What an awful weekend (and it is only Saturday)

The newness of Lima has been quickly wearing off and replaced by an increasing bout of homesickness so having a four day weekend and literally having already spent Thursday in my room, I decided that I had to go out with some people from the group to a beach that is about an hour away. I woke up Friday morning at six a.m. and my stomach was really bothering me. By nine a.m. I felt better and I didn't want to feel like I was giving up my weekend so I decided to still go to the beach. Everything was fine, I felt healthy enough and was running around on the beach chasing gulls and climbing mountains and I was really hungry so I ate some of the fruit that I brought with me (mango, banana, and an apple) and then had a plate of shrimpt fried rice. By the time we left the beach around six, I was still feeling fine. We went to someone's friend's house to drop off all of our bags so that we wouldn't have to carry all our stuff around when we went out that night. We drop everything off and headed over to the main street of Asia (the beach city) to walk around and kill time before going to the clubs around eleven. After walking around for a little bit, I start to feel increasingly more sick and feeling like my stomach had swelled to twice its side. So I found a restroom, spent some time in there, left the restroom to talk to the people I was with, went back to the restroom, did some more business, vomitted, talked to friends, went to the restroom, talk to friends, and went to the restroom. Finally, we found Brenda (the assistant director for the study abroad program here, who is peruvian and who is with here friends in Asia because one of them has a house there). She asked how I was and then told me that I should go to the clinic which is about two blocks outside of the mall place that we were and wait there whiel everyone went out to clubs. I was fine with going there and just sitting while everyone has fun because no one likes a party pooper, but a friend of mine who had already done a lot to make sure that I was able to get the medicine I needed, insisted on coming with me. So she and another girl accompanied me to the clinic. We walked out of the mall and started walking down the street the way that Brenda told us to go only to see that there was nothing there and then we asked some locals where the clinic was and they said that it was right by Wong (a supermarket) in the mall that we were just in. So we go back through the mall and actually find the clinic. I didn't bring my insurance card or my credit card so the friend who had been helping me so much already (Levy), put it on her credit card. The clinic was empty so a doctor saw me right away and gave my an injection of some type of electrolyte solution. Then they told me to drink this other electrolyte stuff, but nothing was staying down so I requested an IV and they hooked me up. I was able to fall asleep and woke up a couple of times to see that Lief and Kristin were coming to see how I was. I was out of it and still really dehydrated so I was going in and out of sleep while they were there. They left but Levy and my other friend who came to the clinic with me (Ilina) still stayed there with me waiting in the lobby. I managed to sleep for awhile longer and everytime I woke up I had to use the restroom. A weird phenomena that I still don't understand is that many peruvians do not have seats on their toilets. At one point there was clearly a seat because the hinges still remain but no seat. So the restroom at the toilet didn't a seat so you could imagine how uncomfortable that was. We all wanted to just get back to Lima, but everyone at the hospital told us that we should wait until sun rise because it was too dangerous and that the girls would be robbed and raped so we waited until sun rise. Around six a.m. I was awoken by the sounds of many more people in the clinic- a woman crying out to the doctor "Socorranlo!" (Help him!)- him being her son who I later heard had been punched in the eye and probably had some skull damage. There were a lot of people waiting in the lobby when I got up to use the bathroom for the thirtieth time. The IV helped a lot but I still felt so thirsty and that weird drink that they were giving me wasn't helping but I followed their directions to take sip by sip. We finally left the clinic around seven and got on a bus going back to Lima right away. We weren't able to go back to the friend's house to get our stuff and we weren't even sure if the people were at the house so we decided to leave all of our belongings hoping that someone would pick it up for us. I made it through the ride without any problems and got to my house around 8:30. The cleaning lady was there and was questioning me about why I didn't call and all this other stuff, and the entire time I was thinking, "I don't care, stop bothering me." I went up to my room and laid down asleep. A little while later the cleaning lady wakes me up and I thought that she just was going to tidy up my room a little, but she tells me that my host family's aunt (who I have met before and is really nice so it wasn't that distant of a person to come talk to me) wanted to talk to me. I gave them this look that said, "Are you kidding me! Let me sleep. What are you going to do to help me?" So they talked to me for awhile saying that I should have called them to tell them where I was, I told them I was sorry and I would next time. They left and I got to sleep some more. Them my host mom knocked on my door and told me that Kristina was on the phone and she needed to talk to me. So I talked to Kristina and she asked me to call Michele (the Program director) here because she really needed to talk to her about some things and tell her that she was pissed off at Brenda (which seemed pretty ubiquitous among our group over this past night). So as I was talking to Kristina I see that my actual mom sent me an email titled: Grandpa. I knew that the news was going to be bad so I got off the phone as quickly as possible with Kristina and called Michele to ask her to call Kristina.

With all that out of the way, I was willing to read what I was sure to be bad news. My grandpa was diagnosed with colon cancer and just had his surgery yesterday. My mom explained that the doctors found that the cancer was way larger and affected a lot more areas. They did the surgery and weren't able to repair his colon completely. According to the letter, my grandpa looked good after surgery but that he would have to do chemotherapy when he was strong enough. My grandpa is nearly eighty years old so his time is coming soon, which is something that we all expect but the thing that he can't accept the most. I hope I am able to see him before that time though.

My brother also leaves for Afghanistan in a few days so that is going to be pretty hard too. I guess when it rains it pours. I pray for both of their health and safety. Emotional breakdown status: impending.