El campo and free health care!

 

This past weekend I had the privilege of going to my "host aunt's" weekend home in Pilar, which is a town in the country about an hour outside of Buenos Aires. It was right next to a polo field and, for the first time, I truly felt like I was in a different country. I got to meet many of my host family members including my 97-year-old "grandma" (Tati), my "sister" Victoria, my "aunt" Graciella, and my "cousin" Pier. All of them were so kind and interested in talking to me, which was very welcoming! Pier speaks Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese! Throughout the weekend he asked me a lot of questions and corrected my grammar mistakes, which I really appreciated since I'm trying to prefect my Spanish before starting to teach in January!

The main highlight of the weekend was the carne asada! They have a special fireplace/grill in the kitchen of their home to make carne asada (BBQ). It was such a foreign, but amazing thing to have in their house, so I spent most of Sunday sitting by the "grill" writing in my journal and reading ¡Hola!, a Spanish magazine.

On Monday night I met Andrea, an American girl who is staying in the same apartment for this month while she travels around Argentina/ Chile after graduating from University of Washington! She is working on her Spanish and enjoying life after college for a month before she starts working in real estate in WA. Andrea is so sweet and I feel extremely comfortable around her. I can tell she has a very loving heart. Also she was born on the fourth of July like me! Crazy!

Despite my amazing weekend and my new adventures, sadly on Tuesday night things went down hill a little :( After going to a tango lesson at the Sanata Bar with a group of girls from my program and Andrea, we all went out to dinner. While I was ordering, I asked the waitress a ton of questions about the ingredients and the menu, then I decided order a pizza with no cheese feeling secure in the fact that there was no dairy in it... I bet you can all see where this is going! 

Later as Andrea and I were walking back to the bus, I starting feeling itchy, my eyes felt puffy, and I was wheezing a bit. All these feelings came up really fast, so we decided to flag down a taxi to the local hospital, which was the public one. Something very different (and in some ways better and some ways worse) than in the United States is that public health service is free to anyone in the country. Yet, on the down side, the public hospitals are worse than any hospital I have ever been to in my life. So in a moment of panic, Andrea and I told the taxi driver to take us to the closest hospital, which ended up not having enough room for us. We then went to the next closest where I was admitted right away. Although the nurses knew what to do when I got in the building, it was by far the most terrifying allergic reaction I have had in my life. My whole body ached, my eyes were swollen, and my body was trying desperately to reject the dairy. Two hours and an IV later I left the hospital feeling tired and drained, but stabilized. I was so thankful that Andrea was with me and that Clari, an advisor from my program, was at the hospital with me to comfort me and be a source of support.

I thank God so much that I am fine and since then I have been extremely careful. I'm trying to make most of my own food now and my host parents are doing a wonderful job of being careful. They were also extremely caring when I came home and have been doing everything possible to ease my anxiety about my allergies. I know this was a little scary to read, but I wanted to let you all know what happened and that I am fine now!

Love you all so much,

Abbey