Stronger

The last month has been one of those times that make you stronger. The first two weeks of November were a harrowing adventure that will be made into a heartwarming buddy movie some day: “Me and My Stomach Fungus.” We began as enemies, Mr. Fungus (the nefarious microorganism we shall visualize as a purple mushroom with a big animated happy smiley face for the sake of positive thinking), and then as time slowly passed we gained a mutual respect. I manipulated it with choice tidbits of juice and food, starved it occasionally for days at a time -- I visibly dropped weight, I call that a win for my side – and it struck me down with chronic fatigue and dizziness that kept me alternating between the bed and the privy for a week and then literally stumble through my classes for another week. At that point, we reach the happy ending of our buddy movie when we finally reached a harmonious co-living understanding: I got anti-fungal pills and decisively destroyed it until no symptoms or evidence remained. Curtain closed.

As soon as I was no longer a semi-permanent resident of the outhouse, another issue came to a front: the need to immediately leave my host family. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a house yet so I’m still here hoping that my current host family doesn’t learn that I searching around: if they find out they’ll kick me out before I have a place to go. It’s a worrisome situation that I’m trying to not think about by watching the entirety of Buffy Season 1-7 in an almost continuous marathon (I’m a dork, you all know this) and reading Bill Bryson’s, “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” which basically says that we’re all going to unexpectedly die any second by unpredictable natural disasters. Happy stuff.

Exciting news: if any of you are bored and have a minute, then you can do your part to make the world a better place. And you don’t need to sign away two years of your life to teach in developing countries. All you have to do is go to this website: http://www.ploofle.com/petition/ and then use the “contact my representative” link to write to Congress telling them to give PC more money. And you don’t even have to write anything! The letter drive begins December 1 and ends December 15, so do your clicking now while you’re thinking about it.