Sick!

I got sick the other night. At first I wasn't sure if I was really sick. But then I was sure. I wasn't sure because my first symptoms were being hot and sweaty. But, you see, being hot and sweaty is sort of part of life here. And the fact that my arms were terribly sunburned and seemed to be releasing heat didn't help in discerning between sickness and health. But eventually I figured that my face and neck should not have been as burning hot as they were.

Other symptoms that compounded included a raspy cough, headache, fatigue (which manifested itself in 15 hours of sleep...Oppa made fun of me for sleeping in until 11:30), loss of appetite, etc. It started in the evening time. Nate had left to Chavadi (which is a town near Chavadi Pudur) to pick up dinner for himself, Ashley and myself) and I left the kids on the porch to lie down for a bit because my back was hurting me. It was over an hour later that Ashley came in to tell me that my food was there. I went to their room to eat but after two bites knew I couldn't eat more. Rather, I felt inclined to calmly ask the question, "If someone were to, say, need to throw up, where might they go to do so?" Their answer was to recommend the bushes around the wall. I excused myself and went and...well, you know. That was gross. I'm pretty sure that its been about 3 or 4 years since I have regurgitated (such a great word). And then I went to the bathroom and rid myself of the remainder of the liquids in my body via the other end. Then I sipped some filtered water and lied down on my mat and slept for those 15 hours.

I don't recommend sickness to anyone. Unless you go for that kind of thing. No, seriously. I wouldn't recommend it to anything. But, true to form, I rarely get sick for more than a day, and was better when I got up the next day and haven't had any problems since.

Granted, yesterday I went to lunch at one of the tea stalls in Chavadi, thinking I was better, but the owner's wife pointed at me and said 'not a healthy body' and proceded to list healthy and unhealthy meal options, and after we had thrown away the banana leaf plates we had eaten our rice meals with chutney, sambar and buttermilk on, they pointed me to a nearby pharmacy. I stopped by, but the person working there didn't understand English. Oh well. I am doing well. Life is good. And I'll save you all the grotesqueness of a picture to accompany this post.