Typical day and getting sick

Here’s a quick rundown of my day today, Wednesday, November 4^th:

1. 1. 1. Wake up. Today I actually arrived in Lima from Arequipa on a 16.5 hour bus ride. Busing is the easiest and cheapest means of travel here, and there are some luxury companies that rival (and sometimes surpass) the quality of an airplane. Still, 16 hours on a bus is difficult no matter how far your seat reclines. Tired, cranky, and—be to totally honest—pretty dirty, I left the bus stop as quickly as I could and rushed home via secure taxi. I dumped my things on my floor, and all but ran to the shower.
      2. Breakfast. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s eleven students living in my house right now. Some days we have bagged sandwiches, other days we have a platter of bread and fruit. Today was a bread/fruit day. The best part of breakfast is talking with Clara, the housekeeper. Clara is ma’ girl. She laughs at all my jokes and antics, and loves when I have a long story to tell. Today, I told her about my recent trip and all the time I spent on buses. Clara lives in Callao, which is just north of Lima and a whooping two hours away during rush hour. Talking with Clara provides me with so much insight into Peruvian culture. She’ll tell me how she’s cooking the day’s lunch, or why a Peruvian classmate may have been acting a certain way. Clara doesn’t speak English, so a lot of the time our conversations resemble charades. But Clara’s patient with me, and always ready to talk.
      3. Leave for School. I leave the house and walk to the bus stop a few blocks away, passing street vendors and money changers. The bus stop can be pretty crazy with different buses and combis swerving in and out. Each bus has someone collecting the tariffs and advertising their destinations. I jump on the first combi that says Toooooodo Javier Prado! Jockey Plaza, Avenida.
      4. School for eight hours. Wednesdays are my bad days since I have four classes back to back from 11 am to 7 pm. My first class, International Peruvian Politics, went something like this: “Hola, Shannon, welcome back to class! Where were you on Monday? You missed our discussion on the United States!” Today, we discussed Peru’s relationship with Canada, China, and Japan. I also spoke with my group about our 25 page, single-spaced paper due in two weeks that I haven’t begun to work on since I’ve been travelling. Three guesses as to what I’ll be doing this weekend! After Politics was Ethics, which was okay. I’m not crazy about my teacher. After Ethics, I ran to the cafeteria to buy a sandwich and just about swallowed it whole. In Spanish, I actually got into a heated discussion with my professor and another student about our class exercise. Our textbook posed the question: “How do men and women eat differently?” which my French companion and I took offense at. We spent ten minutes decrying the reinforcement of gender stereotypes in a textbook, and pointed out other instances when the textbook (from Spain) was sexist. Unsurprisingly, no one else in class really cared. My professor seemed happy that we were participating, at least. After Spanish I went to my Macroeconomics and Business class. This is my favorite class because my professor is really funny. Today we discussed public enterprises versus privatization. Still riled up from Spanish class, I participated a lot in class and argued against just about every public enterprise. That’s not too hard to do when using Peru as an example. Peru is one big, bloated bureaucracy as inefficient and—unfortunately—corrupt as they come. Most students in the class agree that public enterprises are inefficient, and want a smaller government in Peru.
      5. Race home. 7 o’clock is prime rush hour in Lima. I met my housemate outside of school, and we walked as quickly to the bus stop as possible before cramming onto the first combi that advertised todo Javier Prado. Thirty long, cramped, sweaty minutes later, we were back on San Luis and walking home.
      6. Dinner. Like breakfast, Clara leaves each student their dinner portion on the table. Tonight was sliced potatoes with beef and rice.

1. “Do Homework” Seeing as this is a school blog, I should probably make a bigger effort at pretending like I do more homework here, but that would be a lie. Only two of my classes give homework, and even then, it’s only to study for upcoming exams or (in the case of politics) write a group paper. Tomorrow I’ll be printing several articles to start studying for my next week of tests. All my classes seem to schedule their tests on the same day, so I’ll have two weeks of nothing, and then one week of intense studying. Instead of homework, I sent a few emails out to friends and family, and tried to determine my schedule for Spring 2016. Still no progress there.
2. Do it all over again.

Below is a blog I couldn’t post due to bad wifi. I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to talk about this again, so I may as well post it now:

I’m writing this blog post a week early from my hostel bed in Arequipa. It’s 7:13 pm on Halloween, so why am I in bed? Because I have a fever and feel awful. Extreme boredom set in about 20 minutes ago after I scrolled through every new update on Instagram and Facebook. So I figure, why not be productive? This week’s post is supposed to be about a typical day in Lima, from morning to night. But first, I’d like to discuss something that’s on my mind: getting sick while studying abroad.

Remember way back to senior year of high school? Your time was consumed with college applications, and the perennial question would arise: will you go to school near home, or far? Anyone who said “far, far away,” is familiar with the follow up question: “but what if you get sick? Who’s going to take care of you?” To which you naturally reply, “please take your negativity elsewhere. I’m the healthiest 17 year old alive.” But then you do get sick, and you realize it’s really much the same as back home: you miss school, you feel awful, you go to the clinic, you take your medication, and your friends replace your parents in looking out for you, running your errands, and nursing you back to health.

Getting sick while abroad is much the same, only a little bit worse since it requires some extra patience, flexibility, and language skills. I can’t speak for all study abroad locations, but I can certainly speak for Peru: you will miss reliable health care in the States. For me, the whole debacle started when my friend got sick in August. She brushed it off as traveler’s diarrhea, but after two weeks, she finally went to the clinic. They ran some tests, and told her it wasn’t typhoid or a bacterial infection. But she did have something funny on the ultrasound they ran, so she needed to go to the gynecologist. For stomach problems? Several expletives later, she determined that the gyno was out of the question. Her sickness continued though, and another week later, she was finally admitted to the hospital where she stayed for a week. “We’re 99% certain it’s E.coli,” the doctors told us. (Why didn’t the first clinic catch this?) “Why aren’t you 100% certain?” we asked, “Did you run the right tests?” “We see this a lot. We’re going to pump her with antibiotics until she’s better.” I’ve learned that this is the go-to here in Peru. You’re sick? IV and antibiotics. You’ll be better in a few days. That same friend got an awful fever and was admitted to a clinic in Mancora, where—surprise surprise—they stuck her with an IV and gave her antibiotics. Same thing for another friend the very next night. Both girls feel better now, but it would be nice to know what was wrong in the first place. 

So here I am, in a hostel in Arequipa on Halloween night. My same two friends from above are out eating dinner and are going to late night happy hour afterwards. We leave for Puno early in the morning. And all I can think of is: should I go to the clinic, get hooked up to an IV, and be given antibiotics? Is it worth it? I guess only time can tell. But I’m feeling much the same way any sick freshman secretly feels: I want my mom, I want my dog, and would love for the people in the room next door to turn down the music.