I have officially survived my first case of “burma belly” (aka food poisoning). Before even coming to Myanmar, I was expecting but dreading my first food poisoning experience. I traveled here with an excessive amount of remedies for all kinds of illnesses to help ease any nerves I had about getting sick but have since learned that nothing but time can really help ease the pain of food poisoning.
On Friday, we finished up our first week of the TESOL course. We spent each day learning about creating lesson plans and how to control a room full of screaming children. It was a jam packed week so I thought I was ready for a weekend to unwind. Before the night even began, one friend came down with food poisoning (bad sign #1). We regrouped after that and headed to dinner where I tried to eat some fried rice but it slowly become more and more unappealing (bad sign #2). Our evening quickly turned around and we all called it early. I’ll just say it was a rough night. It felt like “angry” from Inside Out had grabbed a hold of my insides and was shaking them uncontrollably.
Two of the most important (and special) experiences of the TESOL course are the “camp days”. Having spent a week performing mock lesson plans for our class and acting like 12 year olds when in the audience, it seemed as though the camp days would actually give us a chance to try out what we had learned on real life kiddos. For the first camp, we went to a nunnery outside Yangon. Previously pumped to be surrounded by the pink-clad children, I was now wishing I could simply survive the bus ride. As recommended by our TESOL teacher Justin, I spent the hour and a half there breathing deeply and pretending there was a sun growing from my abdomen. The drive definitely could have been worse and I made it there in one piece.
The nuns prepared a beautiful lunch of rice, salads, and curries which was topped off with strawberry ice cream. I could unfortunately only stomach some watermelon, but it meant a lot and looked delicious. The teaching portion, besides not being able to stand for very long, went better than I thought. The nuns seemed engaged in our lesson about stormy weather and were eager to participate. We would have them repeat vocab words and phrases we had prepared and they YELLED them back at us. They somehow all spoke in the exact same tone and pitch which echoed violently throughout the room, but it was pretty magical. Even though they had limited english, they seemed to pick up our activities well and had a good time (especially when they got to color).
The bus ride back was much more manageable than the way there and I was feeling mediocre by the time we got back. Feeling sick and being in the sun really takes it out of you. I wasn’t up for walking or eating anything by the time dinner came, except pasta with butter. A friend graciously picked some up on her grocery run which I ended up making in a electric pot/wok thing and scooped it out with a spatula. But man there’s nothing better than just some plain pasta. The food here is incredible but that little comfort after feeling crappy was pretty darn nice. I’d say I’m just about fully recovered now and am ready for the local food again, just maybe not from Shan Noodle that infected us all.
