Emergency Room

I had every intention of updating this blog earlier. I actaully had started to write a new entry on Wednesday, but then things actaully took a different turn which I will explain later. But it's probably the best excuse a girl could use.

I left off more than a week ago, but most of the week consisted of class, which are good and interesting, but not too much to type about here. From what I remember Thursday and Friday weren't too terribly exciting either. Saturday after working on a paper during the day we headed to Victoria Park for a concert. One of the students on the program, Simon, plays bass in the orchestra here, so we wanted to go support him. It was a really nice evening and we sat on the grass in the park and listened to the music. They had two soloists come in too. One was a singer, Samantha, who was in the play Chicago, I believe, but I'm not sure if it was the broadway one. The other, Shannon, was the best saxaphone player in SA and maybe even Africa. They played a lot of music we knew including The Rose by Bette Middler, West Side Story Medley, Chicago Medley, and I Will Survive. All of us had a lot of fun and the park was pretty gorgeous. We are pretty good at finding our own fun, so during the break we were taking fake grad pics around a fountain and Laura and I climbed some trees. Our whole group starting dancing in the back of the crowd to I Will Survive, including doing the Electric Slide, which got us a bit of attention and I'm sure pegged us as Americans. The encore was I'm Walking On Sunshine, which we also all danced too and we had people video taping us and taking pictures. This chubby little girl with face painting on who looked like she was right out of Little Miss Sunshine came back and danced with us too. Oh boy, do we know how to have fun!

Sunday was the day of my swim race. Lauren and I caught a taxi out to the "river". Which in all honestly looks like like a river, but it's connected to the ocean and still gets a tide. We registered and walked around a bit and talked with this old man who was training for the South Africa Ironman that I hope I can see later this semester. He told us that the tide would be coming in when we were swimming, so it would work to our advantage and to put our goggles under our caps because we would probably get kicked and we don't want them to fall off. Sadly they didn't have a bag drop off, so luckily the Lions Club let us put ours in their booth. Then we set off walking. We had to walk a mile up the shore to the start of our race. I wish I had my camera along for that because the trail was really thin and you could see people walking up the trail the whole mile up ahead of you. Pretty sweet. The race went pretty well! The water was a really nice temp and there wasn't many waves. I did catch a few girls, but one caught me right on my way in. I finished in 21 mintues and 6 seconds, with a place of 47th overall and 30th in my age group out of 293 finishers. There were three swim race, and BlueSeventy (wet suit race), the women's race, and the men's race, so when we finished we watched the men. We got to see Chad Ho finish, who is SA's long distance Olympian with a time of 15:36. We ended up staying for results and then caught a ride home with a nice family from P.E. It was a mom (of Afrikaan descent) and dad and their two boys, so that was nice.

Monday we were back at Pendla. Our teacher was finally back, but the other girl's teacher was sick this time, so all four of us taught with our teacher, Mrs. Kadi. She's super nice and is really awesome to work with. We ended up just reading the kids a story in English, then reading with them aloud and then having a discussion and talking about what the story said. We were teaching 6th and 7th grade and it was pretty simple, but English is their second language. Our day wasn't too bad, but our director seemed a bit upset with how disorganized they are. All the teachers changed classrooms and a new timetable/schedule was set over the weekend. I think we've just accepted their disorganizedness by now though.

Tuesday was pretty much the same. We just helped out our teacher, but not as much with classroom stuff. I did get to talk to my teacher at break time and ask her a few questions about the school. This school is public, but you do have to pay for it. So students who can't afford it, can't really go. I think you can tell a bit about which kids don't have much money by their uniforms though. Some are a bit smaller or beat up than others. All the kids here are black, their are no whites students, which I feel like is a bit funny because it's not segregated here. But it just kinda flows down. The reason these kids go to school here is because they live in the area, the reason they live in the township area is because they don't hold very high paying jobs and the reason they don't hold very high paying jobs is because the whites continue to own most of the businesses. Mrs. Kadi was also saying she went to NMMU also for her education, but only for three years. Down here it only takes three years to complete a degree. If that was the case for me I'd be out of there at the end of the semester.

That night when I got home after class I did not feel good, so I went to the "Fat Tuesday" "Pancake" evening at the church and then went straight to bed. The reason I put pancake in quotations is that pancakes down here are really crepes. They call our pancakes flapjacks. They were very good though.

Tuesday I basically had a fever the whole day and broke through it that night, but Wednesday day I still felt pretty terrible, so I stayed home from class. I had a lot of abdominal pain too and a consistantly bad headache for 5 days now, so I called mom to ask her what to do. She was concerned it was my appendix and wanted to have it checked out pronto, so that night I headed into the emergency room. That was a pretty interesting experience! I had to sit down a few times while trying to register because I'd get so lightheaded. It was really hard to because they wanted to know my phone number and I don't have one! I didn't know my director's number either. I finally got to a doctor and got blood tests done and they were also concerned about my appendix, so they admitted me for the night and planned to do a sonar in the morning. Yikes! I slept pretty well, except for the IV in my arm, those things take some getting used too. They also kept taking my blood pressure and telling me it was really low so they tilted my head so it was above my feet. The next morning they asked me to drink six glasses of water for the sonar. I drank six and then vomited it all over the floor. Whoops. The sonar results showed I didn't have appendicitis, but there was inflammation in my abdomen, so they put me on antibiotics and wanted to keep me until Saturday morning. I thought that was forever away. In all, it wasn't too bad though. The hosptial was nice. Like I said before some parts of SA are higher class and this is basically their hosptial. All the patients I saw were white, usually Afrikaan. All the doctors were white also and usually wore casual clothes. The nurses were a nix of both and the cleaner ladies were always black. It was just kinda interesting to see that layout. I was in a room with four other people and they were usually were pretty curious to hear that I was American. I think they felt bad for me cuz I was so far from home and didn't have any visitors either. A few of the other patient's visitors asked if they could get me anything and one of the husbands bought me a candy bar. In all, it was too bad of a stay, but I don't wish to do it ever again.

Luckily, I'm healthy for this week. We're flying to Durban on Thursday until Monday and I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell when I get back. Thanks for all of the e-mails people have already sent me about being in the hosptial. Love you all!