Back!

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After a 12 day hiatus, I am back, by "popular" demand!

A lot has happened in the past 12 days, some good things, some awful things and some downright strange things...



It was a very stressful week 2 weeks ago... I had to give a presentation last Friday on physical therapy in the US and what we do. The stressful part was that it had to be in Spanish...I've given speeches and presentations before in front of my classes, but in my classes, I know most of the people. IN this instance, I only knew the people in the front row...everyone else was a complete stranger. Luckily, I wrote down my speech, otherwise, it might have been a disaster. However, I kind of felt like a rockstar because while I was giving the speech, there were a lot (about 6 or so) of camera flashes and people (3 or so) trying to get a good angle of me while giving my presentation. Afterwards, there were a lot of people (like 7) posing for pictures with me. haha



I've felt like a rockstar here a couple of times now. On two separate occasions, the young daughters of my patients, after finding out that I am from the US inexplicably want to come to the clinic during their mother's visit to meet me. The first time it happened, I said hi to the girl, asked her her name and she looked at me with shock and awe that I was talking to her. She was so shy, it was like she was star struck, which I thought was hilarious. And then it happened again with a different patient. Only this one talked to me and gave me a stuffed animal to remember her by (which I thought was cute). She tried to practice her English with me, but she forgot all the words she wanted to practice, and when I didn't understand her spanish, she told me that her uncle tells her she was born "gringa" because she can't pronounce her 'r's. So that's been fun



Then on Friday night after the dreaded presentation, I went out to a karaoke bar with some friends from work. Now karaoke here is way different than it is back home. I don't know if maybe it is just easier to sing in Spanish or if Americans are just generally really bad at singing, but the people who go to karaoke bars here (and there are a lot of karaoke bars here), are actually pretty decent singers. Also, here they just pass a microphone to your table instead of calling you to a stage. Anyway, the girls I went with were really good singers, so I took the side stage there... We had a lot of fun, side note: they don't sell drinks like they do in bars in the US, they just sell bottles or half bottles and a mixer...(20$ for 1/2 bottle of good rum and a bottle of coca cola with real sugar!) I actually knew the words to some of the songs and I somehow managed to anger the sister of a guy there - that's a long story...



Saturday I went to lunch and I could feel that I was starting to catch the cold that everyone else had already caught and the eczema that is normally on my fingers moved to my lips, so it looked like I had some gross mouth disease (which for the record, I don't)...and by Monday it was mostly better. Then Tuesday, I'm not sure what happened, but I got a severe allergic reaction to something (I still don't know what) and my whole face blew up like Will Smith's in Hitch. Oh, it was awful, and so itchy, and it felt so good to scratch it which just made it worse. Wednesday I went to the doctors and they gave me some medications which basically put me to sleep until today. So that's what I've been up to. I still really like it here and I still promise to make a food entry, but all in good time 😊

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