Enfermedad

June 20, 2010

In my limited experience with awfully experiences, the worst has to be being sick and not being at home. It sucks hardcore. Add to that the fact that I’m in a foreign country and attempting to speak a different language, and it’s downright rotten.

My weekend started out great – our Spanish teacher wasn’t able to make it to class, so Roxanne and Ruthi and I had a free day. We hung out in the break room, watched the World Cup, and talked theology. It was wonderful. Then the Goshen boys started singing hymns for the Spanish teachers, and we all ended up joining in. There are a few things that my camera cannot capture, and that was one of them. The community of four-part, and the joy that they had in singing for us, and the joy that we all had in listening was just beautiful. I ended up going to bed SUPER early that night (6:00 – Sarah Unruh, Anna Voth, you are NOT allowed to laugh) because I was feeling a bit under the weather, and was just going to take a nap. It was a very long nap. Until the next morning.

The next day, most of us headed to the old capital city of Antigua. We took a bus up windy roads, with lots of slam-on-the-breaks stops and pedal-to-the-metal starts. My stomach decided that it didn’t take kindly to such maltreatment, but kept the grumbling to a minimum until we reached the city and started walking around. Then it decided to disgorge its contents in the gutter outside of an old convent. Gives a whole new meaning to “driven to your knees by the wretchedness of your situation.” I dragged myself through the rest of the day, taking lots of breaks and drinking lots and lots of water. Antigua is really pretty – all old buildings, and no new glass-and-steel ones. I also went to Roxanne’s brother’s soccer game. They make up 3/5 of a men’s team, and they won the game, barely. It was outstanding, 4 men against 5 in the first half because one of their guys didn’t show up. They were tied at the end, so they all took turns kicking goals while the opposing goalie did his level best to block them. I don’t know what that’s called. Sudden Death, maybe? It was very interesting – the field was TINY – about the size of a basketball floor.

Today (Sunday) was the worst, health-wise. Church (where I witnessed the casting out of an evil spirit, according to Jaime. Not sure what to think about that. I’ll probably go with the timeless words of Aquinas), and then off to celebrate Father’s Day and their son-in-law’s birthday at their daughter Sulemma’s house. They had steak and rice-and-beans and (my all-time favorite) tres leche cake, and I couldn’t eat any of it. I spent most of the four hours sitting on the living room couch, fielding questions as to my health and bowel movements, and trying to convince my mother, her daughter, her husband, my father, and the maid that NO I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO EAT OR DRINK, JUST LET ME SUFFER ALONE!!! But we finally left, and I feel like I crashed the party a bit. One the way home, I got super homesick. I have never gotten homesick in my whole entire life ever, so it was a new experience. I just wanted my mom and dad and my house and my bed. It was awful and I don’t want it to happen again. Definitely what one would call “a valley.” So I watched “Up!” and read some past quotes pages and now I feel much better, at least mentally.

Sorry, that was super long and kind of whiny. On the bright side, in Antigua, a few of us had a 20 minute, reasonably in-depth conversation with a super granola expatriate from the U.S. and his friend, a boy of maybe 10 who was selling bracelets. It was about the Cup of course. That’s nearly all anyone talks about. I also talked with Jaime for about 30 minutes about tornadoes. The conversation ended rather abruptly and awkwardly when I decided to try and be smart, rather than culturally sensitive, telilng him that tornadoes were caused by rising and falling columns of air and such, and were not actually “the will of God.” Oops.