前途: A Year in Morocco

You know, in the good ol’ U.S. of A., I never used to get sick. It has been years since I’ve had to skip school on account of illness (injuries, however, are another story; friends might remember my butternut squash splinter, or when I unintentionally crushed my hand in the table joint at work, haha). It is to be expected, however, to get sick when one leaves one’s home country, simply due to the fact that one may encounter new and unfamiliar germs, as well as unusual foods and food handling conditions which are vastly different than the ones in the U.S.

At our pre-departure orientation, we were all told to expect to get some intestinal woes as part of the adjustment process. Been there, done that, wasn’t fun. This time around though, I got hit with some sort of cold.

Wednesday night I slept from 9 pm to 8 am, woke up, canceled my class, computed for ~2 hours, then went back to bed from about 10 am to about 2 pm, woke up to make ginger/carrot/turnip soup, and returned to bed around 10 pm that night. Symptoms were headache, sinus pressure, stuffiness, drainage, dry coughing, and an intensely sore throat. This amount of sleep, combined with a high intake of tea, orange juice, pamplemousse (grapefruit), an Airborne, and water, seemed to quell the beast.

Except for the sore throat and dry cough, which are now lingering around and driving me crazy. Cough drops aren’t exactly something you find on the shelves of any grocery store, so I did some internet research and whipped up a cough syrup with things I keep around the house.

I heated up the honey since it crystallized over the past couple cold months, and mixed about a third of a cup with a tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice and about 2 inches of ginger root, pressed in my garlic press. This works fairly well, both to soothe the throat and stop the cough which is caused by the itchy throat, although I seem to need a teaspoonful every hour or so.

So I think, before it gets too much closer to sunset, I will take a walk over to the grocery store for more lemon, honey, grapefruits, and strawberries, and maaaaybe some ice cream (don’t tell my dairy allergy!) and insha’allah the vestiges of this cold will disappear quickly enough for me to be able to teach next week.