matando parasitos, tirando machetes, y haciendo pecho

Killin' parasites, throwin' machetes, and doing chest...

E. Coli - not just from tainted beef anymore!

Well, they finally got me... los parasitos. It had been over 4 months down here, so last week I took a test for the hell of it to see what was crawlin around inside me. E. Coli, Giardia, and some other ameoba that had a less memorable name. No biggie though... the E. Coli was a distant cousin to the one that kills people, and I got them all treated with a series of pills over 3 days.

 

Giardia - smells like roses!

Funny thing, though, I didn't notice any symptoms. Giardia is known for extra stinky farts and poo, but I've been showing those symptoms for years. Anyway, went ahead and took the pills, was feelin fresh, and then last night after our Christmas Party, I woke up at 3am with the uncontrollable urge to vomit. So I donated my half digested rice and lentils to the septic tank, went back to sleep, and did it again a couple hours later. One 7-UP, two gatorades, and a few hours later, I'm back to zero bloggin about it. Not sure what it was, but I felt like $2 for the majority of this morning. All is well though. I'm feelin fresh again, and I'm gonna stop by the clinic for another test Monday to make sure everything's okay.

Don Maximo laying on the glue

In other news, I was throwin around a machete last week with our guard Maximo. Just carving up some cane to make our año viejo monigote. Down here, the tradition for New Year's Eve (they actually celebrate the Año Viejo, the old year, instead of the new year), is to make a monigote of something from the old year, stuff it with fireworks, and burn it down on the 31st. Some people just buy a premade generic one (there's a lot of Buzz Lightyears getting sold out there), but Don Maximo is known throughout Durán for his monigote crafting abilities. Last year he made a huge piojo (lice--one of the volunteers got bird lice around this time last year) and a life-sized replica of one of the volunteers. This year, we're working on a life-sized Chevy truck (modeled after the oldest member of the Rostro fleet, which has already suffered two crashes in the past 4 months--thanks Celso and Caitlin!), and a paloma (pigeon... I thought I left my pigeon woes back in SF, but there's at least a dozen that have taken up residency on our roof. www.nomorepigeons.org/whynot?).

And finally, haciendo pecho... brought my camera to the gym the other day because my 16 year old neighbor Kevin wanted to post a video of himself crushing out some bench press. The place is called Biceps Gym, it's on the 3rd floor of a concrete building, costs 50 cents/day, has an open wall facing the street, and some of the finest equipment from the early 90's.

Kevin doing biceps at Biceps... not sure what the bald eagle/American flag picture is doing in the middle of Durán, Ecuador, but it inspired me to crush out a couple more reps

I posted a bunch more pics of the monigote and un dia al gymnasio in my AJS photo album from my last blog. There may or may not be videos of Kevin and I dominating the bench press...