Another "You know you're in a developing nation when...." Post

…when you scratch your scalp and automatically check your fingernails for lice.

…when you ask your sitemate to inspect the marks on your stomach. “Do you think these look more like flea bites or bedbug bites?”

…when you meet your new Peace Corps sitemate, what you are REALLY wondering in the back of your mind is whether or not she would pull a tapeworm out of your rear end if you needed her to help.

…when you have visitors from the states, you stand outside the bathroom door and shout questions such as: “Would you say that it’s more yellow and foamy, or more brownish-clumpy?”

…when you find yourself happily singing these words around a table of new friends and relatives: “Appy beard-ray du ewe!....etc, etc” and you forget that once upon a time those words used to be “Happy Birthday to you!”

…when you go home for a visit, you are shocked that you own skirts that *gasp* barely cover your knees, shorts, and sleeveless shirts!

…when the rain wakes you up at night, you delay your plans for the next day by three hours each – to make sure that you give the municipal workers plenty of time to clear the new mudslides from the roads.

…when you get together with other volunteers, you share your fever stories: who had the weirdest hallucination before they could get their fever down.

…when your goal for the weekend is to find enough water so that you can heat up a bucket bath.

…when you travel two hours by bus just to buy that US candy that you’ve been craving all month.

…when the most English you speak on any given day is lecturing the family spaniel to PLEASE stop peeing on the leg of your kitchen table every morning.

…when sometimes you could swear that you are living in that horrible movie, Groundhog Day, because there are no notable seasonal changes in scenery between September and June.

…when you can lure every US citizen within several miles to your house with two words: “Ghirardelli Brownies”. And even though your mom and dad gave you enough mixes to make six batches, nine months later you still have two left, “just in case”.

…when the most interesting thing you did today was gossip about the price of tomatoes, and it was truly fascinating.

...when you go on vacation, here are the beautiful things you see:

One of the seven spring-fed pools of Semuc Champey. Swimming in these is glorious!

Pools from above, after an agonizing hike in the tropics.

Inside of the caves at Lanquin.

More Lanquin caves.

The time the cave guide saved me from certain death in the caves. Just kidding, this is totally posed.