For KWood

Here is an update just for my friend KWood.  Yes, you are right. I can update more often.

Tomorrow is my last day of langauge school for this round. I start a new course on Monday. Or maybe it's Tuesday. I'm not really sure; Germans write the date first, then the month. Add that to it's being in my third language and to the fact that I am a little dyslexic, and you get the picture. I got through my course and caused no major international incidents. I only made a few memorable mistakes: I called my friend Kristen my girlfriend and when I spelled my name, I said that it ended in "J." 

Things I am thankful for/Things that replenish my joy:

1. The lady at the Deutschpost knows I am an Auslander, so she speaks very slowly to me. 

2. Guys at small group hug each other. Sometimes they even hold hands for a second.

3. Art is seen as worship. 

4. Tommie SMSes me, so now I know that "barf" is snow in Dari. Everytime it barfs, I giggle to myself. Luckily, I haven't estefarked yet. Praise the Father for that one. 

5. Germans sing "Happy Birsday" to each other. 

6. Cake. 

7. Calling my parents in the US costs approx. 1 euro cent/minue. 

8. Dogs are everywhere, and they are all very well behaved. 

9. Good toilet paper is very accessible.  

10. People over here have never heard the one about two muffins in the oven. It's a big hit. 

KWood, I am also jumping ship on fb photos. I'm sick of my work being slaughtered. 

   

Funky Rash

Now that the dust has settled, I will regale you with my tale of woe. 

Weird rash on my legs. Maybe if I pretend that it isn't there, it will go away on its own. Denial is always the best method of problem-solving. By the next morning, I knew it. Lots of red, swollen marks. Bed bugs. OH NO. How disgusting and incredibly inconvenient. When you get bedbugs, your life enters DEFCON 1. All men man your battle stations. Red alert. Unimaginable horrors. 

Jason and Cheryl came over, and I quickly drew them into my own personal War of the Worlds. We stripped my bed and sealed everything in garbage bags. I had visions of having to purchase an entire wardrobe after my clothes would inevitably be reduced to Barbie-size after having to wash them in 90 degrees C. Can I get by with just wearing one sweater for the rest of the winter? Can you wash goose down in near-boiling water? Do they get in your shoes? What about the couches? How do we get rid of stuff without spreading the little buggers to the Dietz house? You need a professional exterminator. How in the world do you say "Bedbug" auf Deutsch? "Bettbugg?" How about just, "AHHHHHHH!!! Hilf mir!" 

After more internet image searching (it is amazing how many people post photos of their revolting rashes for public display- I am not one of them, by the way so don't even ask), we were pretty convinced that it was, in fact, only a funky rash. Oh, praise God for a funky rash. I have never been so relieved to hear someone say, "No, I think you just have a horrible rash since it is confined to your legs. Germans get weird skin problems a lot." Yay! What a relief. Funky rashes only merit DEFCON 4. 

So, again I went back to thinking it would go away on its own. Not so, my friend. By the time I decided going to the doctor would be worth risking public nudity, it was swollen and hot like a staph  infection. In nudity vs. losing a limb, nudity wins every time. Besides, I didn't want to overreact and go to the doctor for no reason. (No comments about the bedbug scare.) By the time we got in to a dermatologist, I was walking like the Michelin Man.

German medicine is interesting for many reasons. Not the least of which is that they usually don't make appointments. You arrive. Then, you sit and you wait. We went to a dermatologist. Too many people were already sitting and waiting and it was almost closing time. So, we went to the family practitioner. She was very sympathetic that I had only lived in Dresden for two weeks and the place had already made my skin erupt in a violent mutiny. She also spoke no English. Good thing I had come prepared with a list of adjectives in German: red, swollen, itchy, vindictive-  my skin hates me. Thank God for Cheryl. She talked the doctor, who had no idea how to label the unspeakable horrors occurring on my lower extremities and who gave me a note to skip ahead of the line of sit-and-waiters at a dermatologist. I was living Doctor: the Board-game.     

Since the dermatologist was closed by now- did I mention it was Friday, and all of Deutschland closes early to go home and eat Nutella, Jason and Cheryl had to take me to the hospital. By hospital, I mean medical village. I'll spare you the details, but we finally found our man: Herrn Chefarzt Professor Dr. med. Uwe Wollina. He is a professor, the chief doctor in the skin clinic, and I'm pretty sure a specialist in dermatological allergies. Oh yes, it was my medical Mecca. By the way, he is fluent in English.  

**Please just be a funky rash, please just be a funky rash. **  Herrn Prof. Dr. Wollina diagnosed my condition and prescribed some antihistamine and some sort of creme. (That's another distinction between medicine in Germany and in the US; they don't load you up with strong pills if they don't have to.) It was "eczema and acute dermatitis," meaning temporary funky rash caused by skin irritation.  Relief followed a few days later. Eventually, everything regained it's normal color and original shape. Luckily, the only things I lost were a roll of garbage bags and a little of my pride. God bless a funky rash that is anything but bed bugs. 

(Oh, and the only thing I had to take off at the doctors' was my sock. So many reasons to praise.)