It's all fun and games...

...until somebody gets a bacterial stomach infection.

That's right, folks. It finally happened. I am becoming fully indoctrinated into the Indian system. I won't go into the gory details (certain, ahem, bodily samples were involved), but I've been diagnosed with a good old-fashioned stomach infection. I'm currently taking doses of anti-biotic and pro-biotic at the same time (hmm...), and I've been home and in the health center for two days. There's not much to worry about; it's pretty low-grade from what I can tell. Just a few waves of nausea and some hot and cold spells.

It can't be all sunshine and monsoon lilies, can it?

The one thing that has really gotten to me, aside from the sheer boredom of being alone all day in my one-room apartment, is the walk up the hill when I decide I can't do school anymore. On a good day, my trek home is an energized 12-minute power walk with a stair workout at the end. The past few days, however, it's taken me about a half hour to make it from school to my apartment. On Monday, the first day I really felt sick, I made it up the road to my stairs, which look like this:

These look fine, but they quickly devolve into a rocky path
and a switchback.

I began my ascent and stepped onto the first two stairs. I realized then how much effort it would actually take me to get up to my house and my bed, and I started to cry. I stood there for about a minute, hyperventilating like a pouty 3-year-old, trying to calculate how long it would take to get home vs. how long it would take to find a coolie* and pay him to carry me to my door. I decided that, while a coolie could probably easily carry me up the hill--I've seen men carry office desks up the mountain on their backs-- it would definitely be the less-dignified way to get home, so I trudged on. (In hindsight, I'm not sure that stumbling up the hill while whining like a toddler was any more dignified than the coolie option, but what's done is done.)

I've been trying to take it easy, but many of my college friends know how bad I am at keeping still while I'm under the weather, so it's a constant struggle. In lieu of teaching, I've been trying to put together lesson plans for the future, and I've also started really planning my month of travel in November! There will be more information to come regarding my travel plans soon. Right now, though, I'm going to concentrate on slamming this stomach infection so I can get back to teaching those kids!

*The term "coolie" is not a derogatory term here in India. I'm not being disrespectful in this sense.