Update

My apologies for not posting to this blog in so long...

It's five weeks now since I first came down with the typhoid...About halfway through my round of hard-core antibiotics, we had the annual staff retreat.  Thankfully, I started getting my energy back the day before we were scheduled to go.  I didn't HAVE to go; the school would have understood if I had needed to stay home.  However, the staff retreat is at a really nice resort that is (I believe) run by the Guatemalan government...right across the road from the water park/amusement park.  We went to the water park in the morning and then went across the street to where the hotels are located.  It's a beautiful complex of hotels, restaurants, a spa, swimming pools, and lots of greenery and fancy birds.  My favorite were the peacocks.  I had never realized until this trip how very loud they are.  For some reason, with all their finery, I had always pictured them as being very quiet, letting their feathers speak for themselves.  But no, their voice is loud.  So loud that when we first got to the hotel and were gathered outside for instructions, the peacock in the branches of the tree above us drowned out the speaker's voice, and she had to wait until the bird finished to continue.

 For an example of the peacock's call, you can check out this link:  http://youtu.be/QaH0Q42lbGw

Staff retreat was interesting...since I was recovering from typhoid, I didn't really feel up to doing very much.  And eating at the restaurant was a little tricky since my diet at that time was still very restricted (no grease, no dairy, no sugar, no beans...).  I came prepared with some food of my own, and then had to be very careful at the restaurants.  The entire experience gave me a new empathy for people who have to live with food restrictions on a daily basis...having to ask the employees for changes in the menu, having to trust they would indeed make the changes, knowing if they didn't I would end up getting sick...In the morning, when we went to breakfast, we went to a buffet (mostly because I figured it might be safer to be able to look at the food before deciding if it was safe to eat).  And I realized after looking at all the options and asking questions that, out of everything being offered, I could literally only eat the bread.  I'm not used to making a fuss when I go out to eat.  I usually just try to blend in as best I can..,but I decided to ask the man who had taken my ticket if it would be possible to switch my order to something off of the menu.  When I explained why, he immediately said it was no problem, he would simply ask the kitchen to make items without the grease, sugar, dairy, etc.  It was very sweet, and humbling, to have them going to so much trouble.  And I ended up with a massive mound of food...hard-boiled eggs, fresh-cut fruit, papaya juice without added sugar, oatmeal with no milk or sugar, boiled plantains...it was wonderful.  He even made small talk while I was waiting.   

We had a very nice devotional time led by a couple of the teachers in the evening while we were there, sitting outside, asking God for direction and listening in silence...

A few days after we returned from staff retreat, I finished my antibiotics.  Then I had a few days of waiting before getting tested again to see if all the typhoid was gone.  It wasn't, but the levels were lower.  The doctor said it would probably be okay to just let it be since the levels would continue going down over the course of about a month, but when the school asked another doctor's opinion, that doctor thought I should try another week of antibiotics (the easy kind, wimpy ones without all the side effects) especially since I wasn't feeling 100% normal yet.  However, the levels were low enough that the doctor clarified that I no longer actually had typhoid.  That was encouraging.  So I had a week of more medicine combined with probiotics to get my stomach back to normal after so much sickness and hard-core medicine.  I finished that about a week ago.  I had a couple of days of still feeling kind of tired, and then I came down with a cold.  Which actually doesn't bother me that much because, even though I don't feel awesome, I feel way better than I did before.  And I'm back on regular food and have been for almost two weeks now.  That is amazing. 

We have Spiritual Emphasis Week this week.  A team came down from Littleton, Colorado.  The principal had mercy and told me I could stay at the school with the elementary kids instead of going along on the retreat with the secondary students, even though they don't have as many female teachers to chaperone.  I so appreciate it...after having been sick for almost five weeks straight, the principal said they didn't want to push me too hard since my body hasn't completely bounced back yet.  So with the elementary kids I have been in charge of taking pictures at the activities to put together a slide show for the last chapel at the end of the day tomorrow.  We've had chapel everyday and then the elementary students have had VBS activities for about an hour every morning and games for a half hour in the afternoon.  Half the team stayed here to work with the elementary kids and the other half went on the retreat with the middle school and high schoolers. 

I've gotten really good at planning activities for my students around not feeling well.  I think that has been a good thing.  I do less teacher-centered teaching and have them more actively involved.  Overall, I would say it has been going well.

We have the end of the quarter next week.  Then just one more quarter to go before the year is over.  I already bought my airplane ticket home.  And I have been applying for jobs...  We go to Mexico in about a week.  Then we have parent-teacher conferences (the last ones).  Then a few weeks after that will be Holy Week...we get that entire week off of school (along with a big percentage of people in Guatemala).

We had our embassy meeting earlier this week.  Every year and a half or so the ambassador and a few other officials from the American embassy in Guatemala City come to our town to touch base with the Americans living here, give us some information and take the time to answer questions.  It was surprising how many people in the crowd I recognized...not by name, necessarily, but by sight like I had seen them before.  There were the Mennonites who run The Bake Shop (they took up a couple of rows), some business people, some parents from our school, random people I've seen around town...and I met someone who works for an NGO who I realized today might possibly live right around the corner from where I do (near some other teachers from the school)...it's a small world.

Apart from all of that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future.  I've realized I'm really not used to getting sick...normally I am really very healthy.  I think because of that, I tend to start thinking of myself as someone who doesn't get sick, like it becomes part of my identity.  So, in some strange way, getting sick has in a way gotten me thinking more about my own weakness, my own mortality...not that I was near death, but by seeing myself as weak, I also saw a little more clearly the closeness of death, even though I wasn't standing near the door myself at all.  I'm just not as invincible as I thought I was.  And I've been realizing I need to take care of myself.  My mental clock keeps saying there is a time frame for feeling one hundred percent better.  And then I would get frustrated when my body wouldn't follow that clock...I've had to throw up my hands and just deal with it.  There is no way to rush getting better.  Rest is just that--rest--not a striving and pushing forward.  So I'm taking it slow...And I'm seriously thrilled by how much I am able to do now. 

I would appreciate any prayers about the future.  And for health.  A lot of people have colds right now.  I think the situation isn't helped by the winds we have been having lately.  With it being dry season, there is a lot of dust to blow around.  Probably not surprising so many people have sniffling noses and coughs.

I should probably sign off now and go to bed...I intend to post more often in the future.  I appreciate all of you who do check in and see how it's going.