Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Still sick...

This the first time I've been sick in Spain and my body decided to compensate by getting really sick during a nasty period of changing weather patterns and high humidity. Needless to say, having a severe head cold in this weather is quite miserable and makes not want to do anything.

Everyone is sick. Especially the Americans. Once one of us catches something, pretty much all of us have it. But in my largest integrated class everyone was sick, not just the Americans.

I'm hoping yesterday was the worst of it. My friends told me that I looked like I was dying. I told them I was. It was really hot and I had so much pressure in my sinuses that I couldn't hear and I had a headache. I also couldn't talk because my throat hurt so much. Not a good day.

Today I can talk and the sinuses aren't as bad but I'm not out of the woods yet. I have developed a cough and runny nose to accompany my sinus problems, headache and sore throat. At least I can hear. That is a definite improvement.

It's oddly helping me learn Spanish as well. I used up all my tissues that I had brought with me so I went to the super today to buy paƱuelos (tissues). People don't have tissue boxes here. They just have what we would consider pocket packs. So, being an economics student, did per unit price evaluations to pick my best deal on tissues. 15 packs for 1,37€. And I was pleasantly surprised that they do not feel like sandpaper on already irritated nose. I have a rather inelastic demand for Puffs right now (meaning I would be willing to pay just about any price for them) but Spain is apparently not even on the demand curve (meaning they are completely unavailable in this country).

Continuing with the educational theme, in castellano class today we were studying verb tenses when describing the function of an object. Fascinating I know, but useful when you don't know the word for something in Spanish and have to describe it instead. So our professor asked us to describe something we would like to know the word for in Spanish. I described cough drops. My classmates were mildly amused. That is definitely something I need the word for because I sound like, as a friend described once, like I kissed the wrong kind of frog prince. The past three days have been really bad. My castellano professor can't even hear me because of my terrible throat. Monday she called on me and no words came out. Tuesday I had the faintest of rasps for a voice. Today it's not quite normal sounding but she could kind of hear me today. Turns out cough drops are "caramelos de la garganta." Throat candies. Makes sense.


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