on the burns on my body and sleep with the stuff on overnight and to put the shredded carrots on my face, but to take them off after a few minutes. So I went into my room and went to town with a spoon spreading egg whites all over the burn. I let them dry a little bit and then laid down and put the carrots on my face for like 15 minutes then took them off. I had an orange tinted face afterwards, haha.

And OMGGGGGG when I got up off my bed after I took the carrots off I thought I was going to die!!! The egg whites had completely dried and when I moved I felt like my skin was ripping off. My main burns were my face, eyelids, neck, armpits, upper tummy, and upper thighs. I did little as possible so I didn't have to move.

Sleeping was MISERABLE, the egg whites were dried to my skin, they were flaking, so I was sleeping in "crumbs" AND my skin felt like it was tearing off. I got up at 730 and jumped in the shower to rinse the egg whites off.... I couldn't take it anymore. OH, and did I mention my eyelids were sooo freaking swollen this morning that I put bags of ice on them for 20 minutes after the shower and took some ib profen. That helped the swelling some!

BTW, the carrots and the eggs whites worked!!!! (surprisingly!) My face was less red this morning and my sunburn didn't hurt as bad as it should of. So thankfully, I am not in that much pain. Don't get me wrong, my armpits and eyelids hurt, but def not as bad as they should. The eyelids are the worst part, those hurt the worst.

And here is the evidence that this actually occured:

Burnt and sad before the pain started!

Taking a picture of the nice red burn line on my neck

 

 Shredded carrots on my face! You can also see some of the egg whites.

 After math of the shredded carrots...an orange face!

 Dried egg whites all over my stomach

  Burnt Icing my swollen eyelids on Monday morning. I put my pajama

pants over my face before the ice so my eyelids wouldn't freeze!

 Swollen ugly face! Que fea! I took this picture after

 I iced my eyelids Monday morning. (with a grin on my face because

I felt so weird taking pics of myself I couldn't stop laughing)

UPDATES:

It’s Monday night and my eyelids hurt pretty bad to the touch, so I put a rag soaked in nasty white vinegar on my face for 20 minutes… it’s supposed to help with the with the soreness.

It’s Tuesday morning, and my pain is worse than yesterday, go figure, but the redness is wayyyy down and my eyelids hurt way less! My eyelids were swollen still so I put ice them for 20 minutes. (the swelling in my eyelids goes away during the day)

It’s now Tuesday afternoon and the pain is WAY down! And my eyelids don’t hurt anymore. My upper stomach hurts a little bit, but not bad at all.

Wednesday morning:  face and eyelids looked normal this morning, but my face is beginning to peel, ughhhh. Thank goodness I dodged the blistering stage since I took action right away, but I don’t think I can avoid the peeling. I have been soaking myself in lotion like 3 times a day trying to avoid this, but I think the peeling is inevitable.

Here's the score so far: The Sun:1, Heather: 4

At least I got a good base tan going... Rainy season looks like it’s coming to an end, and yes, I do plan to lie out again once I’m totally heeled J

Heather

Week 2 Stories

***These 2 updates are for you, Mandi...... smarty pants!***

5.5.11

                Let’s see… I actually have things to talk about this time…they aren’t that exciting, but I’m still going to tell you about them anyways…. Ha.ha.

So when I was packing up all my stuff and moving to Cuenca I didn’t have any room in my suitcases for the 2349293479237 books I acquired during training…. Not to mention they weigh like over 20lbs, no joke. So a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) offered to bring them to me when her and her mother came to visit Cuenca within the first couple weeks of me being here. How sweet, right?!? She sent me a Facebook message saying she was in Cuenca and would leave my books at the front desk on Tuesday as she was leaving to do touristy things early in the morning. So Tuesday I left work to go pick them up…. My books were 10 blocks down and a couple blocks over at a hotel, and all downhill. I finally found the hotel, grab my books, and put some in my book bag and the rest I left in the bag to carry. At this point the rain clouds are coming in, I have like a billion pounds of books I’m carrying, and the way back is ALL up hill… awesome… it starts to sprinkling so I start hauling ass because I don’t want all my books ruined. I get about 7 blocks away from work and the sprinkle turns into a decent drizzle…. Greaaaatttt, start walking even faster.

Now I’m about 3 blocks away from work and I hear someone say my name. At first I don’t look around because who the hell knows me in this city? No one. Then I hear it again, so I look around. It’s my host brother, in the car, stuck at a traffic light!! PERFEECCCTTTT, I say hello and immediately throw, and by throw I mean hastily give them to him, all the books in my hand at him and say, “take these!” (In English, oops, but I was in a hurry and not thinking) He was like “what are all these books?” (in Spanish) ***ha, he thought those were a lot??? Haha, sucka!*** I then take off my book bag and give him the other 10 that were in there. His eyes were as big as quarters, but he didn’t say anything, he just took them and put them in the passenger seat. Oh and I also gave him the head of lettuce I had bought at the market on the way to pick up my books. Then light turned green, he wanted to go but was sitting there waiting for me to throw more stuff at him, I told him that was all and off he went. As he was driving away I yelled thank you! BTW(by the way)- this all happened in a matter of about 15 seconds.

                Oh man, did I mention that the look on his face was priceless as he drove off??? Hahaha. He totally had the “’What the hell just happened’ look on his face”, it was great! How lucky was that encounter??? Now I didn’t have to haul all of those books on the walk back to the house for lunch, SCORE!

                When I returned for lunch he was at the table telling Marcia (my host mother) this story. They were laughing pretty hard… as was I. And that’s that story. Next.

                My host mother had a plastic surgeon over for lunch yesterday for a marketing thing. She is hoping he will refer patients to her after they get surgery (She does something along the lines of “after plastic surgery” massages). She went berserk over him coming over… both with food and cleaning the house. Actually, it was more like she barked orders (in a nice way, of course!) to the lady that cooks and cleans for us to do all these things… put this away, take that to her room, put more cucumbers on the salad, sweep the floor 5 minutes before he arrives, is the dressing ready?, did you put ONLY salt on the meat and nothing else?, how do the beans look?, is the fire pit ready?... the list goes on. Oh and she did all of this while in her cute little outfit and heels. She’s so cute! (**Sidenote** the other day we went walking after lunch because we were so full and she wore her heels then too. Too funny**) She goes to pick him up at 2, they return, we all eat, chat, and be merry. Lunch turned out great. All the food was delicious!! Except the chicken stuffed artichokes that we forgot about in the oven. The oven was off, no worries, we just forgot to put them on the table. We had them with our lunch today, they were sooo good. I actually think they were jalapeños, but I could be wrong.

                Hmmm…. What next? Oh, I can tell you about the 80-100 person meeting that we didn’t go to today. Haha. Sooo for the last week everyone in the org was talking about this meeting we had in a community about 2 hours away on this upcoming Thursday. Well, we didn’t go to this “important” meeting. I was totally bummed. End of story. I will spare you the details. But I did get to lay out in the sun since we didn’t go to the meeting J Next story.

                Yesterday evening, my host mom gets home around 7:30pm, yells “Heeeeettthhhheerrrrreeee” from the kitchen like she always does when she gets home from somewhere and see that I’m in my room. But this time she actually comes into my room and starts talking so freaking fast!! I have no idea what she is saying, but I can tell she wants me to come into the kitchen, so I put some shoes on and into the kitchen I go. There is an edible arrangement sitting on the table made of fruit and chocolate covered strawberries.

                Turns out there was a “Mother’s Day” party at the TV station where she advertises her juices every week. They threw a party for all the mothers. There was cake, wine, and coffee at the party. And they all got edible arrangements as a thank you for coming. So we all sat around the table eating it, taking pictures, and laughing. She was soo excited about this gift, it was so cute! I asked her if edible arrangements were common here and she said no. That explains her excitement. And before we ate, she took a picture of me pretending to eat the fruit bouquet, she thought it was hilarious that I was pretending to eat it. After we were all done eating it, she spread all the empty sticks on the kitchen table and one of her sons took a picture of us acting like we were so tired and full. Pretty funny. I’m so mad I didn’t break my camera out, oh well, I have 2 years to snap memories J

                Then we went walking like we do most evenings, but this evening she was walking way faster than her normal turtle speed of a pace, haha. After we’ve been talking for awhile I mention how much faster she is walking tonight compared to every other night. She comes back with, “I think it’s the 4 glasses of wine I drank today.” Hahaha. I then told her she should drink wine every day before we go walking. Haha.

Until next time,

Heather

Not Much Happenin 'Round Here

4.29.11

I’m not really sure what to talk about. Nothing crazy exciting has happened this week. It’s been pretty easy going and relaxing. I get up at 7am to run/walk if it isn’t raining. I go to work from 9:30-1. At work I’ve just been trying to listen in and observe what’s going on. So far, I haven’t caught on to any conversation unless I ask questions and someone explains to me what they are talking about. Sometimes after their explanation I still don’t get it. Oh well, little by little I will start to catch on.

At 1 I walk home for lunch. After lunch I run errands, exercise, walk around town, go to the Spa with my host mother and hang out, relax, do laundry, go use the internet, etc. until the evening when host mother gets home and we eat a little dinner and then go walking if it isn’t raining. If it’s raining, I relax, watch a movie, or hang out with my host family. Then I repeat this routine the next day. Pretty simple, eh? For now.

Heather