ninety-one

As I write this, my left middle finger is encased in a metal shell, making it difficult to type C’s, D’s, E’s, and 3’s (hey, that rhymes). This is all that remains of a somewhat accident-prone weekend. It all started when I twisted my ankle on Sabbath morning. I was wearing flip-flops, which made me even more surprised, since I’ve never rolled my ankle before while wearing sandals. Tennis shoes are usually the culprit. Thankfully though, it wasn’t a bad injury, and in a few hours, the only evidence that remained was that of some skin hanging loosely from the top of my foot, where the gravel had started to peel it off. Saturday night I played basketball for the first time in years, and it was lots of fun. The game (and ice cream preceding it) were in honor of Papi Trevor, the Hogar’s assistant director, who was about to move back to the States (he and his daughter, Tama, left early Tuesday morning). The gym floor was extremely slippery and I was afraid that I would slip and hurt something, but fortunately, nothing like that happened. Instead, all of my injuries were received while standing. I got hit in the face with the ball once (a wicked bounce from somebody’s foot) and two fingers on my left hand were jammed when I swatted at a pass a bit too soon. It was a bad jam and I iced my fingers that night, but when I awoke in the morning, my middle finger was swollen and it hurt to move it. I considered going to the nurse or doctor to see if it was broken, but since we had a schedule to keep and a bus to catch I decided to postpone the visit. During our trek into town, I seemed to be cursed. People walking behind me stepped on my flip-flops five times, and one of those times was so bad that my shoe came flying off and landed in the street. That was near the beginning of the day, so I still had some good humor left, but by the end of the day, (when they tried to convince me that it was really MY fault) I was quite annoyed. To top it all off, my finger was rather inflamed, aching, and my toe was stinging and bleeding from a run-in with a concrete rock (let me tell ya, they’re not the best thing to kick accidentally while walking full speed down the sidewalk and looking in the other direction). That evening I went to visit the nurse for some ice. I told her where it hurt and asked if that was normal. She said that the doctor would be there in a little while and I asked if there was anything the doctor could do, since my finger was still swollen. The nurse said that the doctor might immobilize it. Since I had been in a lot of pain throughout the day because I would accidentally move my finger when I didn't mean to, the immobilization sounded like a good idea. When the doctor didn't show up before the nurse and her family started to eat supper, I decided that I would just see the doctor some other day. I went back to my room and looked for anything that could be used as a make-shift splint. A popsicle stick? Don't have one. A pencil? Too long and fat. A note card folded over many times? Probably not durable enough. I was just about to give up on the search when my eyes fell across the perfect thing: a hair barrette. It was the long, slightly curved kind that is usually used to hold hair back in a half-pony-tail-like style. It was just the right length, and the slight curve made it more comfortable. I taped it to my finger and went on with life. A few days later when my finger was still hurting, I finally went to the doctor to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't, but she gave me a real splint, the one I'm wearing right now, and it's a whole lot easier to remove for when I can't avoid getting my hand wet. So that's nice. It also has most of the metal on the outside of my finger, protecting my sensitive knuckle from getting hit accidentally, so that's nice too. Now all I have to do is wait until Tuesday to be rid of it for good.

Today was a bit of an adventure--I taught Kindergarten by myself. Maestra Sandra had an emergency come up, and she asked me this morning if I would take over that class for her. I agreed, at it actually went pretty smoothly. We read stories together and did activities working with the color green. But after play time, none of the boys wanted to clean up their toys and the girls ended up putting it all away. So as punishment, I told the boys that they all had to stay after class to help clean up the classroom. Unfortunately, I was reminded of an announcement I had forgotten about that had to go out to all of the house parents. This meant that I had to write the announcement in each of the children's notebooks, and that meant that I wasn't able to make sure that the boys stayed to clean up the room. Eventually, all the kids were gone, and I was glad that I had let the kids out about 45 minutes early because then I had enough time to clean up the room myself, if need be. But lo and behold, who should show up but Moises, one of the boys who had already left, refusing to clean up. He came in and started putting away some toys. He explained to me that he was just going to clean up the toys so that he could say he had done his part. When I told him that he had to clean the whole classroom, he got mad. I said that all he had to do was sweep. He left the room. But when he came back, he had a broom. He swept the classroom hurriedly, and as he did so, he said that he wasn't going to pick up the trash. I asked him why, but he didn't answer. So he swept the pile of trash into the doorway of the classroom and left it there, running away before I had time to do anything about it. Oh well. At least this kind of thing doesn't happen every day.