Ha! It’s not that bad. This is how we did it in Bulgaria:
We arrived as a group of 41 new trainees and were taken to a mountain lodge for orientation crap for three days. On the third day, we found out what village/town we’d be spending the next ten weeks. They all surrounded one central city where we met every couple weeks for more stupid meetings and training sessions. Each training site had four to five volunteers assigned to it, where we all lived with host families.
Once we got started, we had five hours of Bulgarian language class a day, plus cultural immersion activities, and then teacher training and student teaching (we were all in training to be teachers). Our language trainer was fluent in English and could help us with communication problems with our host families if they came up.
All that might not sound THAT bad, but there was just a LOT of information being thrown at us all of the time, with pretty much no down time. I was living with strangers, getting used to a new country, and having massive communication issues constantly. It was extremely stressful. I spent a lot of my PST very depressed. Four people in my group quit before the ten weeks were up.
To top it off, two weeks before my group arrived in country, six volunteers were kicked out and sent back to the US for Extremely Naughty Behavior. PC Bulgaria totally overreacted and instituted a bunch of tightass rules on MY group to ensure we wouldn’t be like them. It was really uncool and we were the only group that got this treatment. By the time the next group arrived six months later, they had calmed down.
I’ve mentioned these experiences elsewhere on the boards, so I won’t go into great detail, but:
Having a homeless man hold a knife to my throat. I escaped with a couple gashes but nothing serious, and I think I actually gained quite a lot out of the experience, but not again, thanks.
Having someone I love go to jail.
Having to break up with the love of my life - while I was still deeply in love with him - because it was clear that he was pulling out of the relationship but wasn’t willing to end things himself.
Rolling a car. My (current) boyfriend and I went up to Maine last February for our anniversary, and shortly after we left Boston, a storm blew in. Up in the middle of Maine things were finally clearing up, and they’d received snow instead of freezing rain so the conditions were better and traffic was up to about 45 mph. I was in the left lane but saw that the right lane looked clearer, so I changed lanes. In-between the lanes was a line of snow that had built up a couple inches deep, and as I crossed over it, my wheels lost traction. I couldn’t regain control, and we went over into the ditch and flipped upside down. We were unhurt, the car was covered by insurance, and it was an interesting experience to have once. But we were very lucky in that it happened at a relatively slow speed, we didn’t hit any trees or signs, and there was a highway patrol truck right behind us who called a tow truck.
Worst pain would be keratitis, followed by jaw pain from clenching my teeth at night. The keratitis was caused from my contact lenses. No longer an issue since I had lasik surgery. Yay. It gave me the most screech-inducing, “Please let me die” kind of headaches I’ve ever had in my life. Couldn’t leave a darkened room for 3 or 4 days. I think that’s the most miserable I’ve ever been.
That was even worse than the huge abscess that went unexamined at my first doctor visit, then a week later he finally looked and said I needed surgery IMMEDIATELY. Went to emergency and was in the OR a mere 6 hours later. Trust me, around here that’s as close to instant medical care as you can hope for. I never knew how bad it was until one of the surgeons saw me the next day. It was a look of awesome horror in her eyes. She said she’d never seen anything like it. Took forever to heal…the first few days when it was still draining, the smell just about made me throw up. Got a wicked ugly scar now, but at least it’s over. And the surgeon I had follow up appointments with was really cute.
Having a (presumably) loaded assault rifle pointed at my face.
I was a guest at an event on a Canadian Armed Forces base. I needed the men’s room, and asked directions. The directions were rather complicated, but I figured I could follow them. Apparently not; I turned left when I should have turned right, and encountered a couple of sentries guarding something. Up went the rifles, and on came the questions.
It required radioing for the officer in charge of the event, who came and sorted things out, but the whole time, I was in some soldier’s sights. No fun.
I have had C-sections, stitches, broken bones, Gall bladder pain, UTIs, root canals, etc etc. NOTHING has come close to having air and barium shot up an already irritable bowel.
I had an ovarian cyst burst in the middle of the night, and I remember crawling to the bathroom to pass out on the floor there, thinking that I was going to wake up dead the next day. That was pretty much exactly my thought - “Wake up dead.” I don’t know what that says about me, that I expected to die and it never occurred to me to call anyone, including 911. In spite of the level of pain I was in, I could probably have taken a couple of ibuprofen and got it down to “not thinking I’m going to die” levels and got myself to the hospital. Funny how extreme pain turns your brain to mush.
I also had a frozen shoulder a couple of years ago - only time in my life that I’ve screamed in pain, when the arm with the frozen shoulder fell off the side of the bed. It felt like the joint had snapped.
Going to the doctors with my wife and the doctor telling us she had malignant melanoma and had maybe 6 months to live.
Many experimental treatments and 3 years watching her die
Endometrial biopsy. The gynocologist goes through the teeny tiny opening of the cervix to take samples (yeah plural) of the uterus; they do it in the office, no anesthesia…
Probably a lot like a male having a catheter inserted except since several samples are needed, it’s more than once. All the while you’re in the stirrup position–you ladies know what I mean.
A lot of screaming out loud… :eek:
Oh yeah… I’ve had the misfortune to have this done on 3 separate occasions. Negative all 3 times. Thankfully.
Here is an average day in Cameroon PST. Wake up and choke down some beans with habanero sauce. Your host sister wakes up at six AM to make you breakfast, and you can’t make her stop and sleep in. Water’s out again- no shower. Walk down a dirt road to school, almost get hit by motorcycle. Have six hours of intense language training (four person classes) that you must succeed at if you don’t want to get kicked out. You learn on wooden benches in the dirt in hundred degree heat. Break for lunch and, through a language you can’t speak, find out that the only restaurant in town is out of everything but stewed monkey. Return for more classes on culture, pedagogy, etc. Rush to the bar for a beer and relaxation for an hour after class. Return to your host family, who is demanding more things of you in a language you don’t speak. Eat dinner- it’s the same every day, a whole fish and boiled plantains. Your family gives you shit because you don’t eat the fish head. Have some more awkward time with the host fam until you escape to your room to “do homework.” Fall asleep, and toss and turn in the heat.
Repeat, six days a week, for ten weeks. On Sundays there is no school, and usually your host family will drag you to church (which you can’t understand) and you can wash your clothes (in a bucket.) It’s a huge physical, mental and intellectual challenge, with nearly no downtime and no privacy.
Kyla, it’s not so bad the second time around. I think the hardest part is not knowing what is on the other side is the tough part- now I know that I don’t need to kill myself on language, I’ll have my own house and some privacy soon enough and I don’t need to feel guilty about not spending every minute with the host fam. And China PST is great- the host families live in modern apartment, treat you as adults, and have their own lives. The sessions are well planned and useful. Model school is short and actually fun. The food is good, weekends are full of activities like visiting hot springs and tourist sites. It wasn’t anything like the hell I experienced in Cameroon.
Hm, I think my PST was something between your Cameroon and China versions. I have to say that although my host mom drove me COMPLETELY BATSHIT when I lived with her (let me just tell y’all that there is, literally, no word for “privacy” in Bulgarian), she was also extremely welcoming and friendly and generous despite living in pretty terrible poverty. She was, essentially, a subsistence farmer. She has a big backyard and a plot of land outside of town, plus a cherry orchard up on a hillside, and she grows almost all of her own food. She’s got terrible arthritis, but what is she gonna do? She has to grow her veggies or she won’t have anything to eat.
For twenty years of work under the Communist government, she gets a pension equivalent to 50 euro a month. That’s it. Enough wood to heat her house for the winter (when she only uses the one room that the stove is in) costs three times that. If it weren’t for remissions from her son who lives in Italy, I don’t know how she would have lived…until early last year when she became the mayor of a nearby village. I swear to god. My host mom, who repeatedly asked me why my parents couldn’t drive to Bulgaria from America, was somehow appointed the mayor of a village. Of 60 people. Now she gets a small salary.
The point of all of this rambling is that despite my complaints, it was an experience I learned a lot from and I loved my host family. I went back to visit them several times when I was serving in my permanent site, and I keep in touch with them and send gifts to my host niece and nephew, who are now 10 and 7.
ETA: Oh, and I gained so much weight during PST! My host mom delighted in feeding me sweets and fried things and was extremely proud of herself for making me all fat. She bragged about it to the neighbors. When I got to my permanent site, all I ate for a week was fruit and yogurt.
Jaegermeister - once was enough, twice was stupid, never again.
Managing my father’s death - advanced medical directive, DNR, enforcing said AMD/DNR/will, describing death by opioid overdose/pulmonary embolism, drafting/witnessing will, body preparation, cremation, last personal letter mutating into funereal address. Don’t start me on his friend turning the funeral into a fundamentalist sermon.
Surgery on my eyelids with no anaesthetic. Have you ever had someone put a clamp on your face to hook your eye wide open, place a little protective metal cup over the eyeball, and then apply a little screw press to squeeze the pus out of an infected eyelid swollen to the size of your lower lip, followed by scraping the wound clean with a little spatula and then disinfecting it by sluicing the area with alcohol? I figured out why the Japanese word for “ow” is itai: you can grunt it through clenched teeth without disgracing yourself by crying out loud.
But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is having to go back the next day for the other eye, this time knowing exactly what’s in store.
Fractured skull. The pain wasn’t so bad. Even at 5 years old, I could deal with the pain. It was the vomiting that I had a problem with. It has now been 24.5 years since I fractured my skull and I still have a mental block about vomiting. No matter how sick I am, I just can’t do it.
Kidney/bladder/urinary tract infections, coupled with a severe case of dehydration.
T-boning a pickup truck (in a Hyundai Accent) while going 55MPH, which totaled my brand new car, gave my sister a very bad case of whiplash and caused me to have panic attacks which I still take anti-depressants for (8 months later). On the plus side, the guy in the pickup may have lied about why he turned in front of me, but he never once said it was my fault. And the cops/insurance companies (including his) placed 100% of the blame on him.
Debt. I’ve never been more than $5000 in debt at one time. Now that I’m probably 6-8 months away from being out of debt, I don’t ever want to do it again. Never. Ever. Ever.
Thanfully, I’m a strong believer in “one true love”, and I’ll work damn subconsciously hard to suppress any dissenting opinion - so it won’t happen again. I hope. I know. Because it can’t.
