Que (Mala) Suerte

So, I've had probably the luckiest and the unluckiest things happen to me within three days of being in Peru.

Let's start with the good. I began my travels with my dear friend Kathleen. Kathleen has a friend who studied abroad in Cuzco about five years ago. Her friend put us in touch with her family.

We were picked up at the airport by them and immediately put up in their house. We've had great homemade food. We've celebrated New Years with one of the daughters and her friends in some hole in the wall bar that her boyfriend owns. Kathleen and I have felt as an immediate part of the family. It's also been a great opportunity to practice our Spanish.

Now for the bad news. I woke up New Years Day to have lunch with Kathleen and our Cuzquena Mother. By the way, at this point I still had a bunch of lentil in my pocket from the previous night, a superstition that is supposed to bring good luck. During our conversation, I slowly start having a lot of trouble concentrating and coming up with the words I want to use. All of sudden, my eyes roll back in my head, I fall to the floor, and have a seizure.

Kathleen and the mother rush me to the hospital where I come to like forty-five minutes later. It turns out that I had some respiratory infection -- unclear whether it was pneumonia or bronchitis -- that probably got into my bloodstream. That coupled with the very high altitude in Cuzco and the effects of a hard night of drinking (and standing in the rain for a while) and I had to spend almost seventy-two hours of my vacation in a hospital bed in Cuzco.

Going back to my good luck though, I don't know how I would have gotten through this without Kathleen and my new Familia Cuzquena. They all visited me for every hour that they could, brought me all kinds of goodies, worked out the bill for me (which you have to pay in cash by the way), and talked with the doctors to get the ball moving on my treatment. The father, a dentist, called his friends in the medical field and asked their advice on the diagnosis and even had them come in and look at me. Kathleen (whose vacation I feel like I ruined) called her father, a doctor, for advice and was so helpful in communicating with my parents (with whom I had no way of getting in touch with). Her father even talked with my parents to assuage many of their fears and offer advice.

The end result of this? Well, I am unbelievably grateful for my family and friends, both old and new. It's really amazing what people will do when you need them. It's also pretty awe-inspiring what my family here was willing to do having only known me for two days.

I'm also afraid that I'll be cutting my trip short. As much as I feel better now and am taking medication that we're fairly confident in, it just doesn't seem like the prudent thing when you consider I'll still be traveling at high altitudes, but will be by myself (and already have way too many people worrying about me). So, on Monday I am getting on the phone with American Airlines to see what I can do (despite not having bought their insurance that protects against stuff like this). Hopefully, I'll be able to return to work early too and recoup some of those vacation days for my next attempt.

Anyway, I hope I'm not getting anyone worried with this post. I'm doing very well now and am in good hands and I should be back in the States within a few days. Just wanted to share the major events of my trip, explain why I haven't posted yet, and let everyone know how amazing Kathleen, her father, and our new Familia Cuzquena have been.