Homesick

For the first time, I really felt homesick. As you know this past week I went to Peru with some friends for the whole week. We had an amazing time (more on that soon!) there. Needless to say though, I ended up getting violently ill on Monday on the train ride to Machu Picchu. At first I thought it was altitude sickness, as I felt light-headed and queasy the higher the train climbed into the mountains. I threw up on the train and the miserable action continued the rest of the day after we made it to Aguas Calientes, where we had a hostel reservation. To make a long story short, I couldn’t hold anything down. I threw up 13 times and spent the entire day running from the bed to the bathroom. My good friends and the hostel staff were worried about me and called a doctor. As a real bonding experience, they all saw my bare white butt as I received a shot on the hostel bed (what a sight). Turns out I had food poisoning and was clearly dehydrated. Thankfully I was able to see the Peruvian doctor (who was quite friendly and made me feel comfortable in such an awkward situation but who cares about embarrassment when you’re that sick, right?) and we made it to Machu Picchu bright and early the next morning. Thanks to my Electoral (equivalency to Pedialyte, I’m sure) I didn’t die at Machu Picchu.

Anyway, before the trip was over three of the four of us were all sick and all we talked about was eating some good food from home. We didn’t want to eat the food anymore in Peru due to how miserable we felt. To be honest, all we really wanted was some home-made chicken noodle soup (we bought packaged Ramen to try to satisfy that need) and to be sick in our own beds in our own homes instead of in some hostel bunk-beds. When I arrived home on Friday night and my host mom asked how our trip went, I informed her of my illness. To my surprise she made me chicken noodle soup and all day Saturday she took care of me. She made me dinner in bed and prepared some delicious herbal tea for me as some sort of medicine. Since we were returning from Peru to our host families in Chile and not back to the states as much as we wanted, this was the closest thing to feeling at “home”. And it was awfully nice…