don´t drink the water.

Alright, sup bizzos. i know it´s been awhile, i´m sure you´re all dying of boredom with nothing else to read. just kidding. there´s been a lot happening on this side of the equator (including my first peruvian wedding, the carrot party, a highway robbery, and getting cellphones) but their updates will have to wait. why do you ask? Because I would rather fill you in on my first bacterial infection. Yes. You may not like it, but I have to get the word out there how lucky you all are that have never come across a little microbe that can wreck such intense havoc on your body. So Saturday morning was fine. I went the Universidad, played with guinea pigs and felt fine. Saturday night/ Sunday morning was still cool while I experienced my first Peruvian nuptials (which included a lot of Huayno (traditional whiney sounding mucis) and passing a bottle of beer with a grandma with a baby strapped to her back). Even at the carrot party on Sunday night I was fine. It was Monday morning when I woke up that things started to feel iffy. What may have tipped me off was when my kidney made some weird growling noise that I had never heard before. I ate my breakfast apprehensively. I told my host sister I felt like going into class an hour late and thank the Good Lord I did. Around nine o´clock, disaster STRUCK.

I´m not talking about accidentally having a little milk without taking my lactaid pills. It was like I had personally pissed off the God of toilets and therefore he had it out that I would spend my entire Monday morning paying homage to him. We´ll put it this way, I ran my family out of water. That wasn´t even the worst part. The worst was the abdominal pain. It felt like someone was taking a spoon and trying to carve out my stomach/intestines. Holy hell. I called the Peace Corps around lunch and was put on an antibotic called Ciprofalxin (not sure on spelling, Latta this is where you could correct me with your Pharmacy school knowledge). The bathroom party continued all day and I didn´t realize until that night how dehydrated I had become. It was a little freaky. HOWEVER, 30 hours later I am feeling much better. I am still having my bouts, but I actually managed to haul myself out of bed and go to the training center. Not for learning though. I heard I got a package and that was the only thing I was focused on getting today. When I finally got to the post office, I tore open my package and it was from Maggie!!! (For all of you who aren´t familiar with my friends from school, Maggie is a great one. Other friends include Jules, Col, Latta, Pfeff, Zog and Kendall plus many others). She ha d sent me an US Weekly, People Style Watch, Lucky, the new catalogs from Free People, J. Crew, Anthro, a cd, and a hilarious card. This made my day. While nursing a Gatorade, I read about John and Kate Plus 8, and everything else that I could totally live without down here but choose not to. So Mags, thanks a ton.

I really hope I am on the road to recovery though because tomorrow we (the Health program) are leaving for our field-based training tomorrow up in Ancash. It´s about 8 hours away up in the sierra where we will be building latrines and doing other cool stuff. However, it´s pretty cold, out in the wilderness and I would just like to be at an optimal health level before we get there. I´ll be out of touch until Sunday afternoon, so sorry for not responding to any of my emails (Uncle Penn, Mags, Rae, Dad, and Pfeff) in a timely fashion. I literally only had time to write this guy. I hope it all goes well!!!