Monday, July 5th: The "Spill"

So Monday started out GREAT (notice that I said STARTED)! Breakfast here is a little different than it is in the US. At 7:30AM, I ate a grilled cheese sandwich, cantalope, homemade juice (not orange; it tasted like Tang, but better) and tea. It was all absolutely delicious, but it was hard for me to each so much so early.

I walked to school for an entire day of Spanish lessons. I was put in the basic class (YAY!) with some med students and another grad student. There was this one medical student that was completely disrespectful to the teacher (Stalin), telling him that he didn't need to learn this or that and he would refuse to write down anything that the teacher told him to. During the lesson he was asking the other med students about their school, if they liked it, and just basically being obnoxious. I don't think that this would have been so bad if we were in a "regular" classroom, but we weren't. La escuela de Espanol is very small and we were tucked upstairs in lawn chairs (that you get at Walmart) and patio tables. Our whiteboard was the size that most people have in their kitchens or dorms to keep their life organized. It was loud (from the other classes) and frustrating to have this dude talking when I was trying to learn Spanish!

I ate lunch with Cinty and a med student from Canada at Bom Kafe again. I didn't adventure out too much because we only had an hour for lunch and I didn't want to be on Ecuadorian time. :) I even ate the same thing as yesterday.

After we came back, we had more Spanish lessons. During a break, I bought my textbooks (Interviewing the Latino Patient and Medical Spanish) and got the workbook for my level. Some girls (Molly, Annie and Aliane) were talking about going out later that night and I definately wanted to jump in head first to my Ecuadorian experience. We exchanged numbers and decided to share a taxi to a Mongolian restaraunt after dinner.

After school, I came back to my homestay and took a brief nap before dinner. My homestay mom fixed a soup (sopa) with potatos (papas) and cheese (queso) as a first course. The rest of dinner consisted of lightly fried chicken breast, white rice and beans (I think they were lentils; en espanol: frijoles) and cheese. Everything was soooo delicious. I scarfed it down. Gina, my housemom and I sat at the table talking and laughing about farm animals. lol I know that is random dinner conversation, but we were trying to figure out the difference of animal sounds in English and Spanish. For example, in the US, we say roosters go "cockle doodle doo!" Apparently in Ecuador, they say "kedidekeey"! Okay, that was a bad spelling of it, but to hear a retired Ecuadorian woman making animal sounds at the dinner table was priceless! We all laughed until we cried.

As we were in hysterics, my stomach started to hurt really bad. Like horribly bad. I had a terrible stomachache (dolor a la estomacho). I couldn't even walk. It was bad. Gina got me some Tums and I took one with some water and started to feel better. My housemom made me some tea and I sat down for awhile and figured out if I wanted to go out or not. After laying down, drinking the tea and talking on the phone for a bit, I felt like it was okay to go out. I dragged Gina with me. :)

Molly's homestay family ended up knowing a taxi cab driver so we had our own personal chauffeur to the restaraunt. I'm hoping that this is not the last time in my life that I will have a personal driver! lol He dropped us off on a busy corner and promised to come pick us up around midnight. We walked down to Mongo, grabbed a table and had a blast. Eventually another girl from our program came over (Martha) and said that some more kids in the program were at a big table in the back. We ended up joining them and talking some more. Someone eventually suggested that we go dancing across the street, so we paid our tab, and darted across the street to a club. Let me pause here and say that in Ecuador, everyone has a hustle! I thought it was bad in America, but the US has nothing on Ecuadorian hustlers. I was asked at least 3 times in a 5 minute timespan if I wanted to buy gum (Chickletas). They come up to you and rattle the box saying "Chickletas! Chickletas!" You have to say no thank you (no gracias) like 100 times before they leave you alone.

Inside the club, was like any other hole in the wall that you would go to in America. The alcohol is SUPER cheap (2 beers for a $1, a shot of tequila for $1.50 and a mixed drink for 99 cents...EVERYDAY) and some people grabbed a beer from the bar. A few minutes after we walked in, the DJ mixed in Snoop Dogg's Drop it Like its Hot. Needless to say, I was a little shocked. I had to text someone back at home "Snoop Dogg is in Ecuador", after that, he played Nelly and then guess who? SOULJA BOY! lol I know I'm a lame for this one, but I got so excited when Soulja Boy came on. I started to do the dance and everyone in the club (including the people that I was with) stopped and stared at me. Some Ecuadorian people started taking pictures of me dancing! I was sooooooo embarrassed, but I kept dancing anyway. I tried to teach the people in my program the dance too and they joined me. Some bartenders started pointing and talking about me (in Spanish). I felt like a loser and a celebrity all at the same time. The DJ played a little bit of salsa music and I even requested Michael Jackson. It was just fun being in another country, being silly and being a foreigner. It was a great time.

We left the club and headed back to the place that our personal transportation specialist :) was coming to pick us up from. After arriving home, I said good night to Gina, showered and got in the bed. After reading my book (Tori Spelling's sTORItelling), I turned off the light and closed my eyes. As I was laying there, that same icky feeling that I had after dinner started to creep up on me again. I tried to change positions and hoped that falling asleep would make my body forget about whatever it was trying to tell me. And it worked...briefly. I guess I hadn't been asleep that long because my eyes popped open maybe an hour later, and I felt worse. I was extremely nauseous. I laid in bed thinking about if I should get up or not, if I should take another pill. I took some of my traveler's diahrea medicine before I laid down for, well, what it is prescribed for! lol The more I laid there the worse I felt. I gave a little cough and all of a sudden, I could taste sopa, frijoles con queso y rice. I'll spare the graphic details.

I got back in bed and moaned for awhile. I didn't know what time it was because I turned off both of my phones. I didn't have the strength or will to roll over to see what time it actually was. I thought about if I was going to be sick again. I thought about la escuela in the morning. Should I go? Am I contagious? Why am I sick? I thought, "Hey, if I'm actually sick, I really don't know how to tell anyone!" I considered trying to go upstairs and tell Gina what happened, but I decided not to. I thought about my mom and my boyfriend and how talking to them made me feel better when I was sick. I was really worried. After that whole big long train of random thoughts, I closed my eyes and prayed. I didn't know what to do. I just needed some peace. I eventually fell asleep.