I’m almost half way through with my time here in Lima, and so bad nothing TOO awful had happened, but with my luck I should have known I had it coming for me.
Wednesday September 25, I was sitting in my only class of the day, Spanish, when I noticed an annoying rattling sound coming from the glass cabinets behind me, along with the rattling I could feel a shaking and vibration feeling in my legs, but I didn’t think anything of it, just like if a train passed by and it rattled the building a bit, but a few seconds later I realized, “I’m on the 4th floor, there is no train passing by”….my attention was drawn to the projector screen which was swaying back and forth and suddenly it hit everyone….we were having an earthquake. At this moment I cannot say how I felt, scared, nervous, worried, all emotions possible, I was feeling them. It had been about 45 seconds that the shaking went on until we realized what was happening, and it lasted for about another minute after that. Our teacher had us exit the class into the hallway where there are strong pillars, we walked along those planning to go to the bottom floor and then the shaking stopped, and to my surprise my teacher had us go back to class for the next hour until class was out, as if nothing had even happened.
It was amazing to me that it was no big deal to anyone, except for the international students. We had just experienced a 7 point quake and nobody even thought anything of it?? Then I found out this type of thing happens frequently when the temperature shifts and the air gets warmer. What an experience it was for me…
After Wednesday things went on normal as always, until Friday night. Thursday night I noticed I wasn’t feeling well…specifically having certain stomach issues, but I ignored it figuring it would go away, Friday rolled around and we had our night tour of the cemetery as you can see in my last post. Luckily I was able to survive through the tour, until I got on the bus to go back. I had never had stomach pain that bad in my life, and I knew something was wrong. I went home and told my family what was happening and they were very worried and insisted that I go to the hospital right away since I would be reimbursed 100% through my insurance. Well…I went and turns out I was suffering from dysentery. Dysentery??? I hadn’t heard of that since playing the Oregon Trail computer game in 5th grade! The doctor immediately started an IV to get me re-hydrated and to administer an antibiotic and pain medicine. What a relief to finally get some medicine in me, I have never felt pain like that in my life.
My 21st birthday was Monday, and because of this sickness, I was not able to drink and celebrate like I would have liked to, but I was thankful that I was feeling better!
A word of advice for everyone before traveling: Have your doctor prescribe you 500 mg Ciprofolxacin before traveling. This is a common antibiotic that can be used for many bacterial infections and I was lucky that I already had it because it saved me from having to buy it at the pharmacy here.