Piggy on sabbatical

My time in France is nearly up. I've got two weeks with the little ones before boarding my plane back to the U.S. and A. Where I will promptly board another plane bound to South America. Lima, to be exact. Followed by Cusco, La Paz, San Pedro de Atacama, Arica, and Miami.

I'll skip over the logic (or lack thereof) I've exercised in taking yet another trip without job or a solid savings cushion to fall back on. To avoid major freak out, I'm attempting to follow Dave the Scot's "Two Rules of Life."

Rule number one: Never worry about the small things.
Rule number two: Everything in life is a small thing.

(As a sidenote, do you ever need help justifying a ludicrous trip to yourself? Use this foolproof affirmation: My prospective trip to [insert exotic destination here] is a once in a lifetime opportunity. For instance, my prospective trip to the Falkland Islands is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Or, my prospective trip to Greenland is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Say it out loud, and stress once in a lifetime! It works, trust me.)

The fact remains that, for better or for worse (and I'd venture to say for better), I will be Andes-bound on May 20th.

Here is a map.

The reason I've provided said map is twofold. First, and don't be offended, because I know that South American geography isn't an emphatic component of American education. Second, because this is a special map. Can you find Peru and Bolivia? Sweet. Can you see what color they are? Correct! Yellow! And not as in sunny or hot. As in fever, the yellow kind.

Traveling to Andean regions requires immunization against a slew of deadly diseases. These include Hepatitis A and B, Tetanus, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever. As of yesterday, I was missing three: Hep A, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever. I probably could have waited to get my shots, but French medicine being what it is (socialized and awesome), I opted to surrender my naked shoulders to French nurses and get them all in Saint-Etienne.

Yellow Fever is only provided at the Hospital. I had to call and make a rendez-vous with the Service des Maladies Tropicales (Tropical Diseases). Fairly simple and straightforward. I booked an appointment and showed up as planned. And aside from the somewhat terrifying nature of being in a French public hospital, specifically, in the Department of Tropical Diseases, where the waiting rooms are papered with fliers about Bird Flu and Dengue and Malaria, my first shot went off without a hitch.

Hepatitis A and Typhoid, on the other hand, are done at the Centre de Vaccinations (Vaccination Center). Or so I was led to believe. I had called before to make sure, since there is some still incomprehensible rule about getting a Yellow Fever shot the same day as your other shots (otherwise you have to stagger it?), and I was assured by an amiable voice that the Centre de Vaccinations was the place to go.

So I showed up after lunch, chock full of Yellow Fever and eggplant and goat cheese pizza from Chez Franco. I walked into the waiting room filled with parents and their sullen children watching educational cartoons on a wall-mounted TV.

Je peux vous aider?

Can I help you? I was asked by a smiling woman.

Yes, I replied, I'm here for my Hep A and Typhoid vaccines.

Smiling woman: Vous les avez acheter? (Did you buy them?)

Me: Non, j'ai appelé il y a quelque semaines, et on m'a dit de venir aujourd'hui. (No, I called a few weeks ago and was told to come in today.)

No longer smiling woman: Comment ça? Attendez un instant, madame. Je vais vous faire parler avec ma collègue. (How's that? Please wait a moment, ma'am. I'm going to have you speak with my colleague.)

Fine, I thought. I have to pay for them first, apparently.

Minutes later, I was in the front office speaking with la collègue.

Me: Alors, je suis içi pour les vaccins contre l'hépatite A et la typhoïde. (So, I'm here for the vaccines against Hep A and Typhoid.)

La collègue: Mais vous ne les avez pas acheter? (But you haven't bought them.)

Me (beginning to get pissed off): Non, mais je peux les acheter maintenant! (No, but I can buy them now!)

La collègue (pausing): ... Mais il faut les A-CHE-TER. (But you have to BUY THEM.)

Me (officially pissed off, FUCK this lady is such a condescending asshole): Et bien, je peux les A-CHE-TER MAINTENANT. (Yes okay, I can BUY THEM RIGHT NOW.)

Okay, so as it turns out, I'm the asshole. The asshole who failed to process the subtle difference between acheter and payer (buy and pay). Because in France, you have to buy your vaccines at a pharmacy. And then bring them to a Vaccination Center. And have someone do the shooting up for you.

It's a depressing moment indeed when you realize that even though you've lived in a country for over six months and spoken the language and feel integrated and confident about your ability to navigate the local culture, you can fall so miserably short of basic comprehension. At moments like these I feel like I should be narrating a cautionary children's story about a big overgrown dummy (i.e. ME). See Katie. See Katie insert foot in mouth.

At any rate, I had plenty of time to go buy my Hep A and Typhoid vaccine at a nearby pharmacy (I wonder what would happen if I asked for a vaccine at an American pharmacy?) before closing time at the Vaccination Center. So I did. And then I returned, apologetic, contrite. And I thanked the staff. Profusely.

Note: I'm taking a break from blogging until I come back from my South America trip. Check back for updates on new travels in June!

Oslo: A Night in a Hostel

It snowed on and off today, but that didn't stop you from rising early, around 8 am, which is early for vacation, and hopping onto a bus out to the Bygdoy peninsula where you had read you could see the remains of three Viking ships and old Norwegian homes and an exhibit on Sami culture and Norwegian folkdresses. You realize now that this morning you should have chosen to put on your thick wool socks instead of "saving them" for Tromsø. You figured Oslo couldn't be as cold as the Arctic and wore thin, gray cotton socks which have been thoroughly soaked after trudging around in snow and ice and more snow. You thought you might be getting sick this morning but you figured hey I'm only in Oslo for a day I can tough it out and spend the daylight hours outside taking it all in.

But you are sick. All day you've felt the lump in your throat grow more painful and each time you swallow you feel like there's a hole somewhere that keeps getting bigger and bigger and you wish you had something, like a thermos of hot tea or a Ricola to suck on. Your cough has evolved from light to hacking and there are traces of phlegm on your tongue and you want to spit them but that wouldn't be a very polite thing to do on the streets of this clean Scandinavian city. And you can't feel your feet now so you should probably give up and hop on one of those silent, electric-powered trams that will take you back to your hostel where you have had the unbelievable luck of winding up alone in a four-person suite. It's about 4 pm now and you know the sun will set in another hour so you don't feel too bad even though you have to head home before going to the Vigelandsparken where there are a whole lotta statues each depicting a stage of the human life cycle and that just sounds so cool.

When you get back to the hostel you want to ask at the reception if anyone else has checked into your room but you worry about getting phlegm on the guy and anyway your throat is really killing right now. You need a hot shower and a hot cup of tea and a fresh pair of socks. You get to your room and feel unlucky the minute you see a suitcase next to one of the other beds and track marks from shoes that have obviously not been wiped before entering the bedchamber. Or the bathroom, you realize, as you walk in to use the toilet and see that your new roommate has tracked muddy snow onto the white tiles of the suite bathroom. You try not to get upset and decide to take a shower and jump into bed where you can read your collection of Chekhov stories and fall asleep. Sleep is important when you are sick, and anyway you have to wake up at 5:30 am tomorrow to catch your train to Rygge airport to catch your plane to Tromsø. The shower is long and scalding and though your body feels less achy and your feet are finally warm all the congestion has risen to your head and you worry you might have a fever. So you get into bed and read for a while before deciding that you can allow yourself to fall asleep at 8 pm and that way you'll get a good solid 9 hours of sleep and feel much better in the morning.

Your new roommate wakes you when she walks in at 10 pm although you figure you can fall right back to sleep since she's not being loud, she hasn't decided to take a shower, she's simply changed into her pajamas and gotten herself into bed. You turn over onto your side in order to avoid the trickle of mucous out your nose and close your eyes and think about people back home and how you wish one of them could be here and cheer you up because you just feel sick as a dog. And even though you don't want to you think about past lovers as if you didn't already feel bad enough. And then every little detail of everything that has made you worry in the past few months floods your brain until you have to open your eyes in order to escape. You get up and go to the bathroom to use the toilet and drink some water because your throat feels like sandpaper and you look at yourself in the mirror and your eyes are bloodshot and you have crust under and on your nostrils and your lips are chapped.

You head back to bed only your roommate has started snoring and now you are really concerned because you forgot to bring your ear plugs with you, you always do this, you think, why don't you ever learn. You are so sick you should be able to sleep through it you should be able to you should sleep because it's midnight and how did that happen? How is it midnight already? You can only get 5 hours of sleep now and you had better do it otherwise you're going to be miserable tomorrow and you want to enjoy the flight up to Tromsø because you will see glaciers and fjords and all the things you came here to see and enjoy.

She won't stop snoring. You start moaning in bed, softly at first and then loudly hoping that she will hear you and wake up and correct her sleeping position so as to STOP SNORING but it doesn't work. Then you yell out STOP IT very loudly and think you're in trouble now but she actually stops for a moment or two and then is back at it. You reach for your Zune and do it really loudly still hoping that she will wake up because you don't care anymore if you're not getting any sleep because of her why should she get any sleep. You search for your Echos of Nature and you say thank you, thank you Josh for giving you these mp3s back in sophomore year of college when you were having trouble relaxing and the sound of rain falling could make your lower back unclench and salve your mind like a balm. And suddenly you hear your phone make a sound like you just received a text message and you realize that you've actually been sleeping and you look at your phone and it's 4 am. You wonder who the hell could be texting you at 4 am in Norway and why your stupid phone works in this country instead of losing reception and service like it did in Germany and Portugal and Holland. And then you see who texted you and now you really can't sleep because you're back to thinking about old flames and your roommate hasn't stopped snoring and your ears actually hurt a bit because the Zune earbuds are a too big for your earholes. Your nose has also started hemorrhaging and you need to blow it and you can feel the skin between your upper lip and your nostrils getting chapped and irritated and goddamnit how is it possible for someone to snore through the entire night?

You are going to slam that door when you leave at 6 am and you are going to be as loud as you can because this is really unbearable and you can't remember the last time you had such a tortuous night. Only an hour left now.