Losing My Lunch/Dinner/Breakfast/Every bit of Fluid in My Body

So, I finally got sick. Sunday I went to breakfast, then church, then out to lunch, then hung out at home then ate lunch left overs for dinner. I'm not sure where I got it, but we are pretty sure that I had an amoeba. FUN!!!

After dinner I hung out with the Todds and talked on Skype with my family for a bit. Around 7 I went home and studied for a bit and was beginning to feel nauseus (nautious?). I went out to the Bodegona (giant superstore of Antigua) and picked up some note cards for spanish vocab. When I got home, I read a chapter on missions out of a book by John Piper called, 'Don't Waste Your Life,' then I read some Bible and also studied a bit of Espan~ol. From about 8:30 'til 10PM I talked with Dave and Esther, a married missionary couple from Ontario, Canada. They work in Honduras but are here in Antigua at language school for 6 months before they go back to their mission. During my conversation with them, I felt nature calling in a serious way, so I went to the bathroom and didn't come out for quite a while, maybe 30 min or so. First came the diarrhea, then the amazing volume of vomit. For those of you who don't know me super well, I don't mind (and actually kind of enjoy) talking about gross things, so get ready. So the first puke was out of this world...it was pretty much the entire 2-3 pound calzone I had at the Italian place for lunch and left over for dinner. I nearly choked on my 3rd or 4th heave...it was a lot of calzone. After a few minutes of fun, I realized I should have puked in the toilet, not the sink...it turns out I plugged the sink (haha), DISGUSTING. I had to unplug with a stick I found outside with the help of the other Dave. That was the best puke, but I ended up puking 6 times, about once per hour, until 3:30AM...of course, with a complimentary diarrhea each time, and a bonus second diarrhea the last time. Each time things seemed to get a bit easier and more routine, by the 3rd time or so, that I (being a numbers guy) decided to start keeping track of how much volume I thought I'd been losing, based on the size of my water bottle sitting on the vanity. In the end I came up with a farely conservative estimate of 5 liters of volume lost from my body. The next day (yesterday) I was talking to Dave and he told me about his first four weeks here, being sick...he told me he never thought you could actually pee out of your butt, and I thought to myself, I couldn't have put it any better myself, Dave. Sorry, I don't have any photos of the excitement...hopefully I have painted an adequate picture for you. In the morning I spoke with Wendy, the wife of Kendon, who is the director of NLCH...she's a nurse, so she called in an order of drugs and Pedialyte to a local pharmacy, which was delivered to the Todds at school, and they brought it to me at home. I ended up being able to eat a bit for dinner last night (soup) and then was able to go to class this morning.

Now, today was a much better day. On Sunday, I happened to meet someone at church who runs a Christian school in a nearby town called Parramos. This mission also facilitates the building of houses for local families in need, with the only prerequisite being that there is a need for a roof over someone's head. Dave, in my house, just happens to be a carpenter who helps this mission with their home building (actually today was his first time with them). So I ended up going with him and a Kiwi (New Zealander) named Craig, up to Parramos and helping with a house construction. It was really incredible...we finished the entire ~10'X16' in just over two hours. Not until afterwards, hearing stories of previous house donations, did I realized how much of a huge impact this easy 2 hours of work had on this family. This mother and 4 children had apparently been kicked out of their previous house by the alcoholic, abusive father. It was a bit vague, but I guess this group went in and dismantled the home and moved it to its current location where we put it up today. Anyways, it's cool to see how big an impact it has on a family to just give some time to help them out...I really didn't know what to do with myself because none of us really felt like we had done much, but we certainly gained a new sense of perspective...what a day!

Oh yeah, I forgot...I also climbed a sweet volcano with actual lava flowing from it, that was rad. We roasted marshmallows over the lava. The next day (saturday) I went with my house mate Meghan (from Saskachewan, CAN), and a guide to Monterrico for kayaking through mangroves and then the the ocean for some swimming/getting thrashed by the waves. The mangroves were awesome. Most of the time in the mangroves (which are river forests with streams networked althroughout), we were smelling a scent of hard-boiled eggs, it was wierd. I did some "body surfing" during which, I got completely thrashed against the ocean floor (the first time my mouth was open I took in a whole mouth full of sand...yumm).

I'm going to go now...I hope you were able to make it through this blog without puking! I'm sticking to my purpose of really keeping ya'll informed on my experiences down here, don't forget that!