Diga Ahhhhh

After 5 months of (almost) perfect health in Chile, I can now officially say that I have been sick in a foreign country; navigated my way through Chilean laboratories, a lime-green doctor's office and a crappy 24-hour clinic;  been pricked by Chilean needles and peed in Chilean cups (well ok, just one of those).  Although none of these things were necessarily on my South America bucket list, I have crossed them all off nonetheless and come out on the other side, relatively  unscathed.

It all started about three weeks ago when I suddenly felt nauseous and lightheaded in the middle of one of my classes and had to leave work early.  When I got home, I promptly went to bed and knocked out for 16 hours.  In the morning I felt a little out of it, but overall okay.  For the most part I was functioning alright at that point although I had a few more weird dizzy spells over the next few days. Then on Saturday, when I was walking home from work, I started to get a pain in my right side that felt like a cramp from running.  After a few hours, it went away and I forgot about it until it came back with a vengeance Tuesday morning at 4 am.  I woke up freezing with an extremely intense pain on my right side.  I spent almost the whole next day in bed and finally caved and went to urgent care the day after that.  A few hours and 20 thousand pesos later, I had a prescription for pain medication and an appointment for an echogram a week later.

Luckily my boss was not too stoked about the idea of me waiting a week to know what was going on and immediately made me an appointment with his doctor.  I went the next day and was recommended for 8 diagnostic tests.  48 hours later I had the results to all of them (drum roll please).  Turns out it was salmonella, e. coli AND a kidney infection.  The dynamic trio had me completely out of commission for about a week total but now I'm pretty much back in action.  I finished up with my cocktail of antibiotics and alphabet soup (pictured above) on Monday and tomorrow I'll retake the e. coli test.  Once I'm sure all of the bacteria is gone, I can finally get back in the water after 3 weeks of not surfing. 

The recovery process has been kind of lengthy but after a few days of antibiotics, pain killers and fever reducers, I started to feel much better and went back to work.  In the midst of my recovery, Jeff and I made a quick trip up to Arica/Tacna to renew our tourist visas last weekend.  Like I've said before, Tacna is nothing to write home about but Jeff was excited to get his first taste of Peru (in the form of fast food pizza and tocino del cielo no less) and spend some more time in Arica.  We had a nice time but I'm hoping my next border hopping mission will be something new and a little more exciting.
 

 

Amor en el País de las Maravillas

Well hello there.  Long time, no blog (per usual).  I guess I should start with the most exciting news...Jeff (pictured above) finally made it to Chile, yay!  He got here on May 27th and just passed his one-month-a-versary in Iquique a few days ago.  Since he arrived, he's been keeping busy learning Spanish, meeting new people, surfing and eating all the churros in Iquique.

He got his first chance to see Arica a few weeks ago when we bussed up with our two roommates and a couple other friends.  The original idea was to do a border hop so I could renew my visa but Jeff really liked Arica and we didn't want to rush things so we just opted to spend some extra time there and do another trip in a couple of weeks.  We checked out a few bars on Saturday night, and went to the Maui and Sons World Star Tour at El Gringo (although we woke up late and really only caught the last few waves and the award ceremony) on Sunday.  The runner-up ended up being a 16-year-old kid from the North Shore, which was pretty cool.  We ended the trip with one of Schopdog's famous beer rockets and hopped back on the bus around 9:30 pm for a 2:30 am arrival in Iquique. 

Back on the home-front, Iquique life hasn't changed all that much.  Kate and I are still working nights at the same English Institute (although she'll be gone for the whole month of July...wahhhh!).  Ruby just got an awesome new job this month so she's been pretty busy as of late.  The three of us have a few private students, which is great (although it can be a little unreliable at times).

So far no more news on future travel plans or when this Chilean adventure is coming to an end but I will definitely have a better idea of both of those things by the end of July (details to come).  In the meantime, hope all is well with all of you lovely friends and family members that care enough to keep tabs on my little blog. Que estén bien.  ¡Cuídate! ¡Chaoooooooo!