Introduction

I thought I would have a first blog simply an amusing story to get to know me:

While in the Peace Corps, they put all of the volunteers up in a pretty nice hotel for a conference from Friday night ‘til Tuesday, and I had a room with one of my friends.

The first night at the hotel we were having some room parties, and someone came into my room asking if I had a corkscrew. I looked around and all I could see was a phone book, so I said yes, I can open your wine bottle. I have been told that you can put a phone book up against the wall, and hit the wine bottle very hard against it at the base, and the cork will slowly be popped out. A few weeks before, in my village, I witnessed someone beat the cork out of a wine bottle with a 1.5 liter coke bottle. Thus, I decided that it was my turn to amaze my friends, and I swung the bottle hard towards the phone book.

WHACK

Everyone jumped back, and the cork started to protrude a bit. My smile beamed as I reveled in my small victory. So I swung again. I think you can imagine where this is going. I completely smashed the bottle. 750 ml of red wine covered the wall, the ceiling, and the adjacent wall. The carpet became stained. My white dress shirt was no longer white, or dressy. I quickly grabbed the towels and started to clean up, and then realized there was blood on the towels. Just a small flesh wound, very small. But this was all very hectic, so I decided I should go out to the club and clear my mind.

So, now I have a trashed hotel room. I thought it was very Jackson Pollock-ish, but my friends assured me the staff would not look at it that same way. So not cool. First off I don’t want the hotel to mention it to the Peace Corps, because I really don’t want the headache. Secondly, I really did not want to pay the hundreds of dollars that they would surely charge an American. My friends thought I was screwed. I had another drink. The next day I put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door to thwart the maids preemptively ruining my weekend, and decided to put my University degree to good use. How many rooms did the fraternity, umm, “destroy?”

So I sent a buddy out for paint, as I had sessions and he was free, but he failed terribly. Fuck. I called a local friend, and asked where the stores were. But she told me they would be closed by the time I could go, and that they would be closed on Sunday. So she bought me the paint – a bucket of white and a small tube of brown so I could mix them together to make the cream color of the wall. Long story short, I painted the walls on my last night, and no problems arose.

I was proud of myself as all my friends doubted the chances of my ploy working. But what hotel staff is going to wonder “did they paint the walls?” I can just see the conversation now: “Damn American volunteers, always trying to help, they painted our dirty walls!”