Sick Day

Today I spent being sick. I had pretty much all the symptoms that pepto bismol works for, plus a massive headache and a fever. It started at about 2 in the morning, so at 8 I phoned Ajan Supanee and told her I wouldn't be able to go shopping today. She sounded kind of dissapointed, and I was a little dissapointed too because I was excited about going, but at that point in the morning, any movement made my stomach hurt. I phoned my parents in Canada to get my Dads advice on what to do. He was mostly just worried about me getting dehydrated and maybe weak or fainting from not having any nourishment. So I drank an entire water bottle filled with electrolyte stuff which I brought from Canada. I think I maybe drank it a little fast because I was feeling rather thirsty. Let's just say that was a bad idea, and the whole water bottle came back out again. At some point in the afternoon, Kla and Korn came into my room telling me it was lunch time. I tried to explain to them that I was worried if I ate anything, I would just puke it back up. But I was also feeling a little hungry and shakey (an appetite is a good sign right?) so I went down and ate some rice and plain bread. They made me drink this Chinese medicine thing, and take some tylenol. Even though my Dad advised me not to take any medicine yet, I took the tylenol anyways because it's just too hard to explain to them that I didn't want any. However, I ended up not feeling quite as shitty for the rest of the afternoon, and was able to get quite a good nap. At supper time, my host dad was convinced that I needed to eat some soup, so he went out and bought me some. I really didn't want to eat too much of it though, because it had all kinds of meat in it, and I'm really starting to question the meat around here. So I just drank some of the broth and ate some of the noodles, although not many because they tasted kind of greasy. Tomorrow I'm not going to school, even if I feel a bit better, which I think I will because I'm already feeling alot better now than I did this morning. I actually really wanted to go to school tomorrow, since I've missed out on my Monday Thai Dance class for 3 weeks now. My host dad told me he thinks I have the flu, (although I think it's just food poisoning) and that if I'm not better tomorrow they're taking me to the hospital. He also said something about health insurance which I didn't quite understand, but I'm not too worried about it now since I think I'll be feeling better tomorrow. It was nice to be able to catch up on some rest today though. I'm not sure if part of what is making me sick is Culture Shock. Apparently for some exchange students, culture shock can become so extreme that they actually get physically sick. I don't think it's all from that, but I do think that this living in a completely different environment is both physically and emotionally draining, and probably weakens my immune system a little. Although apparently Beam is sick today too, so I'm pretty sure it's just something we ate yesterday, and somehow everyone in my host family is immune to it.