Dead Week; Updates and Hate Crimes

Dead Week.

(22-07-10)

This week was the last of the term, and today specifically was the last day for any actual work. That in combination with horrible internet and a relapse of rather debilitating stomach sickness has kept me from posting in awhile. Apologies to all.

Updates on me. I'm sick, but I just recently went to the doctor who thinks that because of the short time between basically identical symptoms that I might have a more serious infection that just kinda laid low after the first beat-down provided by the antibiotics. I have complaining to do that will go into more detail about all this sickness business later. As for my foot I believe that it is much better. The pain with walking has stopped, the cut is (finally) starting to close, and I believe that the infection has gone away as well. In hindsight I should have gone to the doctor when I first cut it open, I can only assume I would have needed stitches or some butterfly alternative. Other than those two things my health has been relatively stable (in a state of moderately good, but not actually good) for about a week now. The stomach issues only got serious two days ago.

Speaking of two days ago (man that was a solid segue, go me) I went to a Lucha Libre show/fight/dance and actually enjoyed myself immensely. Lucha Libre is a lot like WWE only with masks and a lot more impressive feats of acrobatics and much less talking and macho challenging (instead of talking they just slap each other's chests...).

I started off the evening with a bad decision, which later turned into a pleasant evening with a show, than morphed into a horrible night of frantically running through the streets. My initial bad decision was to believe the map and think “oh, the arena is not that far” and end up walking for well over an hour (an hour to get to the area and another half asking directions from people who I kinda doubt actually live here due to their lack of knowledge of the whereabouts of such a “well known” building in Queretaro). An additional mistake to thinking the map was going to tell me an accurate distance was thinking that the map might, perhaps maybe, use the correct name of the street... I was tired, hot, hungry, and a little irritated at the amount of time I'd spent lost so close to my destination, but I had made it and that was good enough. I entered, found my seat and waited for the match to begin.

At first when I went I didn't know what to expect, but I thought there actually might be real wrestling. I was WAY wrong, but the show turned out to be very good regardless. Many of the moves are based, extremely loosely, on actual techniques seen in jujitsu or wrestling, only with all the aspects that might make it hurt somebody taken out. There were a lot of cool flips and jumps off the ropes (they use a boxing ring) and some comedy mixed in. It was completely worth the $12, but I honestly think that I'm set for life. If I never return to a Lucha Libre match, not a tear will be shed.

Immediately after the lucha, I realized that my stomach had indeed taken a turn for the worse, and I needed to get home immediately. The unfortunate thing about that was the sheer number of people and the small exit (in retrospect that was probably a serious fire hazard...). We took a long time getting out of the building, and once out had to wade through crowds of people to get to the street, to walk to the bigger street to try and catch a cab. We finally managed to flag down a cab and the four of us piled in. It was myself, another guy and two ladies. Of course we went to the furthest lady's house first, to make sure she got home safe, then we headed to the second lady's home from where I proceeded to run home. Now when I say run, I don't mean walked in a manner that was speedy, I mean I literally ran at my 1500 pace all the way to my home (because of the lay out of streets it probably would have taken longer to have the cab take me). When I arrived I entered with half quiet caution (it was mid-night at this point) and half with desperation. This experience, I'm happy to say, ended without a mess. However it was entirely too close to disaster.

Like I've said earlier, however, the sickness thing is being taken care of. The other good news is that I have officially finished classes for the first term. The process of finishing the term was rather hellish though... (see: title)

So, this week the professors really piled on the work. Assignments, studying, reading, preparing for presentations, and just a lot of general learning things. This is pretty normal for the college student life, which I am currently leading, however this week was particularly rough, and last night especially. On Tuesday night I finished my essay that was due today, and yesterday I asked for help from my Papa here to edit it. We sat down and went over the three and a half pages I had completed. We talked about every little grammatical issue, word choice, sentence structure, and a lot of the ideas and content of the paper. The whole process took probably two hours, and that was just for editing, not to mention the actual rewriting. This was pretty late in the evening already because my studying had been interrupted by sickness, a short siesta (necessary due to the extreme discomfort I was dealing with from the sickness (it's kinda like the flu in that your whole body hurts and moving or sitting up for more than 20 seconds is painful)), and a trip to the doctors office. So we spent two hours editing my paper, then I still had to prepare for two tests, a presentation, and also have an interview to include with my essay. Having only accomplished the essay thoroughly (all other tasks haphazardly) I finally got to bed a little before 2:00 in the morning. This is pretty bad when I normally have to get up at 6:30, however this morning I needed to go to a laboratory to have blood drawn and tested to see if I actually have Salmonella. Crawling out of bed at 5:40 this morning wasn't actually too difficult, but staying awake during class and trying to think during my presentation (which was BAD) was very hard. As for the blood test, I find out at 5:00 today, so that'll be kinda cool. I've never had salmonella before, and if they know what it is it's more likely they can fix it more completely than last time. Also, since I'm typing this on a word document because we don't have internet right now, I might post the results in this very blog! Also that reminds me of another aspect that made last night extremely difficult for studying and such. The internet here is basically down. It's kinda like an infant, occasionally you can get it to do what you want it to, but a lot of the time it just sorta acts up or does it's own thing completely, and the majority of the time its not functioning at all (I equate this to sleeping).

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Updates and Hate Crimes

This morning I found out two important things regarding my health for the rest of my stay. The first is that I will have to take antibiotics twice a day and carefully monitor my diet for the next two weeks because of the infections (Yeah, that's an intentional -s plural marker), and that bus drivers can get really angry when you try to use your legitimate discount...

The two infections I have are the two different kinds of Salmonella (according to my Papa here who I'm pretty sure knows everything...) One is Typhoid (tifoidea en espanol) and the other one I only know in spanish: Proteus. Needless to say I'm rather ill right now, but it doesn't stop me from functioning relatively normally, which is lucky. Sometime my stomach hurts a lot, and I'm still having bathroom related issues, but for the most part I think it's just gonna get better from here.

As for the hate crime, I got on the bus this morning and gave the bus driver the correct change and showed him my student ID. He went on to say that because it is vacation (for the locals, yes) that my card doesn't work. Not only is that not true for students during vacation, but I also don't have vacation because I have classes now. He didn't except this answer, gave me my money and asked me to get off. I said of course but that I needed his name (so that I could call his supervisor later) he gave me his name (after some coercing) and then asked me to get off the bus again. I should him the paper I was using to write down the name and asked if it was correct, he then shoved me toward the stairs. I, with my limited Spanish and generally pacifistic ways, pointed at him ferociously and said in my most bad-dog voice: “No!” Then asked him again to confirm his name. He did and I thanked him, stepped off the bus, and flipped him off. As the bus drove off I turned my head to watch it go, and in the corner of my eye noticed that everyone at the bus stop was looking at me half nervous half curious. I threw out my disarming smile and wished them all a good morning. On my way home I had another incident of the same variety but of a different degree completely (which is fortunate, getting pushed twice in one day I might have punched him). As I got on the bus to come home, I gave the guy 5 pesos for a 3.50 student fare (the norm is 6:50), and showed him my credentials. He took my five with an obviously bitter look on his face and slammed the 1:50 into my hand, and did exactly the same thing to the another student in my group immediately behind me. I really don't get why this is such a big deal to these bus-drivers. It's not like our fare pays their salary and by being a student I'm actively taking the food from the mouths of his children! I suppose that this begs the question, why is the fare not fair?

That's the gist of what's been going on with me and I'll do my best to update you again soon.

Much love,

-Connor