Physical hardships

Posts on happier things like the Ustuu-Khuree music festival and the khoomei symposium will come as soon as I remember to bring my flash drive into the city with me. In the meantime, I figured I'd alert people to the physical risks of traveling in a foreign country.

I'm well on the road to recovery now, but my body is just starting to get used to life in Tuva. I've dealt with three boils on my left leg, which have had me limping for the past few weeks (I'm carefully plucking anything that might be an ingrown hair, and hopefully my current boil will be my last). This past weekend, I also had a hellish trip to Khandagaity in the southwest corner of Tuva. Two days in a row, something I ate violently disagreed with my stomach. The first day, the result was a full day of involuntary trips to the toilet. The second day, I threw up at the wrestling championships and spent the rest of the day and the bus ride home trying to avoid a repeat performance.

Also at the wrestling championship in Khandagaity, I suffered another setback that's in some ways even more painful than the boils or upset stomach. While I sat and tended to my stomach, I lent my camera to our Tuvan host, who wanted to take some pictures of the wrestlers. Without realizing what he was doing, he managed to accidentally hit the combination of keys to erase the entire memory of the camera. I've been lax in loading my pictures onto my computer and lost about 300 pictures from my time in Tuva thus far. Everything from Ustuu-Khuree, the symposium, and our post-symposium barbeque is gone...

But as they say, what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger. Sean remarked this morning that I'll definitely have a great trip around the world if I can deal with this kind of adversity while staying upbeat about it.