What Is An Expat?

Ok, so it’s probably not a fascinating thing to write about, and in fact that’s not what I’m going to write about. So there. I’ll have a number 7 plain with cheese, please.

I’ve been a little beatdown the past couple of days. Real tired, and I am going to lay it at a little disease I was exposed to that I call cowpox. I guess it’s better than having smallpox, though. 3 days ago I actually had a headache. Fairly unusual for me. I just dragged through the whole day from about 11ish AM on. Tired and weak, I barely made it. Hit the cot, fast asleep by 8PM. Get up in the morning at 6ish to do the shower run. Typical early morning slowness to move. Standing in the shower, not feeling so good, and SUDDENLY IT’S A LIGHTSHOW! THAT’S RIGHT KIDS, I MEAN GREEN AND RED AND ORANGE! WHAT’S THAT GODDAM BUZZING NOISE? OOH PRETTY LIGHTS! Mr Sensible had the foresight to grab one of the cross bars so I did not fall. Hey, important to breathe! Must…not…pass out…in shower! (Never would live that down, so ain’t no way in hell it can be allowed to happen.) I’m kinda wondering how I am going to make this, if I am going to recover enough to rinse my all wet but only half clean body off, towel down in perfunctory fashion, get dressed and brave the trip back to the tent. I feel terrible, but in what exact way I am not sure. I am more than willing to projectile spew something from somewhere if it will help, but I don’t. Laying down is slightly out of the question at the moment, though it will certainly rank first if I make it to the tent! After a blind twenty minutes — so it seems, but it wasn’t even 10 at the outside — my sight returns. I’m shaky as hell, but I may have it beat in the short term. I wobble out, brush a towel (mine) against me a couple of times and throw my clothes on. After a mercifully short walk that stretches out far too long, like some movie where they zoom in on something while changing the field of view (I forget what this is called, and my description is off from the actual event but it’s close enough) I finally make it to the safety of Tent Sweet Tent.

I collapse onto my cot. I bum a couple of powerbars and some water from Ernie, who will make someone an excellent mom some day. It’s obvious I am not going to make chow, and I would not even try if I could. I pass out for another three hours or so. Eventually I get dressed and go about my day. I walk around in someone else’s body, given my total lack of grace and sloppy walking. Oh wait, that’s normally true, but it was worse than usual.

You’d think that given that beginning I’d sit in the office all day and do about nothing, right? Well as it turns out I have the busiest day I recall having in quite some time, and 3 hours less than usual to do it all in. I must have traversed the entire camp 10 times. Jeez.

…but I’m feeling much better now…

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2003 at 2:03 pm by Robert and is filed under Camp Life, Uzbekistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.