When I said I wanted an adventure...

... I didn't mean for it to involve 8 days of food poisoning and a volcano.

For those of you not following on Facebook, I fell ill almost immediately upon my arrival in Shimla. I know that it was beautiful there, mostly from Nathan's pictures (poor thing was only there a day before he got sick too) and the view from our hotel room, but most of it has been left up to my imagination. I recovered just enough to make it down the mountain, only for the bug to kick in again full force. 2 doctors and a hospital trip later, I am happy to report that I am almost completely back to normal.

Then this volcano thing happened. I was grateful for it at first, since I really wasn't fit to fly out on Friday. But then I found out that the earliest I could rebook my flight was the 30th of April, and even then there are no guarantees that the volcano will have stopped by then. Clearly, a Plan B was needed.

Plan B (which is now Plan A) involves flying to Madrid on Friday. I get to stop in Jordan, which would be exciting if I could actually leave the airport. But anyhow, yay, Madrid. The plan from there was to take the train to London (via Paris)... problem being that European rail is stupid and backwards and does not do e-ticketing. I need a paper ticket, and it's kind of difficult to get my grubby little hands on one of those all the way from Delhi.

So where does that leave me? I'm not sure yet. I'm sure somehow I'll make it back to London, and in the meantime I get a bonus holiday in Spain. And an extra week in India to hang out with my man and do some of the things I couldn't do while I was sick. And I lost 12 pounds. So I suppose life could be worse.

Editorial note: I do not endorse the food poisoning diet.

Sicko

The only real downside so far to living in London is that I've been sick pretty much non-stop since I got here. I've heard that it's normal; being on a new continent means the germs play a whole different kind of ballgame. Doesn't make it any more fun, though.

I wound up calling in sick this morning... I was just so totally out of it, I knew I wouldn't be able to function properly even if I managed to get through (what seemed like) an epic journey to get there. Four hours of sleep later, I'm feeling much better but also totally guilty.

I'm forming a pretty tight bond with my 1-1 student (henceforth known as S) and I hate that I'm not there for her today. It's worse than feeling ill. I think next time, I will have to be on my deathbed before I call in.

Lesson learned.

The Black Death

The Plague has found me again. It struck in the middle of the night. But I still felt certain, until 6:30 this morning, that I'd be going to work. So much for that. Also, so much for my very firm declaration that I would make it to capoeira tonight, come hell or high water.

Now I need to decide if I'll be going in tomorrow. I'm not sure I can make that kind of decision. Too much pressure. Too much uncertainty.

People, events, and ideas

They say that small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas. I like to think of myself as having a great mind (or at least an above average mind), and yet lately I've been trapped in writing about events. I have ideas brewing, but I can't get them out. Why is that, I wonder?

As an update to yesterday's post, I decided to leave the work thing up to fate. If I had gotten a call this morning, I would have gone in. But since I didn't, I kept right on sleeping (rather than option B, which would have been for me to call them at 7 am and thus raise my chances of getting work). The ColdFX and various medications I'm taking seem to be doing their job, though. As a rule, I never take medication -- it says a lot about my desire to be working that I rushed out to get some last night. Anyway, I'm feeling a lot better and should be totally fine by tomorrow. Which is great, 'cause I'm slated to go back to the psychiatric hospital school.

This little piggy went to market...

Well, it's official... I'm sick. Probably with the flu. THIS IS BAD!!! I need to work as much as possible this week, since next week we're off with half term break.

And even though I've been feeling overconfident since this whole swine flu thing came about, now I can't stop thinking: what if I have swine flu and it kills me? Silly, I know. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

Anyway, what do you do when you're desperate for cash but you're sick with the flu? I could probably suck it up and get through the day(s) but... I work with kids. At lots of different schools. I'd feel awful if I infected half the city.