Dr. Livingstone is trapped in my backyard

Holy shit, I came home after 4 months out West and my backyard looked like it had been uprooted from the Amazon. It's not as bad as it was a couple years ago but this time there is more than just grass. It is overrun by weeds of all varieties and that attracts a plethora of various insects. I walked in my backyard to get to the barbeque and a swarm of grasshoppers flew around my legs and it felt like I had just stepped into a fast moving stream of water. And then, after all the grasshoppers had departed, I noticed that there were an abnormal amount of wasps hanging around in the grass. After my run-in with a wasp a couple of months ago I was immediately terrified of being in or around my backyard. Memories of when I was young and feared the outdoors for its vastness, its vacuousness, the way it appeared endless and also for its abundance of natural sunlight (it makes me feel dirty). But now I fear my outdoor living quarters that border my indoor living quarters for extra reasons than those accumulated in my youth. I fear the jungle that has become my backyard. What am I to do? Shall I face the jungle? Lawnmower in tow, am I to do to my yard what big business has been doing to the rain forest for the past decade? How could I be sure that mother nature would not strike me down with a cascade of wasp stings that would immobilize me and then my grisly demise would be realized by the millions of tiny mouths of grasshoppers as they slowly devoured me.

I would need to wear armor but that could lead to dehydration at the hands of the mighty Solar Orb. It is truly one man against the world. But I must persevere. I must tackle the yard with water bottle at the ready, lawnmower revved, long sleeved shirt and long pants wrapped around my body and I must have my rage just below the boiling point. The rage would need to be called upon at a moments notice so that my system could be flooded with adrenaline should a renegade wasp manage to break my defenses.

It will be me.

The sun will burn.

The wind will be still.

Nature will crave blood.

I will be standing in front of the green abyss.

I will reach into the heart of the dense jungle that has enslaved my backyard.

I will grab hold of the dark heart.

I will mourn the lost explorers that have fallen at the hands of the thicket.

I breathe.

I will breathe.

Then with motor and blade I will tear the dense, tangled heart of the jungle out from its core and restore my yard to its former glory as my outdoor living quarters.

So I've been hanging out with kids a lot lately but not many of them speak English very well. So they don't understand all the variations of dirty things that I whisper to them. They just smile and say, "Teacher you are so funny". But seriously it's fun work. I basically help out with the administration of an ESL school youth program. Kids' ages range from 10 to 18 so it's a fun mix of ages and personalities. A large part of the job is just talking to kids and making sure they are having fun and I get paid to with them on activities. I got payed to go to Whistler on a field trip and all I did was see the Whistler sights, eat and have fun. There were no issues involving any kind of behaviour. All the kids are super nice. So I got a paid vacation.

Scwhing.

The only downside is that I never fully realized just how weird it is to sit in a group of people who are talking and laughing and not being able to be a part of it. Whenever I ask them to explain jokes it's always

"He...say.....that, uh........my seester.........have...the loung hair" (some words spelled phonetically to help provide generic accent)

Brutal.

And whenever I tell a joke it's always met with silence and awkwardness. I haven't had this many blank stares since I worked at the morgue.

That is pretty much the only downside and I can't really complain. The job was super busy in July because that was when we had the most students but they have all since gone home and we went from 110 or so to about 37. Big difference. There is a lot less gibberish being screamed with my name being yelled occasionally and always immediately followed by raucous laughter.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. I'm coming back to Ontario at the end of August so I guess I will need to disband the blog because it's no longer on the West Coast but we'll see if the Blog Police catch me.

Fun fact: Brazil is actually a developing nation and has quite a good economy. Most of the slums there have been eliminated by specialized housing projects. I have heard many good things about it and it is supposed to be very beautiful and quite safe. So yeah, maybe you should look into it with a more reliable source than a rich, Brazilian 16 year old but I think you'll be hard pressed to find a better source or a better [REST OF TEXT OMITTED DUE TO INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT FLAG]