I live in the Tropics

Sometimes I forget, because I do not usually see monkeys or large lizards. I do, though, see coconuts everyday, and turquoise ocean every week, and now finally, I did the ultimate act of tropical life and contracted a tropical disease. I believe I have typhoid. Not a full on fever, the doctor tells me, but rather, what I translate as just a touch of typhoid. For a bit I wasn’t sure if I had typhus or tyhoid, but after some googling it was decided that it would be better to have the sickness contracted from contaminated food than the sickness carried by lice and rats. For the past few days I’ve been stuck on a couch or in bed, being cared for by my dear friends. If you have to have a fancy type of food poisoning, it doesn’t hurt to be in the tropics where the goodies your friends bring over include spicy seafood soup and fresh guava juice, but here I go again bragging about being sick…

In any case, I am much too busy to be sick and have, in fact missed two out of my last three days of work! Today I had my first cup of coffee in a week (coming off a pretty strong addiction just in time to go back to America, land of coffee imported from here) and went to work at eight. I taught two classes of adults, one class of four year olds, and had my last tutoring session with the twelve year-old Korean- quite an exciting day for my first day back and last day teaching. I am feeling pretty good about finishing up here in Aceh, and am happy to report that great things do come in the end. My imminent departure has sparked a slew of get togethers including a trip to a freshwater pool I never knew about (there were many monkeys around…and military personnel swimming laps), and a trip to the beach with some of the roughest waves I’ve seen in awhile. It was an amazingly fun weekend, with amazingly sweet students. There couldn’t have been a better way to spend the days before crashing into my couch.