#firstexperiences

I just had the most insane experience yesterday, I feel like I am still half processing it and I can’t go about my day until I write everything down. 

Yesterday at around 6 pm, I tried to walk out onto the balcony of my apartment, with the door still closed. I walked straight into it with my knee and broke it into huge ass chunks, it took me and my partner a couple of seconds to even realize I had broken the glass. After what it felt like forever in slow-mo, I realized I had a huge gash on my shin and it was quickly spilling out blood, lots of blood. It’s weird how calm I felt, I should have been a nurse or a doctor in another life. My partner was not particularly calm, I could tell he was freaking out, but i’ve had first aid training before and I knew exactly what to do: put pressure on the wound, elevate it above your heart and cover yourself with something warm to avoid going into shock.  Thank Godess my father in law is still in Colombia, we called him, he came to our apartment in less than two minutes and got me to the hospital in less than ten. And.... that’s where my story stops being fast-paced. The hospital is just INSANELY slow. I mean, I guess it makes sense with the sheer amount of people they have now because of COVID, and they probably have more security measures, but damn, that was slow.  It took them at least an hour and a half to actually admit me into the emergency room, my leg just pulsing away precious blood as I waited outside the consulting rooms with the other non-priority patients like me. Then I went in and they put some pain killers and hydration in me through a catheter, waiting for at least another hour and a half. Then came the doctors, with their terrible sense of human sensitivity, coming to tell me I might have broken my leg and an x-ray was needed. This is when my calm demeanor broke down.  I just felt so stupid, like something so ridiculous as not noticing where I was walking was just going to be so horribly expensive and maybe now even I’d broken a leg??? I was just worried sick about how much this stupid thing was going to cost me.  So.... my leg wasn’t actually broken. Huzzah! But I did get my first x-ray, which was exciting. I got a what felt like a shit ton of stitches, and seven hours later I got to simply walk out the door.  it. was. insane. 

Thankfully this all happened in Colombia, where everything is just insanely cheap. My entire trip to the hospital cost me a mere 90 USD (which is basically insane in and of itself).

So over the summer I've been working a few hours at the school library each week for the summer reading program. There aren't too many students, no where near the amount of kids that come in on an average day for the school year, but the few students that come in are always excited about getting the books they've been trying to get throughout the school year and all the brand new books that keep coming in over the summer months. Today I got to have a truly great experience.

A young student came in, he is going to be a kindergartner come fall, and he seemed to be a little nervous about it. He's the oldest of two, so he gets to experience everything first, and he was pretty soft spoken (along with his mom) so while I'm sure he can be wild and crazy, he was pretty shy today. His mom had gotten the e-mail about the summer program and stopped in with him and his little sister. Since he had never been there I got to share with him where all the "cool" books are. His mom took his sister and just started browsing books, but I got to the heart of the matter and asked what he liked.

"The Big Bad Wolf" was his reply in this sweet little shy voice. First book I thought of was The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Joe Scieszka. I gave him a quick summary of the book, and then also pulled out The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Stupid Fairy Tales.  Then we got to talking about Mo Willems and Laura Numeroff, and the family had only read a few of the books and didn't know about the other stories Then we talked about Lego books, and helped his sister pick out a couple. She was really into bugs and loved a ladybug book we had. I showed him the cushions the kids used and talked to him about how the library experience goes when he gets into school.