Update, or Why pneumonia makes me not post.

So another week without a picture update. Here’s why:

I went to the south for my friend Sarah’s town patronales festival which like all Dominican festivals is Dominican for LOUD and it certainly was. There were something like a dozen of us, yes a dozen gringos in this small southern town during their patron saint festival which was just a bit surreal for some folks I’m sure. I showed up on my own after a 5 hour guagua ride in the dark, getting dropped off at the town park which is also the center of the festivities. Me, two large bags for the weekend, in the middle of a town I don’t know and am not even sure where I am, and no one is picking up their phones at the house. This is the way a horror movie starts, right?

But it was okay they were just busy cooking breakfast for dinner (french toast and eggs!) and so I showed up and then the party started. We went out just a bit that night and had fun, woke up the next day and went EVEN FURTHER INTO THE SOUTHERN HINTERLANDS to visit another volunteer, Nora, who lives in this cute-ass town on the edge of the Lago Enriquillo, this enormous Manhattan-sized lower-than-sea-level salt lake in the DR. It was a blast as well, and then Sarah and Justin and I had to catch a ride back to the original town.

That’s when the trouble started.

We bought some lemonade and an empanada from a vendor who was not only deaf but spoke a bit of english and told me that I looked latino, which is par for the course with my ethnicity. Then we were picked up by a guagua which started going so slow on the highway… slower… slower… eventually I was thinking that sheesh, I could walk faster than this.

Oh how I wish I hadn’t said that.

The guagua stops and I’m like “uhhhh I think we ran out of gas” so we three get out and stand around for a bit while the driver inspects the gas tank (propane, mind you). Yep, he tells us, it tricked him into thinking that it had more gas. We’re totally without gas.

That’s nice. Guess we should start walking then.

So there we are, three little maids walking the highway on the Lago Enriquillo. We figure someone will show up at some point, right? We can just hitch a ride. Well a kilometer later and no one has showed up. I’m pretty sure THIS is really how a horror movie starts… “three gringos trapped around the Lago… in the afternoon… only one makes it back!” and yes as the virgin it would have been me that survived.

Anyway. After passing a pile of burning trash we get a ride which is great. Then we get back, cook some food, and start hanging out again. We leave the house and they have carnival rides at the park now, which only looked terrifyingly dangerous by US standards (so PEREFCTLY ACCEPTABLE by Dominican standards) and so Sarah and I (and her new kitten) took a ride while Justin, Nora and her puppy Fifa took a ride on it as well. Basically it was Friends + Pets on the Ferris Wheel. The last picture I took before my camera battery died was of them on the Ferris Wheel.

Afterward we danced and ate chimis and had a good time. Then I woke up and had to head back home.

I should mention at this point that I had had a head cold the past week, and was starting to get a cough. I had been prescribed antibiotics already but they weren’t working. Never a good sign for me.

Back in my site by Monday, and by the time I went into work on Tuesday I was having a bit of trouble breathing. The cough was horrible and nonstop. I called the Peace Corps doctors and they told me to come in as soon as possible. So BACK on the guaguas for another 4 hours to get to the capital. Then about an hour into the ride I remembered that I forgot my camera charger, so no pictures for me. At the capital one of the doctors looks at me and says “why are you breathing like that” to which I respond “because I can’t take deep breaths or else I cough like crazy.” Oops, I guess that means I’m in pretty bad shape.

So I get sent off for blood samples and a chest x-ray, and am told that I’ll be spending a few days in the capital. They put me on cough medicine, a weird disk inhalor, and some more antibiotics. I spend a few days in an air-conditioned hostel room flipping channels on the TV. I recover (mostly) and end up back in my site by Friday, right after the doctor tells me that it looks like I have viral pneumonia.

So as you can imagine, I’m taking it easy right now, and haven’t had a chance to charge my camera battery. So it looks like I’ll just have to make up for it by posting lots of pictures of my time in the south when I get around to it.

Bueno. That was a lot to write. I’ll post the pictures tomorrow when I get the chance.