a tale of two feet

Fact: I'm really bad at having feet in this country.

My first full day here back in February, my coworker took me on a walk around Berceni and being a) unaccustomed to Winter and therefore unaccustomed to dressing properly for it and b) a little jetlagged and therefore making questionable decisions, I wore flats. There was ice and snow and dog poop on the streets. And actually I don't think I'd ever worn these shoes before. Such was my judgment. Well, it did not take long before the back of my heel started to burn, but I figured I was getting a blister and there was nothing I could do about it anyway so best to just keep walking.

A couple hours later as I was being shown the Mega Image, I took a peek at my heel and imagine my surprise when my heel, the heel of my shoes and the back of my pants were all completely covered in blood.

And then about a month ago I was playing volleyball in the park, barefoot as I am wont to do, when my little right foot got crushed by a not so little guy. Actually, let's be clear. He wasn't much taller than I am, if at all, he was just thick. And wearing tennis shoes and coming down from a spike. And you know the veins or arteries that you can see on the tops of your feet? Well, immediately I started to bruise where those had been visible (they still aren't visible on that foot anymore). And by the end of the night the whole thing was so swollen and bruised I couldn't even wear my shoe. It's finally quit being tender and puffed up in the last week or two.

So three. This past week we were on the mountain, which is one of the best places you can be, sort-of hiking, which is one of the best things you can do. And I even bought a pair of hiking boots because six years after I quit playing soccer I'm still the fall-down girl and need every bit of traction I can get. The thing is, being one who prefers to go barefoot or in flipflops, I don't own any long socks. Just the ankle kind. But I figured even if the socks didn't quite reach the top of the ankle of the boots, it would be okay. Once more we see a gap in judgment.

Two hikes later, lots of gauze and some borrowed socks, I have blisters that aren't exactly blisters: they're more that the skin has been rubbed clean off. That's gross, right? Sorry. Anyway I've been healing them up as best as I can with help from lots of mothers, including my roommate's who put some yellow stuff and some powder on it and made me lie in bed all day Monday with my feet elevated to get the swelling down (looked like I was pregnant). Plus, poor circulation to the extremities means cold feet and slow healing. But we're working on it. We're working on it.