I weigh 139 pounds.

I knew I was losing weight here, but I had no idea that there was even that much on me to lose--I'm not sure how much I weighed before, but I think I've lost about 30 pounds.

Why do I know this? Well, sooner or later while in Peru some new and exciting illness will get you. I was pleasantly surprised to not have had any health problems, but in some ways I knew it would come sooner or later. I'm not entirely sure what it was. My best theory is altitude sickness, although strangely it hit me coming down from altitude, not going up. Food is almost out of the question for me, both because it felt nothing like food poisoning or really anything I've ever felt and because I ate almost nothing in the 24 hours prior to getting sick. The 8-hour bus from Huancayo to Lima didn't stop, so I was left with half a bottle of water and a bag of bread. Everything I ate after that either Katie or Joseph also ate.

Anyway, at some point while I had collapsed outside and was unable to move or speak more than three words at a time, Joseph said we should go to the medical post and given that I had just spent five minutes trying to control my entire body shivering, I didn't even feel like arguing. Peruvian medicine to the rescue! Obviously since I'm white and foreign the only explanation for them was food, even after I explained my recent eating history. They gave me some sort of injection which helped for a while and mostly made me tired beyond belief. That was fine by me because asleep I didn't have to remember what was happening to me. I woke up today at about 7am to eat one little bread and again at 1pm where I managed both soup and a lamb's eye--guaranteed to cure me, according to my host dad Oscar. The fact that I ate almost half of it before I had to spit out the rubbery mass in my mouth shows that I've improved significantly.

And thanks to my extension to the Huancayo trip to meet with the parent's group and now today's events, Katie and Joseph have done 11 of our 14 classes this week without me.

Gold star!

Matt