Stinging Nettles! :(

Sunday again! This morning Adam and I listened to a Mark Driscoll sermon which was very good. I definitely needed a break from everything that we have been doing. My isiZulu class is getting more and more intense. We have a bunch of vocab and quizzes all the time which consume most of the free time during the day (we have class at night).
After our sermon I really wanted to go hiking again, as it is becoming somewhat of a weekly occurrence. We decided to go to a new stream but it was too overgrown with thrones to get by. We grabbed a few machetes and the guys started hacking away. We needed some gloves however to clear what they were chopping up. I volunteered to get them and climbed up the hill. As I neared the top I felt a stinging/burning pain on my knee. It hurt so bad and I had no idea what it was. It felt really hot and was really itchy. When I scratched it though the pain got
a lot worse. I decided I would just not touch it in hopes it would go away.
I continued my search of some work gloves but could not find any of the workers anywhere. Adam just got out of a meeting the same time I was nearing the end of my search and I asked him if he had seen anybody who knew where gloves were. He wanted to know why and what we were doing. I proceeded to tell him and then told him about the random pain I had on my knee, but when I looked down the skin was bubbly and white. It looked like someone had dripped acid on my knee.
I started freaking out but Adam said he had some antihistamine wash so I decided to go wash it out right away. Thankfully it felt a lot better after that but I decided I would take it easy the rest of the day. I found out later that I was stung by a stinging nettle plant that is covered with spines that inject histamine if they come in contact with skin. They also look very harmless unless looking really close up. Ouch!

My knee after I washed it

A little bit closer up

A stinging nettle plant