Don't take your voice for granted!

It all started last Friday with a little sore throat and fever and progressed until Tuesday when my voice decided to disappear. It has been completely gone since then, not just a hoarse raspy voice, but GONE! Let me tell you it has been an interesting few days. I can't answer my phone at all. The few times I have attempted to have a conversation have not gone well. I usually just end up hanging up in frustration.

Nick and I were out to dinner one night this week after I lost my voice and the waitress was so excited. She kept telling me how she always wanted to lose her voice and she thought it was so cool. Yeah, just wait till it happens to you...not that glamorous. It's so hard to communicate with people.

The other day I was sitting in class, and I kind of forgot about my voice because it's been like this for 3 days now and Nick is just used to it being gone so he doesn't look at me funny when I try to talk. Anyway, I raised my hand to make a comment and as soon as I started talking everyone turned around to stare, let me just say it was awkward. It took me a minute to realize why they were all looking at me, then I remembered my stupid voice.

I went to the Dr. this morning to see if I could get anything to help it out. The news was not good. All she told me was that a respiratory virus was going around and that my vocal cords were inflamed and there wasn't an antibiotic I could take, and all she could give me was a cough suppressant and a humidifier. Then bad went to worse when I asked how long I would be without a voice. 1-2 weeks! That is a long time to not have a voice. It is hard to do normal things without it.

I guess all I have left to do is rest my voice as much as possible and hope its closer to 1 week than 2, and be glad its nothing more serious.

Graduation!

Is only 7 weeks away! Well, 51 days to be exact. I am starting to get really excited. I just finished a super busy week at school and it hit me that I only have to go through that one more time for finals. WEIRD. I better start researching graduation presents to get myself... maybe a nice trip somewhere?

Now I just need to make sure Nick graduates with me. His counselor told him he is missing some requirements. Hopefully he gets that figured out soon, because I am not ready to spend another year here.

Kiva/Valentines

Nick and I decided to have a low-key Valentines this year. So instead of buying each other gifts we decided to make a small microfinance loan through KIVA. It's a pretty cool website. I spent a couple hours looking through all the people and we finally settled on one. His name is Akram from Palestine.

http://www.kiva.org/lend/174583

There's the link if you'd like to check it out. It's a pretty cool website.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Craving

Note to me: Turning on the Food Network as soon as I get home from school is not good for my health. Not only do I want to eat everything I see them make, but then there are commercials for things like this. YUM! Anyone want to go out for ice cream with me?

Hilarious Happenings at the Pool

Wednesday morning I had quite an interesting experience at work. It was just after 6:30 am and I was sitting in the lifeguard stand at work when one of the 80 year old women in the water aerobics class approached me asking where the bathroom was. I pointed her to it and thought nothing of it...Until, about 5 minutes later I look towards the lobby of the pool and see her exiting the bathroom.

Now she had been wearing a black bathing suit, and was kind of far away, but I knew she no longer had the suit on. I was frozen. I couldn't leave the lifeguard stand since I had to watch all the other people in the pool, so I just watched her out of the corner of my eye. I saw her approach the pool office where one of the boys I work with was sitting. He later told me that she was hiding behind the wall and asked if anyone was there. When he answered she was surprised, and said oh you're a boy. He offered to go find a girl to help her, but she said "oh no thats ok, you can just help me." The 19 year old boy I work with then had to pull her suit on over her bum and then help with the straps. This couldn't have been easy because her suit was pretty tight. I know because when she walked back towards the pool she asked me to help her readjust some things.

Super awkward. I definitely wasn't expecting to get that kind of show when I went in to work. And I bet my coworker wasn't either. I don't think he gets paid enough for that kind of service!

this week.

to do:

-nick

Our First Apartment Pictures! (well half of them at least)

These are just a few quick pictures. I still need to get our 2 bedrooms cleaned up to post pictures of them, but I did laundry this week and all my clothes are currently sitting on the bed waiting to get put away. Hopefully that happens before I wear them all and its time to do laundry again! Our apartment is old, but we like it. We have tons of storage space, which is good because somehow we accumulated a lot of stuff when we got married. It's a fun first apartment and we are pretty comfortable here. I just need to motivate myself to decorate a little more, but thats hard when we'll be packing it all up to move to China in less than 8 months.