What have you taken for granted today?

I'm going to be honest and say I've been compiling the thoughts in this post for a long time. However, recent events have conspired, and this now goes much deeper than it once did. So I apologize in advance, because this could very well be my longest entry yet... and this is coming from someone who doesn't write short blog entries.

PART 1:
So it's just about Thanksgiving time, and I have some reflections and thoughts to share with you.

I'll start with things I'm thankful for:
1) I'm thankful for all my amazing grupo buddies. They've been my best friends for the last 139 days, and this experience would have been so much harder and so much less fun without them.

2) I'm thankful for gallo pinto on Sunday mornings and for all my host mom's amazing desserts.

3) I'm thankful that classes are almost over (and that traveling time is almost here, and that coming home time is almost here).

4) I am thankful for everything I had at home that I don't have here -- be they tangible or intangible. (More on this later).

5) I am thankful for Coke made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (especially when it comes in glass bottles!), Monster Pizza, the casado place, World Cafe, Cyro's, Buffalo's, ice cream from McDonald's (although why it would kill them to give me a McFlurry with chocolate ice cream I still haven't figured out), Pague Menos, Hipermas, and the corner store.

6) I am thankful for my family and their support, because there are a lot of people who aren't as fortunate as I am in the support department.

Now I've got some questions for you.... Namely, what have you taken for granted today? Here's a list of things that I don't think I will ever take for granted again.

1) My bed, with my mattress, my sheets, and my pillow, in my room, with my furniture, my closets, "my" bathroom (even when I have to share it with sister and brother dearest) and decorated/cleaned as I please.

2) My house, with my kitchen, my fridge, my pantry, my dishes, my pots and pans, my kitchen table, and all for me to use as I please.

3) My car/moped, so that I can go anywhere I want, when I want, at my convenience, without waiting for 20 minutes (in the rain/snow) for a bus.

4) As an extension of the car/kitchen: grocery stores -- the ability to go to a grocery store and buy whatever food I feel like cooking, then go home and cook it, whenever I want. Also, choosing what food goes on my plate, how much, and when.

5) 95% of the foreigners I come across in the U.S. speak really good English. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? Don't take it for granted that foreigners in the U.S. should speak good English, because a) living in a foreign country is NOT EASY, and b) there are people (raises hand) in foreign countries who don't speak the native language as well as a lot of the foreigners in the U.S.

6) Sleeping in past 8 (and not feeling guilty about it).

7) Silence.

8) Cheese pizza, grilled food, and my recipes.

9) Paying for something with a $20 bill (and not feeling guilty about it).

10) Time spent with my family and friends.

11) Fall, and the seasons in general.

12) Being able to express myself fully, and not just taking a backseat on everything because I don't know how to say what I want.

So perhaps you got up this morning. You slept in your own bed last night. You decided you wanted cereal for breakfast, but then you changed your mind and decide to go to McDonald's for food. You pay with a $20 bill, and you don't get asked, "Do you have anything smaller?" Instead of waiting on public transportation to arrive (and possibly being jammed on the bus like a sardine in a tin), you get in your own car and drive to wherever you're going. At lunch time, you are faced with the same wonderful series of choices: What do I want to eat? When? Where? If you decide on pizza, you have the option to get just plain ol' cheese. Even if it's bitterly cold out and you hate winter, at least you got to experience the beauty of fall, and at least you will appreciate spring that much more when it gets here. And finally, if someone cuts you off on the road, or your boss makes you mad, or anything like that, you can let loose and tell them exactly what you want. I currently have none of these things, and I will never take them for granted again.

(In case it wasn't clear enough, I've decided that the thing I miss the most in this experience is my independence.)

PART 2
So, here's a new addition to that list. Never take for granted your good health. Any day you don't feel horrible, be glad. I should already have learned this 5 times over by now, but apparently not.

Here's the story, more or less.
On Monday during my last (wohoo! -- except for the final) Evironmental Management class, my stomach was really hurting. That's not something particularly new for me, so I just ignored it. But then I went home after class, and it got worse. I couldn't sleep because of it, and that WAS new for me. But on Tudesday morning, I didn't want to miss my the Cartography lab because I figured I'd have to make it up sometime -- time which I don't really have or feel like making. So, feeling horrible and not having slept, I dragged my sorry self out of bed, into clothes, and caught a taxi to class. I sat through all two hours of class and got the last lab assignment done. I SOOO wanted to go home and sleep (sleep has cured me every other time I've felt bad down here), but I needed to meet with my group for my Periferica bus project. As always, it is possible that I misunderstood their directions, but I am almost certain that they said, "We're going to meet at 9am in the classroom" -- you know, to meet and work at the time of the class in the same place as class because class was cancelled and that was easier. I said I had class until 10, and they said I should just come when I got done. Well, we got done early in my first class. I was outside that room at 9. I was still outside that room at 10. All I wanted was for one of them to show up so that I could hand them a piece of paper with my e-mail on it and go home. But of course, I did not see any of them.

Right around 10, a girl who is in my class came to wait -- I guess she just wanted to make sure that class was actually cancelled. I told her it was, but that I was waiting for my group. She went upstairs to ask at the geography office, and came back down a few minutes later to tell me she'd talked with the professor and we indeed did not have class. I was like, "Okay, but I'm waiting for my group." Well, not five minutes later, my professor comes down to ask me what's up. I told her I was waiting for my group. Then I asked if she had their e-mails (then I could leave and e-mail them when I got home and felt better). She did, up in her office. So I slowly shuffled my way up to her office. I was waiting out in the hallway leaned up against the wall, and some of the other women in the geography department came out and were like, "Are you sick? What do you have? You don't look good." I told them that I was just really tired and my stomach hurt. They took me back to the little eating area in the geography department and gave me hot sugar water (if you think that sounds like a weird remedy, I should tell you about some of the stuff that other people's families have given them when they're sick). At that point, my geography teacher comes back, and my cartography teacher is also there. Now I've got 4 people standing over me, trying to feed me hot sugar-water and figure out what's wrong with me. My geography teacher lives in Zapote, which is right next to Curridabat, so she said she'd take me home. I get in her car (my cartography teacher comes too), but we stop by the on-campus medical facility first to see if they can make room for me. Apparently they can, so I go in there.

I get asked the usual round of doctor questions and do the usual doctor exam stuff. The doctor doesn't know what's wrong with me, but they decide to give me some pain medicine. So I go to the back, and they take a blood sample. (First needle doesn't hit, so they move on to the second elbow). Then the pain medicine is an IV, so that's two more needles -- one for each hand (apparently my veins were "hiding"). Then I kind of go to sleep back there for a while. Get this, though: my cartography teacher stayed with me this whole time. That is SO above and beyond the call of duty, and she is SOO nice. After maybe 2 or 3 hours, I feel a little better but not much, and the doctor at the clinic doesn't know what else to do. So he recommends that I go to the hospital. We call the program directors, and they come to the clinic. Then my cartography teacher leaves.

(Oh, it gets better)

So then, they decide to use an ambulance to take me to the hospital, just because they wanted to have somewhere to hang the IV bag. I usually would have argued against that, so it's not a good sign that I didn't even have the energy to tell them no. Once I get to the hospital, I am subjected to two more needles (they have to re-do the IV in the other hand because the one I already had "wasn't big enough", and one for more blood testing), ultrasound, X-rays, and some sort of MRI scan or something. They determined that my intestines are inflamed and infected, but THANKFULLY not ruptured. So now I'm being pumped full of antibioitics, pain killers, and anti-inflammatories. I also get periodic does of oral antibioitics. The last dose the brought me was accompanied by a straw, just in case I wanted to savor its flavor I guess. (I don't.) I'm going to pretend that this is good practice for taking shots. I'm also on a liquid diet. Last night I got some nasty chicken broth an apple juice. Today I've had tea, and another helping of nasty chicken broth and apple juice. I'm going to pretend that this is good because when I go to Panama, at least I'm going to look skinnier in my bathing suit. I've also gotten needle #7, since they had to take blood again this morning. So that brings the total to: Left elbow 1, right elbow 3 right hand 1, left hand 2. Usually needles don't bother me, but 7? 7 bothers me.

I don't know when I get out of here. I would LOVE to be out in time to go the Thanksgiving dinner we're having, but I'm not hopeful. So, whatever you're thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful that you're not in a hospital enjoying a liquid diet of bad chicken broth and apple juice, periodically interspersed with doses of very nasty liquid antibiotics.

I know this isn't going to get me out of my cartography test (I'll just take it later) but I'm holding out hope for either an easier assignment than the Periferica one, or just getting out of it all together. Although I do kind of need something to help my grade in that class. Well, we'll see.