No, it wasn't swine flu

So tech week looked grim on Saturday, when I woke up in the middle of the night cursing the torta de atun that we had for dinner that we certainly to blame. When I woke up again to my alarm, I was violently sick to my stomach in a foreign country, in a foreign house, with a foreign mother. When you feel the way I felt, you don't want to have to worry about things like cultural sensitivity... and I didn't. I sat myself down on the bathroom floor to my mother's horror. There was no other option as far as I was concerned; although, she tried to bring in a bench from the kitchen. She also kept telling me she had pastillas for this and that. Luckily, fellow PCV and neighbor stopped her before she got me and told her PC did not allow us to take meds, but only agua de arroz, which is literally the water from cooked rice with cinnamon. When the PC prescribed meds over the phone, I was out for the afternoon. I woke up to the tico version of chicken broth, which has noodles and potatoes, carrots, and chayote. My family was really wonderful and my mother even cried with me! I must admit, though, while the TLC was above and beyond, and so necessary without family and friends, I snaped one time and told her to pelase stop worrying and that I had lived by myself for nearly six years. I could hear her all weekend talking to family and passers by saying "pobrecita, Katarin, she won't even eat a tortilla, which won't make her feel badly, not even an egg in her soup." The up side of going late to San Vito (I ended up carpooling with the language facilitarors on Monday), was I got in some good integration time with my host mother, which has been extremely limited. Anyway, she took me on a different route to her sister's and showed me all her family's coffee fields and how they had been divided up amongst their children. We also passed a beautiful ranch just in time to get a tour from the duenos. It is rented out for wedding parties, birthdays, etc., and it is walled off by palm trees. There is a beautiful pool with a fountain, where tilapia swim,
a treehouse-type area for dancing, and a doll house-like three floored log cabin that sleeps two couples and has a picturesque simple kitchen. This would certainly be a contender for luna de miel destinations if I were to fall in love in Costa Rica...