June 19, 2008

Panic. Sheer panic. The alarm went off at 3:50am. Disorientation, adrenaline, paralyzed. I woke up this morning not knowing what to do. The panic in my mind was so intense, I literally could not move. I got up the courage to ask Drew if he wanted snooze or off…typical morning routine. Snooze. Hell, I knew I couldn’t “snooze” today. I had to get up. So I hit the snooze, sat in bed, bending my fingers, willing myself to get out of bed. This was sheer torture. We loaded the car, said a prayer, and off we went. We got to the airport with no complications, we got through check-in with no complications. We got on the airplane, once again, no complications. In fact, overall, there really have been no complications, a smooth transition.

We had an hour layover in LA while they cleaned the plane. We re-boarded and headed for Mexico City. By the time we were about 30 minutes out of the city, I mentioned to Drew that I wasn’t near as freaked out as I had been that morning. For some reason though, there was some extremely turbulent air for the last 20 minutes of the flight. We would drop – not just a little drop – but the kind of drop that makes your stomach muscles spasm. THEN, while landing, I swear they were drunk cause the plane tilted significantly to the right…..I was honestly surprised we didn’t land on the wing. Everyone started cheering and clapping after this because we had landed, if not smoothly, at least we had landed.

We then had to go through immigration. That took almost an hour and a half. The airport was hot and stuffy and no one was happy. We then had to go through customs and I had an apple in my backpack for Drew to eat if he wanted it while we flew. They laughed at me for having it and made lots of random Spanish comments about it that I couldn’t understand. All in all, it went very smoothly, no rummaging through suitcases, nothing.

Drew and I were both worried that our chauffer wouldn’t be there since we were so late. He was. Thank goodness! He introduced himself and said his name was so and so and yo habla en espanol solomente. So he wouldn’t talk to us in English. We didn’t have much to say to each other on the 2 hour car ride down to Cuernavaca. He spoke English, but he wasn’t going to speak it with us, so unfortunately, we didn’t talk much. On the drive down here, I was having a major panic in my head. All these houses on top of each other. And what are those big black containers on top of everyone’s houses? What if we live in one of those? What if that’s considered “middle class”??? So we get to the place, and since it had a # on it like an apartment, that’s what I was expecting. Come to find out, it is a gated community with a policeman at the gate to let people in. It is a small home, but they have 2 guest rooms attached to the house. We can come in a different entrance and everything. We got here, and their house helper, Pedro helped us in with our luggage. Lydia, the wife made us “spaghetti” when we got there. We washed our hands and went upstairs to eat. (our little room is down some stairs in the backyard).

For some reason when we went up there, I got so nauseated, I was freaking out. I didn’t want to eat a thing, but the pressure of pleasing houseguests made me grab some salad. They had put this extremely potent mustard salad dressing on it. I could barely choke it down. Under normal circumstances, I’m sure it’d been fine, but not tonight. Then she made spaghetti that consisted of noodles, cheese, and onions. The smell wafting through my nose made my stomach turn. I did NOT want to eat it. Since I couldn’t communicate how I was feeling, I grabbed a small bit of it to put on my plate. The stuff hit my tongue and I didn’t know if it was more polite to run to the sink to hurl, or go outside. I was panicking. I was in a cold sweat and told Drew I wasn’t feeling well, extremely nauseous. He tried to translate it for the couple and Lydia brought me some random pill that was supposed to help with upset stomachs, like a pain killer. I said gracias. There was no way I was taking that without knowing what it was! Yeah, it was in a sealed container, but I didn’t want to take it.

FINALLY, we were able to go back to our room after a huge discussion about what we wanted for breakfast. Hell, I couldn’t keep down what I was eating, there’s no way I was going to be able to eat breakfast! I went to lay down on the bed for a while cause not moving seemed the only thing I was going to handle. After a while, I was ok enough to go take a shower. Thank goodness we have our own bathroom. Twin beds, but our own bathroom, I’ll take it. Not fun, but what do you do? So here I am, 930pm, exhausted beyond belief, sick as hell, not wanting to go to bed cause then I have to deal with the stress of tomorrow. Orientation. 8:00am. Ugh. I sure hope this gets easier for a little bit. :/