Miserable!

What a weekend! I can honestly say that for the last three days I have been absolutely miserable. I thought with all the vaccinations and pills Yale and my mom have pumped me with that I would be immune to just about everything, but apparently not the flu. My boss, Bu Endang and her family, had the flu and since I have spent so much time with them I got it too. On Friday my throat started getting scratchy and then on Saturday I had a full on fever. To top it off my legs are completely covered in mosquito bites. I am pretty sure if anyone from the Indonesian Health Department saw me they would deport me. Mom, my legs are even more covered in bites than when I came back from Australia and the pedicurist thought I had a disease. I have been putting on an ungodly amount of mosquito repellent (with DEET!) and have basically been poisoning myself to no avail. AND (if you can believe there is another thing) I burnt my leg on a motorcycle last week when I was picked up by a friend to go to the NGO Paku. It’s a huge welt that will definitely scar (although I am using Placental extract to hopefully avoid that, yuck!) and that really stings when you accidentally get repellent into it. Last night I finally resorted to gassing my room before going to sleep. Good thing I don’t want to have children, LOL.

I am baik (fine) so please don’t anybody freak it’s just been a hard weekend. I didn’t go to Bukatinggi because the family was sick which at the time I was really disappointed because I finally was going to be able to do the tourist thing, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I just would have been sick anyway AND wouldn’t have been able to work on the journal article my RRAD friends and I are working on for the Environmental Hazards Journal due soon. Although doing that with a fever was a joy, let me tell you. No amount of concerta can help a person concentrate while you are scratching your legs, holding your head in your hands, and practically falling asleep from taking Benadryl.

Ok enough complaining. One enjoyable thing happened on Saturday morning before the nightmare began. I went swimming at a fancy hotel with Meertri and Livia. So much fun! They are only just learning to swim so I got to play instructor for a bit and then become a big kid again. At first I couldn’t get them to do much because they were scared of most things so I pulled out the underwater camera. They have never taken photos of themselves underwater so they were so excited they quickly forgot their fear and would go under the water constantly! I taught them how to go under without getting water up their nose and how to stay down longer by blowing out some air. I tried to teach them how to float but that’s hard with people when they are the same size as you. I even taught them how to do an underwater tea party and showed them handstands and somersaults (Tara, I really missed you during all of this. I felt like I did when the two of us used to play in the pool). Then I started teaching them actual things like freestyle and helping Meetri improve her breast stroke. Afterwards we went to KFC for lunch (Indonesians LOVE KFC) and back home so I could start working on the journal article.

The photos are on Facebook. Still can’t upload to the blog site because the files are too large.

Well that’s my update. Have to get back to work now. At 10:00AM we are meeting with our local NGO partner on our Public-Private Partnerships Disaster Risk Reduction Project for West Sumatra. Their name is Kogami and we will be discussing a three day training we are starting tomorrow for the private sector.

Cheers!