#2

"You will be sick all the time."

Counting backwards to the top, here are the worst (best) moments:

5. Gulnara's party "For the Americans".  Now, don't nitpick my definition of sick.  I told them I should have stopped drinking roughly 5 shots beforehand.  For those of you who know my drinking (in)capabilities, let the magnitude of that sink in.  The upshot?  I threw up out my bedroom window, the chickens ate it, and I didn't walk for a day.

4. Marshutka rides.  I never know where to put this "sickness", but it makes the list for sure.  At least I know I'm not alone.  The sight of a pulled-over marsh for a sick person is one we all know well here.  Sometimes I travel back and forth to Batumi every day for a few days straight and then the nausea just sort of follows me like a haze. 

3. That time I got food poisoning at site visit (when I visited my village for the first time).  Not the last time I'll have food poisoning in Georgia, but surprisingly it was the first.  It makes the list for the intense embarrassment that I felt.  I was so sick that I had to end my welcome dinner in Batumi and make my new host family take me home.  Everybody was all freaked out.  Then I went back to training, still sick.  Bad news all around. 

2. I made it through the first HALF of winter without getting sick.  I was, like, the SuperKali of Georgia.  Until I came back to my host family after break and walked right into a sea of people who cough and don't cover their mouths.  Because being cold makes you sick.  And then it began.  And continued.  And never ended.  For months.  And months.  And after a course of antibiotics and a slew of cough medicine, it persisted.  Maybe I was the cough and the cough was me and there was no separating us.  Ever.  And then I had to get my chest x-rayed in Tbilisi.  After which, it cleared up in a matter of days with no extra medicine.  Wtf?  Magical x-rays?

1. Because it's a law for me in Georgia that I always get the sickest when I have to travel long distances, it makes sense that #1 happened right before I left to go halfway across the country to job shadow another volunteer.  This was the monster disease, The Big One, the disease to cough and fever all other diseases away.  I remember feeling so faint and so determined not to complain that the entire end of the first day shadowing turned into just a series of moments where I was focused on staying upright and walking forward.  Then I gave that disease to like 10 other volunteers.  Because I should have stayed home.  Sorry guys!

My rating for this platitude? 7.  I can't give it a 10.  For as sick as I've been, it doesn't amount to the horror stories I've heard from other people (and my God the pictures Africa volunteers post of their parasites ...).  Guess I'll remember to take my vitamin today ....