India you magnificent bastard, you finally got me.

This weekend marked the last of our groups adventures outside of McLeod (except for a possible trip to Amritsar, if we can get our act together and all our work done in time). Most found this a bit terrifying, as it means that we only have a couple weeks left in India before we have to return that that miserable armpit of america, ohio. On the bright side, however, we got out of class early on Friday to take a taxi to sherabling monastery,  which everyone was very excited to see as it is generally acknowledged to be a beautiful example of Tibetan monastery-manship, and it was pretty much guaranteed to be one of the highlights of the trip according to Passang la.
India; however, had other plans.
This wonderful country has something of a reputation to keep up when it comes to  tourist horror stories, I have noticed. This can be explained by something our professor would bring up at least once a week last semester: we would all, at some point or another, become extremely ill. Up till this weekend, I was pretty proud of myself as I had managed to keep myself fairly healthy beyond a minor cold that lasted a couple days last month and a sprained and shockingly swollen ankle (that was probably worth a blog post in itself, but I’ll just show you all the x-rays when I get back [yup, it called for x-rays]). Seeing that my own stomach was impervious to everything it could throw at it (mostly sketchy street dahl and samosas), India turned to my only weakness: my stupid Ohioan classmates. On Tuesday, one girl in the group missed classes because she felt sick, but we ignored her ‘cause she’s a girl and it was prolly just cooties. Come Wednesday, another girl had fallen ill, but again we didn’t worry too much about it cause we had better stuff to do, like watch monkeys fight dogs.  On Thursday, yet another gross and slimy girl got sick, and spent what happened to be her birthday with what is referred to among the locals as the “loose motion”. At this point we became a bit worried, although most of us took some comfort in knowing that the bug seemed only to be targeting the girls. Sadly, with only hours left before we were supposed to leave on Friday, Brad became violently ill while walking home from lunch and had to stay home, along with two of the aforementioned girls.
After another terrifying taxi ride through the mountains and rather uneventful night in the guesthouse at the monastery, we had a great day on Saturday touring the monastery and watching a traditional dance and less traditional karate performance. That afternoon, I played soccer with a group of monks of all ages on a rocky and deeply rutted  pitch with goals craftily constructed with bamboo; I should have known that life couldn’t truly be this perfect. Dinner consisted of some of the best food I’ve had yet, and we went to bed happy.
By six thirty the following morning, I was thoroughly drained of all sorts of bodily fluids, well acquainted with the thankfully western style toilet, and haunted by visions of the previous nights feast and its desperate attempts to escape my stomach. That Sunday was spent carefully sharing the bathroom with the guy I had shared the room and the virus with, and together we shattered the  “most toilet paper gone through in one day” record before loading up on Dramamine for the ride home.
You win this round, India.