Lake Atitlan

Greetings everyone!

I am happy to report to you all that I am feeling a lot better and almost back to 100%. I still get tired really quickly and sleep a lot more than I am accustomed to but I am not sure if that is due to being sick or the way of life here in my site.  I think it probably would be a safe bet to think it’s a combination. 

This past week I have found a great house to move into.  It is definitely an upgrade to the house that I was living in.  I feel bad in a sense that the two previous volunteers had stayed in that house and I had to break the cycle but I am will be paying the same rent for a better place to live.  This house also will be with a family that I will interact daily with.  I will have the second floor of this house and I have just more open space with windows and an area to start growing some plants and test out my green thumb.  Another benefit is that this house is about a 10 minute walk to work.  My previous house literally was about 20 steps from the door to the door of my office.  This extra space will not only allow me to stretch the legs more on a daily basis, but it will allow me to pass more people in the street and talk and know more people.  For example, this week as I began to move things back and forth, I keep seeing this one older gentleman and we kept exchanging little chit chat back and forth.  Come to find out that he was the casket store owner here and tells me about his business.  It was funny because he told me that he has the opportunity to provide families with the last memory and gave a good laugh.  Just little things like this open the doors of relationships that the Peace Corps stresses in our work here within the community.

I just got back from a little trip to Lake Atitlan and to Panajachel.  The premier lake here in Central America, has been dubbed by some as one of the best most beautiful lakes in the world.  For me, I have had the opportunity to grow up around water.  I am very blessed to have family that has a lake house up in New Hampshire on Squam Lake (yes there is lot of bias but its still the best lake I know of) and also have had the opportunity to see the oceans of the Pacific.  Atitlan is a spectacle do not get me wrong but for the hype that surrounded it I was a little disappointed.  There were moments where it was very beautiful with a sunset, sun-kissed clouds and lighting clouds too.  It is a lake formed in the crater of a massive volcano and around the lake are three massive volcanoes as well jutting out of mother earth. There just wasn't that wow factor, maybe its there and I just did not find it yet.  Maybe I have to spend a little more time to form a accurate opinion.  I will definitely return.  Here at the lake was a little get together of other PCV’s that enabled me the opportunity to get to see other volunteers from my training group and catch up as well as meet other volunteers who have been in country for sometime.  It was a good morale booster and fun to see how everyone has been going through the same ups and downs as me.  It was a good weekend to recharge the batteries before a few weeks left of 2010. 

Lake Atitlan

I want to extend a Happy Hanukkah to all my family and friends who are celebrating, you know who you are!  I hope everyone is doing well and preparing for the winter! 

Finally, I want to add a little quote about time as a friend and I have been thinking about what time is, how we deal with it how we try to make it relate to our lives.  There is the same amount of time in each day, each week, month and year, but it is amazing the daily interchange of this concept and what we call relativity.  

“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't

own it, but you can use it. You can't keep

it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it

you can never get it back.

Thanksgiving with a side of Dengue...

Hey Everyone!  Happy Thanksgiving.  Hope everyone has had a great few days off and will be enjoying the weekend with close family and friends in the company of loved ones!!  I had great plans this Thanksgiving to go and spend some time with other volunteers in another department here in Guatemala.  We have not had the ability to see anyone within our training group yet and this was going to be our first chance to do so.  


Monday was a good day, my project specialist and APCD (program director) came to visit as they were passing through.  It was good to meet up with them and they took me out to lunch.  While they were here, I was able to get another house approved and am looking forward to moving this weekend into a new house with a family.  My housing situation is just not the best for me right now and I think that this new house with this family will provide me with a little more social interaction on a daily basis that will not only improve me Spanish level but also just be a better all around situation.  


A weird thing happened that day, I wasn’t feeling too well and did not sleep the night before.  Sunday I remember having a slight headache and not feeling well all around.  I had gone to bed early and tried getting some extra sleep to shake what I had.  Monday came along and nothing much better except every hour the headache got worse, and my joints started hurting.  My muscles started hurting.  It was not good.  I was not ready for the flu.  I through seriously really?!  Why now. Oh well, that night I came home a little early talked to my brother online and told him what I felt and just was miserable.  I had a little dinner and some hot cocoa to make me feel a little better, to remind me a little of home and tried to go to bed by 8pm.  I woke up and took 800mg of Ibuprofen around 9pm and went back to bed.  Then the rest of the night was horrible at best.  I woke up tossed and turned with calofrios (hot and colds) where I was so cold that I was violently shivering and then the next minute I was sweating heavily.  This was a long night. Battling nausea stomach everything…. not to mention I had unbearable pain running through my back, down my spine into my groin joints and legs.  Every muscle in my body was just sore to move and I had not even been doing anything.  At 3am, I thought to myself, we have to do something, and something fast.  I couldn’t make it out of my bed and to the phone so I just laid there and did my best to do deep breathing and to get control of whatever was happening.  I somehow made it back to half consciousness or death feeling and woke up at 7am. 

 I called the Peace Corps doctor and told him my symptoms and told me to get to the hospital as fast as I could.  I did.  It was a nice long windy bus ride down the mountains here to Quezaltenango (Xela) (pronounced Shay-lah) and then as I was somewhat delusional still I got out at the bus terminal.  This was my first time in Xela and I had no clue where the hospital was, or where I was supposed to go, or which direction to head.  I looked around and started walking.  After about a 10-15 min walk I finally asked someone in the store where the hospital was and showed here the address.  She told me the ‘other direction and very far’.  At this point I had begun to feel a nice itchy sensation, burning almost where every article of clothing touched my skin, and I just realized that I had walked in the wrong direction for 15 mins.  GREAT.  I have no idea where I am, and no idea what the hell is wrong with me.  After talking to a few more people and what felt like 10 hours, I finally just got in a cab and had the driver take me to the hospital which was about a mile away. 

It was him...I swear

 I get to the hospital and was seen right away as the doctors are waiting for me and PC has notified them about my coming.  After taking sample of everything and talking to them they tell me they are going to show me a room.  I tell them a room for what?  I tell them I am hoping to get back to my site tonight, I was hoping I would be able to just get some medicine and get back.  Then a quick reply of ‘your spending the night’  SWEET.  I thought.  I was shown my room, had some nurses fish around for some veins for an IV and then just started at the walls.  The doctor came in a few times, and the blur of the day soon turned into night.  The next morning, I talked to the doctor and the test came back all negative and they told me with my symptoms and where I live, I had dengue.  I knew dengue was from mosquitos but that was about it.  It is common and people get it but I didn’t know it was like this.  Hey it could be worse.  I know what most of you are thinking but seriously, it all retrospect, things could be a lot worse.  I am still alive, I still have my limbs. I still can function….for the most part.  


So the day passes and it is about 2pm.  I ask the doctor when I would be able to leave that day.  She gives me a little smile and says, sometime tomorrow….perhaps.  Ha, another night.  I just wanted to go home so badly.  I didnt have anything with me.  Luckily I had a book in my bag that I had forgotten to take out and pounced on it like it was the only book in the world.  At this time, I was going nuts. Just laying in a third world country, and going to spend Thanksgiving, one of only two holidays that the PC gives us as free travel days.  I got to use mine to hang at the hospital with dengue and a side of Salmonella: the double whammy.  They found out I had salmonella too.  Oh man was I in for it.  Yesterday when I woke up….ugggh….I was just miserable.  I was still sore, my lower back at felt like Mike Tyson had given me about 15 rounds of his prime and I was just chilling in the hospital bed.  Ill be honest.  It was a really really low point.  I was depressed.  I didn’t know when I was going to be let out of the hospital.  I did not have anything to do.  I just was a mess, alone, sick in a foreign country which is never a good combination.  


Finally I escaped.  I got back late last night.  After feeling fresh air for the first time in three days and learning how to walk again was a great boost to me mentally.  But after the short 2 hour bus ride home I started feeling horrible again.  I was scared.  But the comforting thing was, when I was walking back into town, people were asking me where I had been.  People were just saying hi.  That they hadn’t seen me in a while, that there, the human interaction of my town here but a little smile on my face.  I got home, talked to my parents on the phone filled them in on what happened and wished them a Happy Thanksgiving.  I took a nice bucket bath, changed my clothes that I had been living in the last three days and went to bed!  This morning I woke up and felt a little better and the headache has lessened considerably but I have read on the Dengue symptoms that it can come back after a day of feeling better.  So I hope hope hope hope, that tomorrow I feel awesome and not anything like I have been feeling.  


I am fine! Seriously I am.  There is no need to worry about me or feel bad for me.  It is just part of what goes on here in the lives of people here on a daily basis.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have had access to medical care where most of the people here in the country do not.  I am lucky to have family and friends to support me through this journey, and I thank you for being a good support group.  I will keep you all updated as these next few days pass.  Happy Thanksgiving!!