So much for keeping up with my personal health initiative. No sooner had I gloated about my good fortune healthwise than I got a really bad bout of stomach flu (I think...) and spent three hours in the emergency room getting an IV drip to rehydrate. The doctor said my blood tests came back normal, but as there was nothing left in my body to excrete, they never got a stool sample. Proudest moment in all of this: on the bus coming back from the beach, half conscious and really ill, I managed to lean over the guy next to me and open the window to throw up. He didn't seem too traumatized.
I just thought I'd update everyone on my physical well-being. My friend Sondra is coming in today for 10 days, so I'm glad that the worst of the illness has passed. After the IV, I felt 50% better, and today I feel 75% better. Improvement. Sondra and I are going to spend a few days out at my site to see what I'm up to out there, then we're going to head up to Kuna Yala to sit on a white beach and enjoy each others company. So excited to see her and have some girl time.
As faithful readers may remember, I was going to do a garbage charla on Saturday, but as it turned out no one was around at the time we were going to do it. Not even my community counterpart that was going to do it with me. That's just so Panama. So now I'm changing tactics. I'm going to focus on smaller groups ( between 6-10) and give the charla a few times. I was considering making it kid-friendly and giving a few charlas at my house for them. I think it's a better approach, especially have big community meetings proves really unwieldy. I lose peoples attention really quickly.
Speaking of children, I just bought the first three Harry Potter books in Spanish and a few more puzzles (puzzles are a big hit, Mom) for my community kids. I've had a lot of questions about what people can send for me, but I'd rather that people send things for kids to play with. A few rules: nothing with too many pieces, books are great, as long as they're in Spanish, nothing too technical (remember these kids live below the poverty line, technology is pretty foreign to them), and anything that combines fun and academic themes are GREAT. I almost bought Scrabble Junior (in Spanish, of course) today. I couldn't afford it with the books and puzzles, though. Please let me know if you're interested in sending something down. I'd love to have more stuff for kids to do. Otherwise they're just running around like little feral jungle kids. Which they kind of are, I guess...
Okay, that's my two cents for today. Love and good health to all!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment