Sunday, September 13, 2009

sick nasty

This entry is going to be kind of gross and if you're not into stories about mass food poisoning, you should probably stop reading now. Thanks :)

Last Tuesday I made the 10 hour trek to Veliko Tarnovo (in Central BG) for a Project Design & Management conference with about 40 other B25 volunteers and their counterparts. I was so excited to see all of my friends and hang out for a few days... after the all day meetings. Keep in mind when PC finds hotels they have to find ones equipped for large groups and conference rooms. So they found a really nice 4-star hotel in VT. (I checked the hotel's website.) The hotel also has a restaurant where we were served breakfast, lunch and dinner. To give my personal opinion, the food really wasn't that great to begin with... and I'd venture to say that most other people there agreed.

Anyways, every night I stayed out very late dancing/karaoking/hanging out with everyone else. Our meetings started at 9am and lasted til about 5 or 6pm. On Thursday I was so exhausted and skipped out on breakfast and lunch. By dinner time a couple of girls and I decided we'd skip out on the hotel dinner and go to a local restaurant. After dinner I started feeling not-so-hot but still went out and danced the night away.

Friday morning my roommate woke me up at 845 and asked if I was going to go to the meeting. My response was, "If I move I'm going to throw up." Which is exactly what happened. So I took a shower and eventually went downstairs for the last day of the conference. I was there for 30 minutes before I had to run out of the room and try to make it to the (not close at all) bathroom. Unfortunately, I didn't make but was able to run outside and throw up on the hotel's patio. This is when I found out that a few other people didn't show up in the morning because they'd got sick. And by that afternoon there was at least 20 other people who'd gotten sick... like we're all having intimate dates with the toilet.

This is also the day everyone is supposed to leave... except for me, Jon and Dan because we're all 10-11 hours away. I'm SO glad I didn't have to get on a bus on Friday. I would NOT have made it. Either way, as the day continued... more and more people were getting sick. I'd venture to say about 40-50% of the 90 people at the conference got sick. The boys and I had planned to go walk around VT and check out the city but that obviously did not happen.

Saturday morning I woke up and made it to the bus - not sick - but with an aching body and just wanting to be home. Many, many hours later I made it back to Razlog and ended up having to wait another 2 hours for my bus to my village. And then I ended up crying in the bus station since the bus was 30 minutes later than usual (weekend schedule maybe?) and it was just embarrassing. 11 hours later, I was home.

So even though we all wanted to die, it was fun nonetheless! Since we are in PC, I guess it had to happen sometime. I even got a few pictures before my camera died.

View from my hotel room of the city

Scott and Dan with their juice boxes and matching jackets. Love it.

Meg, me and Cory... 2 of my favorites





6 comments:

Jacci said...

aawww poor you!! I'm sorry you got sick :( Glad you still had fun though. I think you need to kick the picture taking up a notch. Please and thank you. LOVE!

Kelsey @ Seattle Smith's said...

Food poisoning is the worst, and I can't even imagine dealing with that in a conference or traveling. Hope you're feeling better!

Unknown said...

Veeves!!! I'm so sorry but am glad you made it back with out getting sick on yourself. That would have been a little yucky. I hope you learned a lot. And I agree with Jacci...you probably could take the picture taking up a notch!
LOVVVVVEEEE YOU!

vicki said...

So sorry you got so sick...did the hotel take any responsibility? Did anyone say they were sorry or try to find the root cause?

Jennifer N. Hernandez said...

i'll send you some of that food the astronauts eat. that should do ya. i love you... i would say i wanna come visit but after that story not so much :) LOVE YOU & I MISS YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!

Jan Kelley said...

sorry to hear that you experienced these icky events in your journey,m but at least they will make every other day seem successful against that little backdrop. Keep the faith baby.