November has already proven to be an interesting month, but for now I would like to revisit the end of October. I haven’t documented YAV retreat number 2 on my blog, so here is a quick review of some of the events. Wednesday October 26th was Diwali, so I left early Wednesday morning to visit Aluva. Nicole, Ian, and Claudia joined us on Thursday and we began Retreat number 2. Thursday, I searched and searched for Parks and Recreation on the Internet, and sure enough, I got to watch 3 whole episodes of my favorite show! On Friday our day was fairly….intense. We spent almost all day long sharing. First we shared reflections in Bible Study, then opened up to the larger things we have been encountering this past month. We shared all of the wonderful things about our sites, and also openly shared about our hardships. It was also Betty Kochamma’s Birthday on Friday! We had a nice celebration for her with friends and family, great food and great music. Binu played some really some of her favorite songs. Achen fed her cake. It was a really beautiful display of family love. I am so grateful that we are now a part of their family as well. On Saturday we went to a mall. Yes….a mall. We all found a few goodies from a bookstore very similar to Barnes and Noble. I spoiled myself with a few movies! On Saturday night I skyped with my family and I was reminded of how lucky I am to be blessed with their awesomeness. On Sunday October 30th we went to church, had some lunch, and boarded a train back to Kottayam. I was sad to leave the little oasis that is the Aluva house. It was a great time for a little bit of pampering, comfort, and joy. I rested that night ready for school the next day and excited to be back at Buchanan.
October 31st was full of a few scary things as usual, but not the kind with trick-or-treating. I woke up with a high fever. Luckily on the Buchanan campus we have a “hospital.” I put it in quotes not because it is a fake hospital or is unworthy of the title hospital, I would just like for all of you readers to adjust your idea of what a hospital is for a moment. In the U.S. people in hospitals are very sick, constantly monitored, and hooked up to all kinds of machinery charting the progress of the gravely ill patient. You probably recall your last trip to an American hospital, and when you read the word here, you may be projecting that experience ever so slightly into my explanation of the medical system. Please don’t. Stay Calm. In Kerala hospitals are for the sick, of course, but they are for all kinds of illnesses. Every illness is welcome in a hospital because each hospital has specialists who can cater to different sicknesses. So the hospital doubles as a doctor’s office for many illnesses that in the U.S. we would normally just get a pill for and go home. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will continue my story.
The Doctor at the Buchanan hospital didn’t really know what to do with my unrelated symptoms of nausea, but he did see that I had a severe ear infection in both ears. If this diagnosis sounds familiar to you close friends and family, you are right! I had an ear infection in August after Stony Point before I came to India. So, with some advice from the teachers, I went to Mandiram Hospital. They told me I might be there for up to three days so I packed some clothes and hoped for the best. Nicole lives and works at Mandiram Society which is part of the hospital’s institution. Naturally, I gave her a call. She was sick too and her symptoms were eerily similar to mine, so we were going to be admitted to the hospital together. We were both suffering from dehydration, so we were treated for that. The ENT titled my illness a “chronic ear infection” since it hadn’t fully healed since August, and started me on Antibiotics right away. Nicole and I were right next door to each other in the M.Ward. It was a place of rest that looked very different than an Amercian hospital, but not at all bad different. There were no wires hooking up to complex machines, no bed that moved up and down with the touch of a button, and no TV. The room included a bed, an extra bed for family, and a bathroom attached to the side. My window overlooked the garden, a cleaning service came daily to keep things nice, and our food was taken care of by Mandiram Society. We were monitored very often by the nurses, and we also had many visitors from the outside world. Claudia came to visit, Jaimol Kochamma and her husband came twice, and countless members of the Mandiram staff spent their time to come see us.
Nicole was released on Thursday the 3rd with a good report, and I was released Friday morning with many pills and an order to continue resting. To get back on my feet, I stayed at Mandiram Society until this morning. My days were full of rest, recovery, and really good company. Nicole has been such a blessing to have during these difficult times. We worked through the challenge of being sick and far from home together. We even helped give our families some peace of mind to our greatest abilities.
This illness also helped me to recognize some small opportunities for me. An opportunity to give myself grace for my lack of energy for the past two months, an opportunity to rest and not feel lazy about resting, and an opportunity to change my focus. I became very honest with myself in many of my discussions with Nicole and started getting to the root of some of my problems as a person. I often focus too much on affirmation from external sources to feel self- worth. I am sharing it because I am aware that it is a common issue in people. I have been lacking in my ability to internally affirm myself for my whole life. In other words, I am very self-critical and my natural internal nitpicking is doing a lot to reverse the effectiveness of my year here. I have been reaching out to those external sources ever so slightly even here in India, and that is something that needs to stop being about affirmation and more about support. I am not doing this year to “find myself” but I am doing it so I can focus on what I like about myself here, and in general. A huge part of discernment is internal, and I feel that it is important to become more in touch with the good things about me and how to create affirmation for myself. So here I am, back at Buchanan, ready for another week of school. The joy of interacting with children is one thing that really helps me be myself. I like me around kids. So until I’m at a point of utter nirvana with self-acceptance, you can find me here among the children, counting the many blessings they provide.Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. They were felt all the way across the world!
“If you hear a voice within you that says, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh (the first quote I turned to today in my quote book)
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