Abored Abroad: Live and let sty and the nearly infinite AC fix of 2014 12/08/2014

So one by one, day by day, the little pieces of my broken villa are being repaired.

I now have lights on all floors.

I have two working burners in my stove.

Still working on getting my computer and stereo back online, but I do what I can when I can.

So things should be going pretty well, huh? After all that stress - all the hours of people in my house going everywhere - all the not sleeping because of the pick ax crew in my driveway - all was slowly getting behind me.

All day. Every day. 6 AM On a weekend? Knock knock, bitch.

Okay, well I may have gotten a call this morning that they were removing the half-operational stove they installed a few days ago.

I may have gotten word that for the 3rd consecutive day there has been a team of men in my villa working on, but never fixing, my air conditioner.

Really.

The first day it was one guy, he pulled the chip board and showed me the fired capacitor. He said easy fix and he would just pull the rest and replace them. The next day there were 4 guys. One to climb the ladder and work, and three to sit around the guy on the ladder and have a chat. Today, my friend Sayed informs me there are 6 guys in my villa.

They are taking apart the same AC units they took apart yesterday, the same ones that were taken out the yesterday before that.

I guess it is hard to get the professionalism you get in other countries...

or even

But it will be fixed, and the cool weather is a very nice treat. If it was summer I would have just moved into my fridge.

Little did sty know that there was something sinister afoot.

Or, a-face, rather.

Crazy thing, apparently lack of sleep and high levels of stress are linked to developing a sty. I had seen a sty before in a student, and all I can say is ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, but eye (HIGH FIVE EYE = I JOKE) had never had one. I didn't feel anything wrong.

In fact I didn't know it was there until talking to the school nurse in passing she got "the look" where you know the person you're talking too sees something and is no longer llistening

That one.

But what she was looking at was my eye.

"You okay? Your eye is all...ya know. You okay?"

Definitely words you want to hear from someone in the medical profession.

Just a few steps shy of the ever classic line: "HOLY FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR EYE!?"

She said she knew all about sty's, so I had a look and sure enough...there it was.

Sty.

So, this is pretty much how I walk around now:

Same dress and everything. I am a huge hit at parties.

What would I do? My job is to stand in front of teenagers. Something like this can ruin any chance of education in my room - and with so little happening already this could be a real bad time. I can imagine the looks from students as their deformed physics teacher lumbered into the room with a basketball underneath his eye.

Not learning today. Let's all stare for 90 minutes and be completely unapologetic about it.

This thing is crazy big. In fact, I will let Mike Myers explain just how large...

So how could I possibly avoid the attention I would get from staff and students with this musket-ball lodged under my eye?

Well, fate would work in my favor for a change.

It is spirit week at our school, which means students with a normal uniform for school get to wear whatever they want - within reason - to celebrate National Day this Thursday.

Sunday, (work week is Sunday to Thursday here) was Wacky Tacky day - and I made a modest effort. Bright green plaid short and a polka dot tie, two different shoes - your standard teacher fare for a spirit day such as this. But then halfway through the day I discovered my eye was giving birth to a planet...

How would I hide the eye issue from people on Monday?

How could I take "Character Day" and make this work?

I am a goddamn pirate. Arg and stuff.

I needed a way to cover the ol eyes, so I had a burst of inspiration...an eye patch?

Oh yes. An eye patch would be perfect.

Though I strangely didn't have one laying around.

So, some cardboard, string, and black construction paper did nicely for an impromptu eye patch. Strapped a few belts together for a bandoleer and threw my big kiffyeh scarf on my head

bing-bang-boom...

pirate.

I am dressed for success...success at striking fear into the hearts of fat Spanish merchants, apparently.

They actually hired me. Like, they actually wanted me to work here.

So, with a little creativity and some idiocy I am a pirate today. What character? Well, I was going to do some from one of my favorite books, Treasure Island. Couldn't do Long John Silver - I had two too many legs. I couldn't do Israel Hands because I don't know if that is such a good name to use here. They don't put the country on any maps here, maybe calling myself that name would be...unproductive.

So instead, I am a younger Captain Billy Bones.

Why not? They've never read that book anyway.

I suppose I could be Sorta Blind Pew - maybe Halfway Blind Pew or something. Important thing is I am a pirate and this patch is perfect. It is like my left eye has taken a nap for the past 7 hours.

So while I am not sure how long it will last, the big challenge will be "Twin Day" tomorrow.

I am already in a 3-some, (just as awesome as it sounds) where we are wearing some silk toga-like thing and coming as triplets. But how can I hide my eye? Maybe I can convince them to wear sunglasses like me?

I just hope it doesn't heal, because where is the fun in that?

Maybe we could be the Three Fates from Greek Mythology and just use one eye...and it would be my right one. The unbroken one. The one that isn't creating a new and dangerously strong gravitational field caused by its ever growing mass.