Just to catch up on the past weeks of my life, I celebrated St. Patrick's day by having my wee-ones make hats to catch leprechauns and my older kids made toilet-paper roll piggy-banks. My school website is creating a page to show the parents what all we did, so I will share that once it's up and going. I did the same activities with my private classes. This was hilarious because those kids are 4 and 6, so they were SUPER into looking for leprechauns. I found it ironic because their family is loaded and pay me 30 euros an hour to essentially play with their kids in English for an hour. And their children are incredibly hell-bent on finding a small Irish man to kidnap and become rich with his gold. Then again, playing with these little assholes for an hour in English is more difficult than it sounds (and some days I deserve triple what I earn). I won't start on this quite yet (I will save it for another blog) but the little boy has some serious issues. I don't know if he watches too much television or his parents are certified porn stars or something, but he's seriously misguided in life. If I didn't know any better I'd think that Ren and Stimpy were his parents. Nicolas is 6. He's in first grade, can barely write his own name, can barely read, and is obsessed with sex and bodily functions. At first I wondered if it was normal but then I realized that I have over 420 students and none of them are that disgusting. The only time they laughed at something "naughty" was when my 5th graders learned the word "underwear". Meanwhile Nicolas two weeks ago pulled down his pants to show me what a "weiner" was when I refused to acknowledge that I understood him in Spanish. Later that week he bit me in my ass. Imbalanced. The only reason I don't quit is because a.) I get paid 60 euros a week from them for (usually) easy work and b.) the little girl, Marta, is only 4 but has really grown to like me and talks to me in the little English that she knows. She usually doesn't talk at all, even in Spanish...she just makes noises and hums to herself...so I feel like we've come such a long way to quit on her. Anyways, I taught Marta and Nicolas about the leprechauns and they asked if we could go outside to hunt for leprechauns. I told them yes, I drew them magnifying glasses that we cut out and colored, and headed downstairs. Please close your eyes and imagine this: An American girl with two small Spanish children who are yelling in broken English, looking for clues through their shitty paper magnifying glasses, picking up every piece of trash they find and calling it evidence, while wearing a ridiculous paper hat and looking for a small Irish man. Among the things we picked up and took upstairs were a phone number, a bottle of prescription eye drops, and a rusty paintbrush. Meanwhile, there is a group of Spanish children playing soccer who immediately stop to stare at us, perplexed, and a group of mothers who started yelling at that children that maybe if they listened, "to the pretty, nice, blonde girl that they could learn some English as well." I have no shame here.
Anyways, back to today. So I'm planning for Easter this upcoming week. It's the week before our Spring Break, so I'm in survival mode trying to make it to next Friday. I think I have a death wish, because with my younger kids I told them to bring in a hard boiled egg or two for painting. Then the week after Spring Break (when I'm lazier than hell) we'll do an Easter Egg Hunt. I can only imagine what all is going to go wrong with this plan but I'll be sure to properly document and report back.
Currently, because I'm preparing for Easter, my bedroom (and specifically my bed) looks like the Easter Bunny's secret lair. It's covered with plastic eggs, candy, gummy bears, stickers, and more candy. It's really hard to find big bags of candy here that don't cost my first born child. And it's pretty lame to put one piece of shitty candy in an Easter egg. So two pieces of candy per kid, times 420ish students...I've started looking at EVERYTHING to figure out what I could buy in bulk to give to the kids that isn't so expensive. Gummy bears and dental floss were my cheapest options....and clearly I'm not that big of an asshole to give them dental flossers (although some of them could stand to learn about some dental hygiene...). I want to maintain my celebrity status at school.
So I'm sitting on my bed, door shut, watching Parks and Recreations (not that funny but I feel special it takes place in Indiana haha) when my roommate (the lovely male roommate) starts yelling my name. I yell "what" and continue stuffing eggs....with so much shit on the bed it's impossible to get up and open the door. He keeps yelling my name like a lunatic and tells me he's hit himself on the head with something. I roll my eyes and collect my stuff, trying to explain that I'm busy and can't run out of the room quickly. I open the door and he's nowhere to be found. He's talking to himself, howling in the bathroom and rambling on about how he's dizzy and hit his head and he should have showered before, son of a bitch, he should have showered before, goddamned window, someone's whore mother (that's like the go-to insult here..."your whore mother" (it's the equivalent of "damnit" in America)...if you are suuuuper pissed then the mother of all insults or swearing is "I shit in your whore mother" or "I shit in the milk". I really don't get it but it cracks my shit up when I translate it in my head in English). I walk in and ask what's wrong when he looks at me, blood dripping down his face as he's rolling toilet paper around his hand, explaining that he hit his head.
Here are the questions I wanted to say, but couldn't think quickly enough in Spanish to ask;
- Are you sure you just hit your head and weren't stabbed in the face?
- Why is there so much blood?
- Why are you using toilet paper to clot the cut instead of paper towel or an actual towel? Clearly the toilet paper is just clinging to your spikey hair and making your entire head look like a toilet bowl scrub brush.
- Why are you asking me what to do?? You're a 26 year old man who cut your forehead...why are you crying and panicking and freaking out like you just sliced off your arm?
He runs back into my bedroom and, looking absolutely confused out of his mind, asks what the hell these things are? Don't I have alcohol?? Or anything to clean the cut?? What do I do Chelsea?!?! (Side note: I'm NEVER going on even a single date with a Spaniard. If this is what I have to look forward to, this complete lack of self-sufficiency, I'd rather die alone). I told him to clean the cut with the wipe, put the gauze on it...and probably even better if he had tape to tape the gauze. "BUT WHAT IS THIS...it's in ENGLISH! I can't even read it!!" Just because it's in English doesn't mean that it's poisonous or bad for you...it's not like American medicine is voodoo or similar to a witch-doctor. It's a damned alcohol wipe, you fool. I explained, simply, that the wipe was to clean, and the gauze was to use to help it clot. He asks, one more time, if I don't have any alcohol or anything. THIS HAS ALCOHOL. READ IT. ALCOHOL is spelled the exact same way in English as in Spanish.
I tried to sneak away again but eventually guilt got to me and I decided I should continue meandering in the hallway just in case he has another freakout. I mopped up the hallway blood, listened to him continue to mumble (I swear the window stabbed his forehead and knocked all sense out of his body...like Freaky Friday, except he didn't change bodies, he just became really stupid. And practically naked.) I cleaned up all his nasty bloody toilet paper make-shift tourniquets (dumbest idea ever) and walked back into the hallway. I'm not that vein but usually when I walk to the kitchen I can see myself in the mirror in the hallway. The mirror is gone. It's a long stand mirror. I look around, hella confused, until I look into the living room and there is Genius, sitting in a chair, propping up the mirror on the convection oven, so he can look at his head. He wasn't doctoring his wound or doing anything productive, he's literally just sitting there looking at himself with pity. I go and get my Lucky Tiger (it's technically an anti-hemmorhoid ointment but is amazing on cuts and cleaning wounds. I've used it since I was in daycare.) and hand it to him. He gives me his fantastic speech again, "What the f*** is this?? It's in English! I'm just supposed to put this on my head?!? What is it??" It's ointment...to help the cut heal. It won't shrink your head or make you any more idiotic than you already are so what do you possibly have to lose? I don't know how to say ointment so I told him it would help it get better. That's when I noticed that a.) his back was really hairy and b.) he had stolen my vodka out of the cabinet because he didn't believe that the alcohol wipes (clearly labelled) had alcohol in them. So he used more toilet paper to wipe down the cut with vodka. (This explains all of his cursing I had heard ealier, before I came out of the bedroom for the second time. I'm sure that hurt like a bitch but to his credit it was a $4 bottle of the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find...so...it was probably close to pure ethanol.) He's still weeping and asks what he should do because he needs to shower. I told him if I were him I'd wait to shower until it had stopped bleeding or he felt less dizzy (psyched out). He told me that wasn't an option because he REALLY needed to shower (which is why his back was hairy...he had just shaved his head and luckily for my retinas it was clinging to his half wet back...so attractive. I feel like I should have been paying him for the show [sarcasm]) I rolled my eyes (don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to listen) and told him that he should probably put some paper towel or something on it if he was going to shower because we all know he's a baby and the water wouldn't feel wonderful for him.
He asks if I think he should go to the hospital and I told him it looked pretty split open, but he assured me it was just the knot on his head from hitting it. Once again, if you don't want to hear what I have to say.....don't freakin ask. I grabbed my hand mirror and told him to look in the bathroom to see what he thought. He freaks out and decides he needs stitches. I told him I bet it would heal on its own but stitches might not hurt (news flash: I speak Spanish, not Medicine. If this were my problem, I'd have shut the window in the shower in the first place, and if I had hit my head I'd wait til it stopped bleeding, put a bandaid on it, and move on with my Easter egg stuffing. Or called Jeri and she'd tell me exactly what to do, after I sent her numerous pictures of the wound. The internet is a beautiful thing. This is how I solved my electricity problem when we blew a fuse.) He then asks how he gets to the hospital, where he should go, what should he do?? ...............................did he miss the past 4 months where I'm an American??? I avoid the hospital and clinics at all costs. I have NO clue. You're asking a bald person where the best person is to get your hair cut. You're asking a girl for the best doctor to get a prostate exam. You're asking a homeless person about the housing market. You're asking a priest for sex tips. I felt bad but...I can't help you. I told him to call the other roommate and maybe she could tell him what to do. The only thing I could help him with was offering that he probably shouldn't take the metro, and should call a cab. That's good advice right?
He left shortly. I asked if he was heading off and he tells me (in the tone that could best be described as a moody 16 year old girl who doesn't get what she wants and tells her parents, "Don't worry about it...I'll just die alone with no friends. It's not a big deal.") that I shouldn't worry about it, he's going to the hospital and will take care of it. I don't think anything I did could have satisfied him unless I would have stitched up his head myself with my travel sewing kit. So I don't feel bad. But he did come back to the house (reasonably quickly) with like 6 mini-staples in his head. I have learned many lessons from this experience (that wasn't even really mine to be had) but most importantly I'm going to shut the bathroom window before I get in the shower.
And probably try to mildly wound any significant other I might have before getting serious to make sure he's somewhat self-sufficient and not a completely incompetent man-baby. (These are also times when I realize I'm soooooo not ready to have children.)
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