The dog that gave me a love bite

Last Thursday was the week of crazy animals. 1)I noticed a spider living in my bathroom that only has 5 legs. Does that disqualify it as an arachnid? 2)A big swarm of bees that are bravas (angry) moved into my house that afternoon. The majority left but there's still a big family living in between the two stories of my house. I'm going to see if someone can smoke them out, because they come in at night and I don't want to live with pending stings! 3)My worst fear before coming here came true that morning when a dog bit me on my run. It was one of a pack of four sort of wild and mean dogs that always follow me in a certain spot that I have to go by. I was cornered and so walked, and all of a sudden the smaller fat one bit my calf! I looked down after scaring it away and saw that I was bleeding, and so talked to the owners and went home to scrub it for 20 minutes with soap, water, and an old toothbrush (according to our medical handbook, what we have to do after a bite to kill 90% of rabies). Called the medical office and they wanted me to come in for the post-rabies shots, but I convinced them I didn't need to. With no cases of rabies in La Joya for a long time, I'm pretty sure the dog is just mean and not rabid. Actually, I know it's mean. It used to be the dog at my old host family's house a couple years ago and ran away to become part of the dog gang it's now part of.

In my job, things are going better than my time with animals. We had the inauguration of our Telecenter yesterday, and it went well. The center is now open to the community, and we began our classes today. All six classes that we're offering this round filled up to the brim. It's good to be teaching again after so much time out of the classroom.

I took advantage of my last free weekend for a while to meet up with a couple friends in Constanza this weekend. We spent 3 days in the small town which was beautiful: a little town in the mountains that actually got cool in the nights, enough to need a sweatshirt! And in the days the heat was better, not humid at all. They grow a lot of the country's cooler-weather veggies and fruits like cabbage and broccoli, celery and strawberries. We had strawberry milkshakes or slushes every day there! The main reason we went was to hike, which we did lots of. We walked about 12 kilometers to Aguas Blancas, which is the biggest waterfall in the country. (Pictures to be posted soon!) It was such cold water that none of us swam at the base, but enjoyed its beauty instead from outside. We decided to take a bola (ride) back when a big tractor offered us one. On the back attachment, we had to hold on for dear life as the tractor went on the very bumpy and twisting road, and so after about half an hour we got off. The men on their way back to town from work just laughed with us. Another bola came along not too long afterwards that was in the back of a truck, and that was slightly more comfortable and a whole lot less work on our part of bracing ourselves. Another hike we did was more exploring the side of a very steep hill without a path. It was the beginning weekend of that town's fiestas patronales on Saturday night as well. That's when every town adopts a patron saint and celebrates the week each night with famous singers coming in and voting for a queen (teenager who wears an ugly white sort of wedding dress). But we got to see fireworks, danced in the streets, and went on a ferris wheel that was pretty fast. None of us wanted to leave the cool weather or the amazingly cute town at the end of the weekend.