the bandage on my finger came off on monday, and i hate to complain about it, but i'm in a funk. the thing looks hideous. truly. the top of my finger looks like a stump that a bird shat on (the "bird shit" is a combination of stitches and dried-up cream). all my co-workers and students keep telling me that it looks a lot better than they expected it to and that it's fine, but i can't help but wonder if they're seeing the same thing that i'm seeing. obviously not, since the finger is attached to me and not them. oh, well. i'm gonna have to deal.

a hallowe'en festival was held at the school last night (mexicans don't really celebrate hallowe'en--they celebrate something on nov. 2 called dia de los muertos or the day of the dead--but our school's partially american, so we did), and boy was it a production. the PTA mothers organized a whole carnival-like event where attendees had to buy tkts to play games and go on rides. there were actual horses galloping around the racing track. there was a mechanical bull. two haunted houses. tons of food stalls. everyone got dressed up in hallowe'en costumes, and b/c i was only given 3-hrs' notice that i had to be dressed up as well, i improvised and went as a hipster (john deere trucker hat, tiny arcade fire t-shirt, black blazer w/ a little gentleman reg pin/button on the lapel, tight jeans, sneakers, and every hipster's essential accessory, the ipod). most ppl guessed that i was either a boy or a teenager. my indie music 101 class knew better though. my shag of hair that desperately requires a haircut kind of even looked like a mullet under the cap, which complemented my whole ensemble well.
some of my students' costumes were pretty ingenious--a grade 10 student dressed up as edward scissorhands and had some awesome, authentic-looking scissorhands (they could've put someone's eye out though!) and a grade 11 student went as a businessman caught in a powerful hurricane; he had fake glasses, ruffled hair, a turned-out, tattered umbrella, a suit w/ a tie that was suspended by a stretched coat hanger so that it looked like it was being blown by the wind, and a briefcase that had papers coming out of it that he'd glued together so it appeared as though they were spilling out. that's creativity, man.

i genuinely like all of my students--even the ones that drive me crazy--and i think it's endearing that many of them have known each other since they were in pre-kinder at the school. most of them have grown up together and have stories of how they broke each other's arms or pushed the other out of (stationary) car windows when they were little. they're so familar w/ each other that they're very likely sick of having to grow up w/ the same group of ppl all the time (they often act like they're siblings, and it seems slightly incestuous when they occasionally end up dating each other), but i look at the seniors and think it's sad that they're all going to be apart for the first time next year. they'll miss each other, whether they want to admit it or not, and i hope they realize that they're lucky to have so many ppl to keep in touch w/. i think there's a strong sense of community at this school, what w/ it being so small, which makes it vastly different from the huge high school i went to, where it was relatively easy to remain an anonymous face amongst the hordes of other students. i think these kids are in for a real shock if they end up going to large colleges where they'll become nothing more than a student # to the administration.

the other interesting thing i've noticed lately is how these students have grown up in a party town. they're used to going out and drinking (since the age of around 14, or whenever they looked old enough to get into clubs) and hitting the malecon every weekend and balancing that w/ schoolwork. alcohol isn't really a forbidden thing for teenagers here, and therefore loses some of its "off-limits" appeal. maybe these students won't burnout in college or university as quickly as hicktown frosh will b/c of this?

on tuesday, my parents' friends are coming here for the day on a cruise ship and i'm to entertain them after i finish teaching my classes. i have to admit that it's been kind of fun trying to come up w/ things they'd be interested in seeing here, but what i'm going to do w/ them is definitely different from what i'd plan if any of you from back home ever come (hint, hint). i'm kind of looking fwd to showing some familiar faces around.

to add to the already-teeming list of quasi-traumatic experiences i've had here so far, i was stung by a bee at school yesterday. sure, that sounds like nothing, but i've never been stung by a bee before, and i didn't find out until yesterday that i'm allergic to bee stings (reminds me of that macaulay culkin movie, my girl...i don't think my allergy's that serious though...nor was i attacked by a flock of bees). the evil little bugger went under my skirt and got me on my thigh, and as soon as it happened, i could barely hobble over to the office to check my leg. it started to swell around the sting, and the nurse came to put ice on it. after a few mins, i was able to make it to the nurse's office where a doctor was waiting for me. he told me i was having an allergic reaction and recommended that i take a bum shot of antihistamine to combat it. i'm sick of having needles injected into my arse cheeks (i'd had two already due to the finger fiasco), but apparently it's a popular location for a shot. it hurt like hell and then it totally knocked me out. i had spanish class, and as i was heading across the campus, i started to get groggy and my students were telling me that i looked high. i completely zonked out during the class, to the amusement of dave and kim, and it took me all night to get out of the fog. the swelling around the sting has disappeared now, so i guess it really wasn't a big deal. guess it's just another amusing anecdote for the ever-growing collection about my life here.

addendum: i forgot to mention that jen swallowed a bee last friday. the bugger went into her drink and she took a swig and down it went. i really do think we're cursed or something.
addendum to the tabloid news: my students brought in their pictures of and with paris hilton yesterday. i laughed.

before i gloss over the past three or so weeks of my life, the things that have been on my mind most recently:

- i pass the port in the marina while taking the bus to school every morning, and lately i've noticed that there is at least one cruise ship docked there a day, and sometimes there are even three. locals tell me that this is actually quite uncommon, so tourism here must be increasing. (last week i even spotted the dawn princess ship at the port--i cruised on it last summer to alaska...it was a sentimental reunion.) now that hurricanes have or will be hitting so many other resort towns in mexico, i'm thinking tourism is gonna get even crazier/busier here than usual. i've got mixed feelings about this; obviously, an influx of vacationers will be good for the businesses here and the town will benefit, but i think day-to-day life will suffer a tad. it's going to get annoyingly crowded and traffic will be insane. prices will likely skyrocket in touristy areas and i'll likely have more mexican locals trying to take advantage of me by overcharging, assuming i'm just on vacation and clueless.
it's funny how us new teachers act like locals and pretend we have a right to look down on clueless tourists when we spot them, forgetting that we probably look exactly like them and evoke the same disdain when other locals see us.

- i can't seem to get used to the sweet and spicy combination of flavours that locals here are obsessed w/. one of my students loves to make me try all the candies that are covered w/ chili flakes and have gum or fruit-flavoured centres, and i don't know what to make of the stuff! it just tastes odd to me. another student of mine loves to pour chili flakes onto her apples. it's common to pour chili flakes and lime juice onto mango and coconut slices here. chili and lime. it's on everything.
sweet and sour? yes. salty and spicy? sure.
but sweet and spicy? i'm gonna have to work on it.

random tabloid fact (oxymoron alert!): paris hilton was spotted partying in various locales around town here in vallarta this past friday, surrounded by an entourage of limousines and fawning boys. my friends and i avoided the hoopla on the malecon (which was further amplified by the likely debauchery that was the 20th anniversary celebration of carlos o'brian's, the local tourist-trap/meat-market dance bar and high-school student magnet--my kids offered me free tkts left and right last week) and hung out at a fun bar in old town instead.

so, three weeks ago:

- had a slight bloodfest w/ my finger. won't go into all the minute details, but let's just say i bled so much my sling was dripping and my co-worker who took me back to the hospital came thisclose to fainting at the sight of the blood sliding down my arm as the doctor applied pressure to stop the bleeding. i'm okay now. really! i am slightly peeved by how all my clothes seem to be soiled w/ blood stains though.

- this incident directly led to my not joining in on a weekend getaway trip to an extremely private beach house ("private" meaning no doctors or hospitals or phonelines or other ppl, for that matter, in sight) by boca de tomatlan which is owned by our school's librarian and her wealthy husband, where alex and jen got severely food poisoned by some bad chicken they'd brought and bbq'd. they missed two days of school b/c of it.
kim, my housemate, also got severely beat up by the ocean (and had the battle scars to prove it), as the waves were really rough that weekend. needless to say, i was kinda glad i didn't go.

two weeks ago:

- as the pictures from my previous post indicate, we released baby turtles into the ocean at the beach by the westin hotel in the marina. there were literally hundreds of turtles, so all the ppl who'd gathered for the event got to release around three or four turtles each. they were endearingly cute, and although some of them were special ed turtles and took a little more time to make it to the water than others (one ended up burying itself in the sand, poor thing), we oohed and ahhed and fawned over them unconditionally. more than half the turtles won't survive (there were already seagulls flocking towards them as they headed further out into the pacific; the crowds of ppl on the shore kept them safe for a little while, at least), but the ones who do will return to that exact spot on the shore in seven or eight years to lay eggs of their own.

- on the saturday, we held a canadian thanksgiving potluck dinner at alex's and jen's house, and it was a great time. we had a few honorary canadians (aka americans) at the event, and they learned just how awesome us canucks can be. unfortunately, there was no turkey, due to alex's and jen's recent bout of food poisoning and newfound disgust towards anything that resembles a chicken (that, and the fact that we have no idea where to find a turkey, dead or alive, here), but the hors d'oeuvres, salad & bread, veggie lasagnas, potatoes, stuffing, and apple and pecan pies more than made up for it. so did the wacky jenga games that took place afterwards. my missing fingertip has caused an imbalance in my jenga-playing abilities and i lost twice (or was it thrice? i can't remember--i blame the tequila) in a row before managing to pass along my loser crown for ensuing rounds.
on the actual thanksgiving monday, we made up for the turkey-less saturday dinner by splurging and treating ourselves to a 3-course thanksgiving meal (salad and turkey w/ stuffing and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes w/ gravy and PUMPKIN PIE!!!) at steve's sports bar, where we dined w/ other expats while watching the canucks game on the bar's many tv's. i felt bloated for a week after that.

- it was an eventful week. at school, for some inexplicable reason, my grade nines decided to google my name and found some articles i'd written for the queen's journal as well as some pictures of me (no, not those kinds of pictures--one from exclaim! mag and another from the journal site) and i never (and still haven't) heard the end of it. now the news has spread up the grades and the whole high school has cyberstalked me. hooraay. i will look fwd to the week where no students come up to me in class and say, " i saw you on the internet, miss."

one week ago:

- it was columbus day on the wednesday, but the pv school authorities decided to shift the holiday to friday to make it a long weekend. kim and i took our first overnight trip to tepic, the capital of nayarit state, which is the state north of ours (jalisco). we got to practice our spanish a ton, since we were literally the only freakin' gringas in the whole damned town and were stared at like rare museum pieces the whole time we were there. we bought a lot of stuff from huichol artisans and just to make myself even more conspicuous, i got myself a hot pink cowboy hat and wore it for the rest of the trip.

- last weekend was the last in pv for amanda, since she'd found a better job back home in texas and had decided working on a ranch where they breed champion horses was her dream job while teaching english here in pv to rambuncious mexican children for peanuts was not. we went out on thursday and saturday night, and on both nights i could not help but run into my senior students (i also later learned that my grade elevens were on the lookout for me as well) wherever i went. i've got to admit that it's pretty odd hearing ppl calling me "miss c" in bars and lounges at two in the morning. regardless, we had a great time dancing w/ all of amanda's housemate's gay friends from guadalajara and mexico city, and i'm really gonna miss having her around. she's the first friend we made outside of our own school, and she was a cool one.

this past friday, dave (the art teacher), kim, lisa (another teacher at the school) and i went to an art opening at a gallery that belongs to the parents of students who go to the school, and the two siblings got a kick out of seeing me there. i almost bursted out laughing when one of them told me that half the school was out looking for me on the malecon (i truly hope he was joking). this almost directly led to the four of us hanging/hiding out in old town that night. i jest a lot about the students seeing me while we're all out drinking, but i really am sort of uncomfortable about it, since i'm the youngest teacher at the school and therefore have the smallest age gap amongst them.

yesterday, a group of us headed out to sayulita for the third time, and i just vegged on the beach and geeked it out by doing math problems while jen, alex and dave went surfing and kim swam. dave and i hung out at an older teacher's house afterwards to watch the world series (my brother, WHO GOT ENGAGED THIS WEEKEND, taught me to love baseball) on his tv on a balcony that overlooked the whole town, drinking beer and eating the greatest sandwiches we've ever had (courtesy of the owner of the coffee cup, who is a friend of the older teacher and also a former teacher at the school himself).
it was a great game (the chisox deserved to win) and i hope the rest of the series follows suit.

and now i think this blog has pretty much caught up w/ all that's happened here lately! hats off to you if you made it all the way down here!!

p.s. i finally saw my finger on friday. i hadn't seen it for a month before then. needless to say, it was disgusting. perhaps i will elaborate more later.

i was writing a very long and inspired catch-up post yesterday when the power suddenly went out. needless to say, everything was wiped away into nothingness and now i don't have the energy to try and reproduce what i'd written.

so until i do replace that post, some pictures in lieu of it to tide you over:

releasing baby turtles into the pacific...


it can get pretty sentimental watching them head off towards that vast, scary world of ocean...*sniff*


canadian (veggie-friendly and turkey-free) thanksgiving dinner #1:


p.s. the hand in the turtle picture is not my hand. it's actually kim's. wesley sure is one observant bastard, but my left hand currently has a chunk missing from the top of its ring finger and looks disgusting and is certainly not worthy of a picture!

souvenir of mexico
(or did i give mexico a piece of myself?)

alright, here it is.

disclaimer: you may not want to read this if you can't stand talk of blood and gore, or don't have an eternity to read this entry that's probably as lengthy as a history of the world.

two saturdays ago, a group of us new teachers drove up to punta mita to spend the day on an island by there. we were going to hire a small boat (i think my students told me that it's called a panga or a lancha) that would take us to the island, where we planned to go snorkeling and just hang out on the beach.

all the pangas were lined up along the edge of the water, and as we got into one, i did something very stupid. i placed my left hand on the side of the panga, and while it was there, the panga parked next to ours bumped up against it and BANG! my ring finger got smashed. daytrip over.

at first, it all felt very surreal. the fact that my finger was seriously hurt didn't immediately sink in, and for a few moments i was telling myself that i was okay and that we were still going to head to the island. but then i started to feel some pain, and i looked over at my finger and saw it cut at the top, with fat sticking out, and blood was splurting out like a sprinkler onto my skirt and onto the panga. i proceeded to announce to everyone, "i think i hurt my finger."

for the most part, i stayed surprisingly calm. i turned my head away from the part of me that was split open, and i think my philosophy was "if i can't see it, then i won't lose it."

from then on, things seemed to go in super-slow motion.

alex, a fellow new canadian teacher, declared that we had to go to a hospital. jen, also a new canadian teacher and alex's girlfriend, let her first aid senses kick in and elevated my arm and put some of the ice from our cooler into a plastic bag and placed it by my finger. she then helped me out of the panga and escorted me back to dave's car (dave, the new art teacher from houston, texas via arizona and kansas, just got his car back from the mechanics a couple of days before). i was afraid i might faint, and at one point things got all spotty and i felt lightheaded.

it felt like years before we'd managed to pile everybody into the car (including one of they guys who was going to take us over to the island on the panga) and get going. we were really lucky that amanda, a friend of ours who is teaching at another school here in PV, speaks spanish fluently, b/c we probably would've been lost w/out her. the guy from punta mita directed us towards a doctor in the small town, but the place was closed (i think they were having their siesta), so he gave us directions to another doctor in another tiny town 15 mins away. while this was happening, we were trying to contact our school director on amanda's cellphone, but there didn't seem to be any reception from where we were calling.

the second doctor's office was open, so i was escorted in there, and while i was there, dave drove the guy from punta mita back. the doctor took one look at me and said i had to get to a hospital. unfortunately, we had to wait for dave to return w/ the car. the doctor gave us two options--we could either head to the hospital in san francisco (san pancho), which is a town about 20-30 mins away from where we were, or we could head back to PV (an hour away). we decided to go back to PV, since we knew more ppl there and they would be more familiar w/ which hospital and doctors i should use.

the doctor wrapped my finger up in bandages and put it in btwn some ice packs. he recommended i take a painkiller and gave me the option of either having it injected into my ass or swallowed in pill form. i chose the pills, even if it meant they would take longer to kick in. i wasn't really interested in having anything poked into my bum cheek.

we still couldn't call our school director b/c the town had no phonelines, but we decided that on our way back to PV, we would stop by his house to see if he was home. it was important to try to let him know about my situation b/c he would know best about what to do. the six of us that were there were all new to the town, so we knew squat about good doctors and hospitals in vallarta.

i think we waited about half an hour before dave returned, and i spent the time asking the doctor to distract me from thinking about my finger by telling me the nicknames for names (the equivalent of the anglo "dick = richard"), which was something that i was fascinated by at the time.
pancho = francisco
poncho = alfonso
chuy = jesus
lalo = eduardo
pepe = jose
lolita = maria delores

dave finally returned and we headed back towards PV. the ice for my finger kept melting, so we stopped by a little convenience store and dave ran in, yelling that a girl's finger had fallen off (slight exaggeration) and we needed ice. one of the workers in the store understood english and quickly gave the ice to dave for free.

despite the awful pain and bleeding, the drive was kinda nice, 'cause i got to pick all the driving music we listened to from my ipod and nobody complained about it.

we stopped in la cruz, which is a sort-of suburb, to see if jerry, our director, was home. thankfully, he was. jen, alex and i moved into his car and he practically flew us to the hospital. he had his wife call their doctors for us, and they met us at the hospital right away.

by this point, it was two hours after the initial incident, and i was paranoid about a few things:
1) i would somehow bleed to death (probably unrealistic and ridiculous)
2) i would get infected by something that was unclean and contaminated and die that way instead
3) they would not be able to reattach the piece of my finger that had come off and it would look deformed and hideous for the rest of my (possibly short) life.

fun stuff, huh?

at the hospital, they moved me into a little room and the nurses began to remove the bandages on my finger and sprayed it w/ antiseptic stuff to disinfect it. i've never screamed so many profanities so loudly in my life. jen (who took life sci at queen's and was also a con-eddie a few years ahead of me) stayed w/ me in the room and was nice enough to let me squeeze the heck out of her hands. she watched the whole thing, which even i couldn't do, and she told me about some of it later on.

my school director's doctor and a plastic surgeon (parents of kids at the school) looked at my finger and then they told me what they were going to do. that was probably the scariest moment of my life; at that point they could have completely shattered me--all the terrible things they possibly could have said filled my head and i almost didn't want to hear what they were actually going to tell me.

what they ended up saying was that the tip of my finger had come off, but it didn't go straight across--it went diagonally, the front tip of my finger and my whole nail was gone. however, the root of the nail was still there, so it would grow back eventually. the very tip of the top of my bone was gone (they did an x-ray) as well. they told me that they were going to pull the skin from my finger up to the top where the edge of my nail was supposed to be, and stitch it together. the length of my finger wouldn't change very much, and they said that my finger would look relatively normal after three months, with the nail grown back.

they injected anaesthetic into my hand to freeze it, and the doctor said i would only feel it for two minutes. "TWO MINUTES?!?!!" i freaked out. he actually meant two seconds, but he got mixed up, explaining that his english wasn't very good. (i don't recall minutes sounding like seconds in spanish, though!)
they rubbed iodine all over my hand, and i yelped in pain again, so they injected more anaesthesia. then it was okay.

jen later told me that the piece of my finger had been hanging by a thread of my skin the whole time, and that it had looked pretty disgusting. she also told me that the doctors had removed the piece completely when they were operating on me and thrown it straight into the garbage. i waved goodbye to it afterwards (i didn't actually see it though). she had been hoping that they would reattach it, but i guess it wasn't possible.

funnily enough, alex felt closer to me after this experience, since he lost the whole top of his right index finger six years ago by slamming it in a car door. i now have somebody to go to if i have questions. we're also thinking of starting a "nub club." while they were operating on me, he came into the room and told me that his biggest regret when this happened to him was that he never took a picture of the finger at the time. he was trying to convince me to take one so that whenever somebody asks me what happened, i can just whip the picture out of my backpocket and show it to them. thanks, but no thanks. i haven't even looked at my finger w/out bandages on since i turned away from it on the panga.

nothing like this had ever happened to me before. i guess i'd lived a pretty sheltered life prior to this...i've never broken or sprained anything in my life, and i'd certainly never had stitches before. this was the first time i'd have to have my arm in a sling or shower w/ a plastic bag wrapped over my hand. guess i was due.

they put me on five different kinds of medication, two of which were painkillers that made me crazy-nauseous for the next two days, leaving me bedridden. (kim took very good care of me though, making up for the fact that she couldn't do anything during the actual incident since she can't stand the sight of blood.) i missed two days of school, and when i went back, my kids all wanted to hear my story and then proceeded to flood me w/ gruesome stories of their own.

oh, and i couldn't even manage to stay away from getting a shot in the bum. after the mini-operation, they gave me a tetanus shot in the left cheek. hmph.

this is really freaking long. and i'm not even entirely finished yet. i'll save the follow-up for the next post, and then i have to catch y'all up on the rest of the last two weeks of my life.

let's just say for now that i'm okay, and i'm glad i've met such good ppl here who have treated me so well and helped me so much throughout this whole pathetic ordeal. i'm sorry i've kept so many of you back at home in the dark for so long, but really, my parents only found out a few days ago.

maybe i'll get a picture of my finger up soon!