I've been sick this week. The kind of sick where you think at first: ah, it's nothing. Then you ignore it for a little bit. Finally you realize: time for a trip to the doctor's office.

Being sick in a foreign country is especially hard. At home, you'd know exactly what to do, who to call, where to go and/or what medicine to buy but abroad, everything is strange, different and difficult. Of course it doesn't help that you're sick and likely feel horrible.

The difference when you're living abroad is that you often have to ask for help.

In my case, I marched into the Deputy Director's office at school and explained my symptoms and what was going on. Mind you in the States, I would <em>never</em> do this. I believe in a pretty solid work-life divide where work is work and what's personal is personal and never shall the two meet. However sometimes (and this was one of those times) you have to take a deep breath and just get over whatever hang ups you have about these things and ask for help.

Somehow, being sick makes it slightly easier to do this.

Luckily, she was really gracious and recommended a doctor (who speaks pretty good English), called the clinic, made a same-day appointment for me and at the end of the day checked in with me once I was back at school.

The funny thing is that I've been taking my antibiotics for only 48 hours and I already I feel a million times better. I didn't realize how un-good I was until today when I find myself feeling significantly better. Ah, medicine.

In hindsight, maybe I should have known sooner that I was sick and gone to see the doctor a little sooner given the fact that at one point last week I thought: I'd rather go to sleep rather than cook dinner, blog, watch tv, grade papers or read a book.

Now that I am on the mend, I still don't feel like grading papers but the other things seem don't seem so hard.