A few weeks ago, I was involved in a car crash. The driver took the curve too fast, the car flipped a few times and we hit a pole. It wasn’t even like we hit the pole on the side of the car, we were straight up, vertical with the pole. Like, my head was against the window basically on the ground and the car was straight up and down on the pole. My parents didn’t call you in a fit, so that means I’m alright- no worries.
I was in a Peace Corps ordered neck brace for a few days. Since the accident was right outside of town, everyone knew about it and showed up at the health clinic where they brought me directly after the accident. Apparently, no one thought that closing the door to the check-up room was a good idea, so I was in a pretty good amount of pain having to constantly reassure the people I work with that I wasn’t. I can’t be sure that I was speaking Spanish, it was probably a Spanglish/gibberish.
Now, thankfully we were all wearing our seatbelts. That was definitely my mother’s doing- insisting that we wore them always. My father deserves credit here as well, because when we were little, instead of having a “curse jar” where the parents had to deposit money every time they said a naughty word, we had the “owe me a dollar” rule. Everytime we caught Pops without his seatbelt on and we said “owe me a dollar dad”, he had to put a dollar in the jar. That’s how we made our first hundred- and promptly purchased a Nintendo. Easiest money I ever made-but I digress.
So the accident happened, I was the big news in town. It was a good thing we hit that post, because if now, we would’ve kept on rolling down the dang mountain.
Now, it was a pretty terrifying experience, but I didn’t get that “life before my eyes” flash. The terrifying part is if we would’ve struck the pole a foot farther up, it would’ve hit me in the face, not the bed of the pickup. When I saw that, I was thanking my lucky stars.

All settled down, and I got back into my work after the accident. Thanks to a generous donation by my dentist of 20 years, all of my students got to learn about the fun world of oral hygiene. For the past month, we’ve been learning how to brush our teeth, how to brush the tongue, what happens if our teeth rot out, and how cavities form. WOO HOO. It is amazing how little the kids know about it, and how many little kids you see running around with their baby teeth rotting out. Every class I had, we would start by brushing the teeth. Thanks again to Dr. Konikoff and Kelly Scheer for working out that donation for me. It’s been amazing. The kids are loving it.

To conclude- the other day, I went to a Parents’ Day for a school I work with down the road. They insisted that I got my face painted (i.e. drawn on by eyeliner) like a cat. When I got on the bus home, everyone was looking at me more curiously than normal, for a reason I couldn’t work out until I got home and looked at my cat face. Picture included above.

I’ll be home for a little bit of time in May for my aunt’s wedding. Should be a good time- feel free to shower me with diamonds and gold.