International Blog

Having a blog is a new experience for me, and it's really interesting being able to share my experiences with the whole world. The "whole world" being Olympia pretty much, so I thought. One of the most amazing things about this is that I can see who is looking at my blog and where they are from. It turns out that not only do I have visitors from Olympia and Veranópolis, but I have visitors from 25 different US states and 37 different countries!! In fact 15.6% of all my visitors are from outside the US and Brazil. Countries like Canada, The United Kingdom, Indonesia, Germany, Poland, Guatemala, Italy, New Zealand, Romania, Greece, The Netherlands, Iran, and Slovenia just to name a few. Knowing this is so amazing, and it really makes the world feel smaller.

Ranch Dressing!!

Nana's friend Salete, who speaks wonderful english, and her American husband Tony, who speaks no portuguese, recently went to the US to deal with Tony's bank closing. They came back recently and Salete was nice enough to buy me some Ranch Dressing while she was there!! It was a wonderful present and I'm so thankful to her. I'll have to ration it though but I'm still very happy to have it. Thank you so much Salete!

Official

We got the results from the blood test and it's official that I do have Mono.

But don't freak out anybody because it's completely under control!!

My Diagnosis

We just got back from an ENT (ears, nose and throat) Specialist. Ironically all of those areas are bothering me so I had good hopes when we entered the office. He thinks I have Mononucleosis. They took some blood and they will get back to us with the results. My options right now are basically just to wait it off. I need lots of water, juice and good nutrition to help the recovering process, and also lots of rest. He did give me Ibuprofen which is supposed to help and he says that antibiotics wont. Which explains why all the previous times we used antibiotics wouldn't stop my sickness from coming back. We got 6 different droppers of Ibuprofen for me to take doses every 8 hours. It comes in these weird thick white drops, kind of like elmer's glue and they taste pretty good. I've done a lot of research and I'm pretty much an expert on it now. Apparently I've already had this for about 2 months so the doctor told me I should be back to normal in about 5 days. I pray to God, Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha that he is right because I am so ridiculously tired of being sick. We will see what happens during the next 5 days...

Sick Again

Believe it or not I'm sick again. I got another sore throat which turned into very swollen tonsils and possibly another virus. My throat doesn't hurt to swallow now but my tonsils are so swollen that they affect my talking. I sound a little different. It's crazy. Plus I got that weird thing again where I lose hearing in my left ear. I've definitely improved from this weekend though. I was super swollen up, feverish, and weak. We went to a throat specialist who gave me these three "magic pills". They were very powerful and my body couldn't take the first one. But they helped put down the swelling. I was improving, but still too sick to go to a very special party called Debut which is like a royal ball. I even chose a tuxedo to rent but I couldn't use it. I've been sick since last thursday and it's added to a chain of many many colds and sicknesses I've had so far in Brazil. But I'm still having fun here. I knew that there would be challenges and I'm determined to get through them. Plus with every cold I get, I develop antibodies so I wont get that particular disease again. I think the reason I'm getting sick so much is that I'm in a new environment with all new diseases that everyone here is immune to, but I am not. Oh well, that will change over time. As for now I'm looking at the bright side. I'm getting better, summer is coming, and I can still hear out of my right ear.

Keyboard

Guto just gave me his electric keyboard so now I can sort of play piano while I'm here. It's not a piano but it's better than nothing.