culture shock

when i was home over christmas, the only real "reverse culture shock" i experienced was when i went to get some sugar from the sugarbowl to add to my tea, and was genuinely surprised that a sea of ants was NOT inhabiting said sugar. but now i'm back in guyana, and ants are everywhere. yesterday, an army of them bore a hole through a ziplock bag, invading and effectively claiming my granola. i had to sift my granola, throwing the small bits and the ants out. then i tied up by ziplock bag of granola and hung it, bear-bag style, from an extra hammock string suspended from a clothesline. yeesh. then, today, the ants annexed one of my quaker instant oats packages. they seem really hard to get into (if you're an ant)! they're kind of paper-y. for some reason i thought papery packaging could stand up to ants. i guess i should have known better - they burrow into WOOD, hello. nothing is safe from them! i had really put my faith into north american product packaging, thinking that ziploc bags could stand up to some little ants. nope.

yesterday i ripped off a hemp bracelet that i've had on my right wrist for about a year and a half. i made it for myself when i started working for darcy. i'm glad it is gone, because of what it symbolized to me, but now my arm feels all nekkid without it. so now i am on the lookout for some new long-term apparel to clothe my wrist/define this time in my life. in other wrist apparel news, for those who are interested, the thin piece of black leather i've had wrapped around my left wrist since cornerstone 2003 is still keepin' on, and serving as a gauge of my real whiteness vs. rupununi savannah tan.