Convalescence!

Hurrah! At long last, we have returned to the world of the living!

After two unbelievably grueling weeks of finals, papers, presentations and the premature-ending-of-the-Earlham-life, we have crashed through the end of Fall semester 08. Things got pretty ugly at the very end–on Saturday night of last week, as I worked feverishly away on two different papers and two finals, I discovered that my work was more feverish than usual...that lovely lymph-nodes-the-size-of-golf-balls feverish. Everything was pretty downhill from there on: my wisdom teeth became inflamed, my tonsils painfully large, and my mouth exploded in a case of ulcers so bad that foods with the following characteristics were not easily consumed: salty, warm, cold, bland, sweet, sour and solid (liquids were all right, as long as they contain nothing but water).

However, all 8 pages of my amygdala research paper, 9 pages of my physiological psychology take home test, 20 pages of my independent study, 14 pages of my senior seminar and both of my finals were turned in, in spite of the aforementioned maladies. I arrived home on Tuesday morning and was promptly shipped to the oral-maxillo-facial surgeon's office, where they popped my wisdom teeth out in less than half an hour. After that, I settled in to do what I'd been looking forward to for the last two and a half miserably busy weeks: napping on the couch. Admittedly, having a mouth stuffed with gauze and bags of frozen peas plastered to my face wasn't part of the original fantasy, but I was spoon fed smoothies, so who am I to complain?

We're more or less back to normal; still can't eat anything more solid than bread, and my jaw's a little tender, but there's nothing to stop me from packing for NEW ZEALAND! AAAAAAH!

Well, I'd best get back to organizing my life. More on everything later…