17 november

One of the first times I was sick in Ukraine was when I was in training. I had been there for about two weeks or so, and my stomach decided to give out (give in? definitely out, I think). It was gross.

I didn’t want to get out of bed, except to go to the bathroom, and everything seemed so much awful to deal with. Public restrooms in Ukraine are not easy to find, and if you find them, they are not free. Those restrooms that do exist do not have toilet paper, and many have squat toilets, also referred to occasionally as Turkish toilets.

I’m lucky that this was a short-term illness, lasting only a few days. I’m also lucky that my host mother was infinitely kind to me, and only a few horridly awkward pointings in the dictionary were necessary to indicate the situation. She pointed out words that translated as “adjustment” and “environment”, which were polite. I didn’t think there was an appropriate word that I could point to that meant “Man, sometimes there’s really a lot of grease on my food sometimes! I wonder if it’s all vegetable oil or if any of it’s ever from meat? Man, fried food really isn’t that great for me and my digestion!” Plus, what did I know? Ira, my host sister, was dispatched to the store to get me some bottles of water so I could mix up dehydration salts—though, re-reading that, I bet they were probably hydration salts, right? I was allowed to sleep, and there was talk about contacting my teacher as needed.

It was a rough few days, and I remember feeling alternately awkwardly self-conscious and melodramatically weak. Oh, poor me! Now, where’s a bathroom? Still, it passed. I always had a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the frying of foods, but “adjustment” to my “environment” could have been the real culprit.

About a year later, this experience came up unexpectedly when I was chatting with Blythe, who had lived with my host family a few months after me.  I had been their first American, so I was thrilled to know that it had been such a good experience for them that they’d decided to go through it again. The first time I had spoken with Blythe I had been pretty confused, but it was very cool to know that I had a sort of step-host-sister out there. Anyway, during this chat, Blythe mentioned “the yogurt incident”, which left me totally confused.

“You know, when you had that yogurt that made you so sick, when you were living with Tamara--?”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and told her so.

As it turned out, Tamara had remembered that I had eaten yogurt for breakfast the morning that I had gotten sick, and she had decided that it was the yogurt that had made me sick.

What? Again, I had no idea, and told her so.

“See,” said Blythe, “I was sort of suspicious about that, too. I’ve had yogurt here other places, and it was fine, but she never served me yogurt while I was there, because it made you sick.”

“But it didn’t—“ Or did it?

I couldn’t believe it. All this time, Tamara had believed that it was the yogurt that had made me sick. Not only had she immediately stopped serving me yogurt—which I apparently hadn’t even noticed—but she had refused to serve the American who came after me yogurt. Unreal.

Anyway, it gave me at least one more word to point to in the dictionary after “adjustment” and “environment”: “incredulous”.