December 2009 – dannypeck.net

Socks, Sickness, and Breakfast

As Cameron said tonight, “There might be some truth to it, but…” Every time anyone gets sick here, it gets blamed on the temperature and your awareness and preparedness for it.

Kelsey and I constantly joke around about wearing socks. For instance, after having been seriously sick last week (which was 100% due to dehydration, though Lourdes blamed it on my not having on a sweatshirt that day) I have had a small cold for the last two or three days. I feel perfectly fine, but I’ve just been coughing a lot, and it’s going away now. But I came home to Lourdes’ house yesterday afternoon just in time for it to start raining as I was walking from the Trole station back to the tienda. If it had started raining while I was on the Trole, I would have stood around and waited for the bus, but the bottom dropped when I was almost exactly halfway between the station and the house. No sense turning around, I ran for it, but go drenched anyway. Jose laughed at me a little when I walked in the tienda, but concernedly made sure he told me to go upstairs and change. I did just that, but having taken almost all of my clothes back to the intern apartment in the north in preparation to move back there, I had no socks in the house. I walked out of my room barefoot to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen, and Lourdes came upstairs at just the same time. So of course, I immediately got the “You’re sick because you’re not wearing socks” lecture and went to put on tennis shoes.

The next story won’t seem related at first. Be patient.

I tend to be late for morning meetings because of breakfast. Breakfast with the family is both non-negotiable and a bit of an ordeal. In the US, if I had an 8:30 meeting with an 60-90 minute commute to get there, I might grab a Pop-Tart on the way out the door, or more likely just skip breakfast or hope the meeting was finished before Hardee’s stops serving Cinnamon & Raisin biscuits at 10:30. That’s not an option here because (we don’t have Hardee’s, we don’t have Pop-Tarts, and mostly because) nobody in the house, from abuelita down to the kids, is going to let me leave without sitting down and eating with me. One morning I had to be at Youth World early, so I made myself coffee so I could honestly tell Lourdes I had breakfast already (coffee is always the main component of breakfast and dinner). I should have left the dishes out so there would have been some evidence, but since I washed them, Lourdes asked me all that day and literally all the next if I was sure I had made myself breakfast that morning.

Today I was in the kitchen helping Marta when Miguel (my friend and both Lourdes’ and Marta’s nephew, therefore Adrian’s cousin) started frantically looking around the house for some things. Adrian came out of his room a minute later and I realized he was not feeling good. Miguel told me he was taking Adrian to the hospital. As Miguel was running around the house, Marta started asking him about food. It went something like this (though it was, obviously, in Spanish):

Marta: Have you eaten breakfast yet?

Miguel: No.

Marta: Are you going to?

Miguel: No.

Marta: You have to eat breakfast!

Miguel: Well, not this morning.

Marta: I have the water boiling already. I’m pouring coffee right now.

Miguel: I don’t believe we can right now.

Miguel then proceeded to run downstairs to hop in the car, Adrian stumbling along with him, clutching his side like it was going to explode any minute. Marta scoffed at them under her breath until they were long gone, bemoaning her ridiculous nephews, skipping breakfast.

Tonight, Cameron and I had talked about Adrian, and before she dropped me off at my apartment, Cameron called Lourdes to check on the situation. Turns out Adrian had pneumonia. He’s doing much better, but he’ll have to stay in the hospital for three days due to a torn membrane in his lung, which is what allowed him to get the infection. Lourdes’ theory, however? “He works in a restaurant over a hot stove, and then they go in and out of the freezer all day. Hot, cold, hot, cold.” Again, as Cameron said, maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe. Some. At least he was wearing his socks.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

Not Atypically Not Ready

Miguel and I were talking recently about hanging out on a weekend once he is finished with classes after this week. What I hadn’t realized up until even more recently is that today, I’m completing my penultimate weekend before I head home for Christmas. I’m on day 104 right now, which is over a third longer than the longest I’ve been here previously. It doesn’t feel like it at all.

This week is going to be psychotically busy. I’m not even 100% sure yet which days I’m sleeping at which house, and I have people to see and projects to complete and shopping to get done and parties to attend in addition to my normal work week of teaching and writing and meetings.

Although I know I’m going to be busy, I’m trying to be “all here” right now, as we say at YW.¹ I keep thinking about August 2008 when I came home from Quito Quest. Much as I tried to hide it, I had a bad attitude, and a difficult readjustment to life in the States because of it. And a good chunk of that was (lack of) preparation. When anyone from Youth World asked me if I was ready to go home, I simply said “no.” I caught myself leaning in that direction last week, realizing while I wasn’t grumpy about it, my response was not excited either.

I think that part of that is that I know there are certain things about life and ministry here that simply cannot be understood from the safety of your pew in North America, and I’m bracing for it a little bit. And part of it is that there are a lot of things I am leaving behind this time: more connections, ministry sites and projects to plug back into when I return, knowing that this is my last week of living with Lourdes and her family. What I’m trying to be conscious of and intentional about is things I have to look forward to and be excited about at home.²

Almost a year ago I reminded a friend that wherever she goes, God is preparing her for it and He is there already waiting for her. This week while the craziness of life plus preparing for holidays and travel surrounds me, I’m reminding myself the same thing. Much as there are special people and memories here in Quito

I’m really stoked to see my family and people at church, as well as friends who will be in/around Elizabeth City for Christmas. And not that this is in the same class at all, but I’m also really excited about Mexican food.³ I

¹I had this big internal debate whether to use the expression from El Refugio or to quote the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (“Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.”) I decided that the former was more appropriate, but the latter deserved an honorable mention.

²I hope Cameron doesn’t read this. I misused four prepositions in the same manner in one sentence.

³Contrary to popular belief, the staple foods here are things like rice. Not. Tacos.

Christmas Party to Remember

Tuesday, we had our Youth World Christmas party, a day that I won’t soon forget. I think I must have eaten something sketchy on Monday night, because I felt slightly strange most of yesterday morning, but not bad enough not to work. After lunch, though, Cameron told me I was looking pretty pale, which I’ve learned is a sure sign I’m about to lose whatever food I’ve got in me. Cam drove me home and I actually did get sick, but then slept it off and felt pretty good by 4:15 when I needed to head down the hill to the office for the party. I figured I’d be fine.

Turns out the Christmas party was an “Amazing Race” that split us up into teams and sent us out to see who could make it to the “Pit Stop” first. My team was Casey, Phil Payne, Ivet, Jorge, Kyra and Beth. We were sent out from the YW office, all around Parque Carolina, and then finally to Plaza Foch in the Mariscal. We rode bikes, peeled potatoes, bought Christmas ornaments, and rented paddle boats. I was in a paddle boat with Ivet and Kyra and we’d made it almost all the way around the lake when we realized Jorge had gotten stuck in a boat by himself, so I jumped ship and helped him paddle back around the the lake. This definitely helped us pull out ahead, but twice around the lake was not a good idea for my health.

We finally completed all our tasks, and made it to the restaurant that was our end-point, meeting Brad and Sandi and discovering that we had won. I’m not sure if it just took that long for sickness plus ridiculous amounts of exercise to catch up to me, or if my body was like “Oh, he’s relaxing now, I can finally freak out.” But I began to realize as we hung out, waiting for the other teams to show up, that I couldn’t relax my arms.

Before I knew it, my hands were clenched into fists that I couldn’t release, and my upper legs and forearms were starting to tense up too. Dave Gardeen came over to sit down next to me, and I told him “Go get Casey now.” I’m really thankful that Casey had been on my team so that he was finished at the same time as me. Before he moved to Ecuador to work with Casa Gabriel, Casey was a physical therapist. I truly think I would have had to go to the hospital if Casey hadn’t been there, realizing that I was dehydrated and knowing where to put pressure and what to have me consume to get my muscles to relax and blow flow going back through my arms.

Now, I explained all that concisely in one paragraph, not for lack of description, but that I simply would rather not relive the experience. On a scale of 1-10 from least to worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, it was easily a 9 if not a 10. I threw up a significant amount, and Matt took me home (as in, to his home, so he and Marlo could keep an eye on me).

I have eaten a lot of plain food yesterday and today, relaxed and recovered at the Jensens’ house under Marlo’s supervision, and got to go to the regular Youth World meeting this afternoon. At which I was scheduled to lead worship with Brad. So I got to be in front of all those people who saw me in a pretty embarrassing state two nights ago. I decided to just embrace it, so as I got everyone’s attention before we started to play and sing, I made reference to the fact that I tried to die at the Christmas party, but I was wearing my winning-team-Santa-hat, so it must have been worth it. Mary Scholl shouted out in her best mom voice “And what did you learn?”

To which I responded, “Not to try to keep up with Jorge.”