Every Day Of Rain Brings Water Flowing To Things Growing In The Ground

Funny-not-so-funny-story-time!! As many of you know I suffer from CVS, and during childhood I was so sick that I went through failure to thrive and my immune system was tremendously compromised. Because of this I am a magnet for viruses! And while I eat healthy, exercise, and use hand sanitizer constantly to try and stay well, there are times that that is not going to work. SO here is the installment of “Anna got really ill in Bulgaria and had to go to hospital.”

I woke up Wednesday which is my research day with a post nasal drip that was hurting my throat, I figured it was allergies so I took meds and eventually took a nap to try and feel better. When I woke up I learned just how wrong I had been. I was incredibly ill, throwing up constantly, unable to focus, and everything I ate wouldn’t stay down. I tried juice, cereal, crackers, etc. Nothing worked. I finally caved and decided that I needed to call my mentor teacher. I told her that I had been vomiting for hours and was very ill and I thought I needed to go to the hospital. To which she responded: “I have to think on this, I’ll call you back later.”

This is when I panicked dear readers. PANICKED. I remembered my friend Becs, issues when she got sick and her mentor teacher said that she would call to take her to the doctor but then turned her phone off and could not be reached. And all I could think was: I am going to die in Bulgaria. In my communist style flat, on the 13^th floor,  I am going to die. This is it. I had so many escape plans, to get to a hospital if I needed but now I was just too sick to do them. And I realized I SURVIVED KOSOVO, CUBA, and MEXICO for this? Screw you Bulgaria I am going to live! (All you fellow brown coats will understand that I immediately felt like Kaylee from Serenity when she is in the epic final battle and screams she is going to live.)

I crawled back into bed and started my plan C, I alternated water every ten minutes with crackers, and took my socks off to cool my body down. This is when I missed being at home and sick. When your mom takes you to the doctor and brings you yummy foods, and you watch TV without having to care about anything besides how yucky you feel. ugh...homesickness on top of other sickness=not fair! I called my mom to tell her what was going on, and looked up the closest hospital and right as I was getting shoes on to try and get there my mentor teacher called back! I told you I loved her!

Turns out that what she meant by “Ill have to think about this” was “I have to call all my Doctor friends and find someone to see you.” She got me into a hospital downtown to be seen, and came in a taxi to pick me up. When she saw me the first thing she said was “Why didn’t you call earlier? You look horrible!” And I didn’t know how to say “I am used to being sick, I thought I was fine, turns out I was very wrong.”

The doctor took one look at me and had me lay down, after describing my symptoms to my mentor teacher she translated to the doctor who told me that I have a virus that is sweeping through Bulgaria. It is a Bulgarian virus, not found in America and thus I had no immunities to try and protect me from getting it. That everything I had done to treat my being ill actually aggravated it! So she gave me four different medications and said to go home and rest.

This is where you think it gets better right? That the meds work and I’m suddenly back to my sarcastic, crazy, self? Yeah, I am sorry dear readers but that is not what happens. I not only had a virus but the virus weekend my immunities to allow me to get a cold as well. (Now all you nurses out there are saying “A cold is a virus” and yeah I get that, but for the sake of not confusing people I am saying cold, and virus!) So I get a cold, which I can’t treat, because the juices, foods, and medications that you use to treat a cold aggravate the virus more. Therefore I cant treat the cold until I am rid of the virus. Cure the virus and I’m good right? Wrong, I am allergic to the main medication that forces the virus to leave my body. Basically, I can’t get rid of the virus quickly because I can’t take the medication that does that, and I can’t treat the cold until the virus has left my body. Which all leaves me in a horrible mess of constant vomiting, sore throat, inability to breathe, and lack of consciousness for days.

But all hope was not lost, my students and colleagues came to the rescue! First off my landlord insisted on coming in to take out the mosquito nets even though I told him I was contagious and he just stared at me and asked me if I thought I would die. I turned over saying yes, but just in case don’t rent the flat right away. Then my mentor teacher called me to ask if I was taking my medications and my Vice Principle called to tell me I was missed and that everyone hopes I will be better soon. Then my students reached out and asked if they could visit me to bring me food and make sure I was ok. They were wonderful constantly messaging me and seeing how I was doing, asking if I needed anything and bringing me food so that I did not have to leave my apartment.

All of my students who had doctor parents asked them what would help me get better and then they made it for me. It was like some form of apple sauce, and immediately my stomach began to settle down!Between my students constant checking on me, and my landlord taking my trash out, and just know that there were people around if I needed them I stopped stressing so much about being sick and began to just let myself get better.

Of course I was still panicked about missing class since my eleventh grader are supposed to have a test on “Sleepy Hollow” this week and without having class last week we didn’t get to review. But when I tried to tell my mentor teacher why I was so concerned about it she told me, “Your job is not a rabbit it will not run away so quickly, your health comes first, take care of you.”

So here I am trying to get better after days of being ill, and still trying not to worry about my students and how much I need to make sure they know before I leave them in June, and yet it got a little bit better. Yes I got sick in Bulgaria, and yes during that they informed me that Hep A was found in the water in Gabrovo, which while it is far off is still frightening. But in the end, I made it. I thought it would be a lot harder than it is, living alone. But it is pretty easy. The hardest part so far is being sick while living alone, on the 13^thfloor where it takes a lot to even exit my building when well, never mind sick.

But I did it! Though my friends and I joked about how the odds were in my favor that I would see a Bulgarian hospital eventually, I can say I lived to tell the tale ;) And I was able to get closer to my students because of it!In the end I was able to skype my kitten and try to feel like I was at home getting better, but being here is still where I want to be!

Tonight's song is "Penny's Song" from "Doctor Horrible's Sing A Long Blog" because no matter how bad the day is there's always a bright side!

A.

 

Could There Be Two? Like You? No Way!

Hello Readers!

Now I know you are all waiting to hear about Kosovo am I right? Well the reason that has been delayed is I became very ill over here in Bulgaria. VERY ill. But I will write about that later. This post it to tell you that I have been nominated for the “Versatile Blogger Award!” Because my blog is not only about living in Bulgaria but also: traveling around, teaching, real life, growth, friendship, and discovery-It apparently makes me very versatile! At least that is what the blogger over at “Fashionably Kate” thought. http://eversofashionablykate.com/

 

Isn't it pretty?!?!

I am truly honored to be thought of for this, and honestly blogging has been helping me not only share my adventures with my family and friends back home but also keep track of the craziness that ensues! However, with this nomination comes the stereotypical fine print, which I actually always read btw. ALWAYS READ. Even the tiny print on those infomercial at 2 a.m. ;)

Sometimes it's hysterical

So Fine print:

Display the award on your blog

Mention/link the people who nominated you

Nominate another 15 bloggers who you feel should be given this award

Inform them you have nominated them

Write 7 facts about yourself

Sell your soul for a packet of skittles…wait, hold on! That one isn’t for this award, it’s for a kids 6^th birthday party. Whoops!

I want him at all of my parties from now on!

So because I am very ill and I think that I am allowed to take it easy for a few days I will nominate my 15 later on in the weekend when I am feeling better and can think straight. However here are my 7 random facts about myself!

1: I am obsessed with 1920’s, ‘30’s, and ‘40’s films especially in Black and White. I watch them on youtube in bed at night and pretend I am in the cinema back in the day with snazzy ushers and penny popcorn.

2:I don’t like purple skittles, I know that’s odd right? But they just are too ‘dull’? for me I guess.

3:My favorite Disney original character is Goofy (originally is important because Winnie the Pooh is another one of my favorites but wouldn’t count in this category!) I love that Goofy always got to wear clothes when Pluto didn’t and it was funny because Pluto was more intelligent but Goofy was so optimistic. To me it seems an analogy to mankind: We may not always be the brightest but the optimism is what gets us through. No matter how many times he was injured he kept going, I really loved that about him. *Cue my sister mouthing at the screen “You seriously over think these things! It’s a Disney character!”

4:*Warning for explitives used in direct quotation!*

My friend Kaylee jokes that I am her Vulcan and I actually found a fanfiction story that has Kirk going off saying “That is it! That’s all. The end. Get your hands off my Vulcan! That’s not just the first officer of my ship—the Federation flagship—that Vulcan is my Vulcan. I’m sure you people have girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, consorts, harem-boys—whatever the hell it is you people do—but that? That is MINE. Holy shit, stop touching my fucking Vulcan.”  

I swear she followed me here..

What a beauty!

Now Kaylee would NEVER say it that way, but we read it and thought it was so funny that after we constantly said I was her Vulcan, someone wrote about it in fanfiction. But in reality people joke I’m a Vulcan because I act on logic instead of emotion, I am not one to jump but instead carefully think things through. The craziest I’ve gotten was hopping a bus out of Bosnia early to get to make it to Albania! I also am very guarded and don’t display emotion as easily as others do. It’s jut how I roll lol.

5: I had this adviser in undergrad who didn’t want to grant me permission to take extra credits, and I panicked.  I was 19, I wanted to graduated in 2.5 years and really take on the world, and if she didn’t let me take those extra credits I couldn’t take Existentialism and really investigate who I was. So I stood there and talked as quickly as possible saying “It is the purpose of a higher learning institution to try and engage their student body and push them to the very limits of their capability and intelligence, this is what I am trying to do and if you do not support that I am at a loss.” To which she finally said “fine, but if you burn out I warned you.” Well I didn’t burn out, I took 4 years to graduate with 3 majors, 4 minors, and 80 classes, but I didn’t burn out, each class just fueled me more and got me here today. But that was definitely my first ever act of “telling it to the man.”

6:I overcame my fear of dogs while playing with these huskies who were pulling my sled when I went dog sledding in Canada at the Millennium New Years Celebration. They were so cute and cuddly that I stopped worrying that they could eat me in one bite!

7: When I was 12 all the boys in my school band made fun of me for playing trumpet because they said girls shouldn’t play trumpet so what did I do? I learned how to play “Joy to the World, Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” on the trumpet, while balancing utensils on my fingers that were pushing the keys. No one doubted I could play after that. I also was not allowed to take utensils out of the cafeteria again ;)

There you go! 7 random facts to show my awkward versatility! Next post coming is my adventures of being sick in Bulgaria. This one is a real nail biter so get your popcorn ready!

The song for tonight is: “A Guy Like You” from “The Hunchback Of Notre Dame” because it celebrates people being different and shows that some characteristic should be celebrated…like being versatile ;) 

A.

As My Crazy Life Begins To Approach Critical Mass

 Hello Readers…Miss me?

It turns out that I couldn’t have imagined being so happy over here. Teaching is amazing, and everything I hoped it would be. I was asked to be on the Halloween planning committee and judge the costumes too. Today I even gave my 11^th graders a creative writing assignment to write how they think/want Sleepy Hollow to end, (before we read the end) and some of my students were so excited they had to read and act theirs out to me during my 15 minute break ! One student actually called me “Captain” which made me want to stand on my desk and re-enact “Dead Poets Society” and a group of my students approached me after class to ask if I would host a Bulgarian cooking class at my flat so they could cook for me and teach me the traditional dishes. I of course said yes, and they are looking up vegetarian meals for me since I can’t eat meat. I was just so overjoyed that they wanted to spend more time with me, and interact with me showing me their culture. How amazing is that? It’s like I get to do everything I ever dreamed of doing, but in a single year. Who could ask for more?

You couldn't ask for more! He says

But I know I promised you I would finish my travels, so here are the countries we have left from my “Peter-Jackson-Wrote-My-Trip-Backpacking-The-Balkans-Everyone-Says-I-Am-Crazy” trip! Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Tonight’s post is Albania (I’m going in order btw)

I've been known to sleep with my  passport

I'm packing my grateful eyes!

So I will be honest with you readers, Albania was not on my radar until I started this journey. I have this life goal, you may call it ridiculous, but hey, not YOUR life goal-so I don’t care. ;)  I want to visit all 195 recognized and unrecognized countries/nations. If I die trying to achieve it, I will die a happy and fulfilled person!

I started off by getting to the Podgorica bus station very early in the morning, I then took a bus to a different part of Montenegro where I waited for two hours to transfer to my next bus to get to Tirana. Let’s discuss how I was drafted into the “Bus Station Workers Breakfast Club.” So basically I am sitting there, eating my grapes that I took with me for the trip and this woman brings out a tray with 5 espresso cups on it…there were 4 workers. I thought nothing of it because they were talking amongst themselves the janitor, the shop woman, and the ticket sellers. Then all of a sudden this woman approaches me with the makeshift tray and speaks to me in “Serbo-Croatian-Montenegrian” to which I respond in a mixture of Czech and Bulgarian. The gist? Here is our espresso, have some.

Thankfully this is true!

Tigger understands me!

Seriously... it was intense

Now readers if you know me at all you know I never drink coffee, never mind espresso, never mind MONTENGRO espresso which is incredibly strong, they put no sugar in it, and it’s basically acid. But I couldn’t get them to understand that, they thought I was just being polite. So what do I do? I take a sip. It was HORRIBLE. I thought I would die, I had to keep drinking though because that woman was so happy that she started telling people who walked in that the American loved her espresso. How could I let her down after all of that? I kept drinking while talking to her in a mixture of languages detailing my travels and the places I liked. Thankfully the coffee break was over after 30 minutes and they all went back to work leaving me sitting there with my cup…I slowly poured out the rest of that sludge into the waste bin next to me. This was a covert operation, how did I succeed you ask?

I met new friends! I met this adorable couple from New York first. They were tying to figure out a bus schedule and couldn’t read it so I helped them and we got talking. One of them used to be a lawyer but now he is in a Ph.D. program in Anthropology at U of Chicago. His boyfriend meanwhile just passed the bar after completing his Law program at NYU. Really impressive couple! But they were fantastic asking me about Bulgaria and Fulbright, it was a great conversation and we detailed the south, what we liked about Europe and too soon they had to go. But they covered me from prying eyes while I poured out a huge chunk of coffee. The next opportunity I had to ditch the coffee came when I was helping some Aussies figure out how to get to Athens. Apparently I was literally the only English speaker in this bus station who could: read Cyrillic, speak Czech, read a map, figure out a bus schedule, and stealthily get rid of intense espresso that would have melted the ice burg that took out the Titanic.

Here is my coffee...you know just in case

He really didn't know...

This picture was actually really hard to get!

Finally it was time for my first bus which got me near Tirana the capital of Albania. Then we had to quickly change into this mini bus that was waiting for us on the side of the road. It was a horrible trip thanks to all that espresso I drank and the lack of air, but I befriended these other Aussies and a few Brits on the bus who were going to sail around the world. I ended up educating them on Dr. Who because I refuse to let a British person not be well versed and we thankfully finally arrived in Tirana.

I found a taxi and got to my hotel which was really luxurious and unexpected since it cost so little. But they were helpful and I soon unpacked what I needed to, washed up, called my mom, then hit the town. Ever get lost in Albania at 8 pm? No? Oh good, well I have. You can’t find a map in Albania to save your life…so instead I took a snap shot of my hotel address and when I was lost I asked people in establishments where the street was. Here’s the thing I bet you are thinking “if I got lost in Tirana I would panic.” Right? Well I didn’t. Getting lost is always my favorite part of travelling, I find so many unique hidden spots that are absolute gems that how could I ever get angry?

Don't tell me you don't find that gorgeous!

I found my way back but only after finding a really cool open market, a nice gelato place, this cool old shop where I bought my best friends niece a shirt because her dad is from Albania, and all the statues I wanted to visit in daylight.

Day two I hit the streets and found an agency to sell me a bus ticket to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. I wanted to know my game plan so I could make sure I saw all the sites but also made it to Kosovo on time. I brought my lunch with me and ate in the park where this old man came and tried to ask me for help with his cell phone. When I explained in Czech that I couldn’t help he gave me the traditional “male head of the household greeting!!!” He kisses both cheeks and holds my shoulders. Yes, I am that lucky!

I felt like they "wanted me" like Uncle Sam!

Isn't she adorable? My travel booker!

Then I saw the opera house, the mosque, a few museums, the clock tower, revolutionary statues, and basically everything you could possibly wish to see while walking for hours around Tirana. Ladies and gentleman you don’t know how beautiful the world is, and how amazing it is to be part of it until you are catching a man falling off a wall in the center of Albania because he overshot the landing, or following a group of grandmothers across a crazy intersection because no one messes with them, and eating in a park that is dedicated to revolution and reform. Tirana was great. I learned a lot, saw beautiful places and experienced a culture I never even considered visiting. In part I did it so that I could one day tell my Bffl Vicky’s niece Simone: I went to your fathers country and this is what it is like…But I also was thrilled I could skype with her while there so she technically saw her fathers land. How amazing is that?

After tackling Tirana I went to bed, packed and ready to board a bus the next day to go to Kosovo. I woke at 5 am to catch a 6 am bus very close to my hotel (seriously there are NO bus stations in Tirana what???) and when I came down to check out the old, tiny, adorable, man behind the desk took me outside and lead me to his car. Apparently instead of calling a taxi as I requested the day before, he just volunteered to take me, so yay! It was a quiet ride, but nice. I got on my bus and my next post will detail the crazy trip I took into war torn, currently rebuilding, Kosovo!

I refuse to listen to Beiber!

Tonights song is “Through the Looking Glass” from “Wonderland, Alices New Musical.” Because sometimes you really have to take a chance and enter into a world you know nothing about to find a deeper part of yourself and “what might be.”

Anna