Getting Sick in Spain

Spain may feel like a dream that I do not want to wake up from, but it is still real life. You will get sick. The good news - Spain has great healthcare and CIEE will give you good insurance.  The bad news - you may forget 90% of the Spanish you know when you are *ahem" a bit green in the gills. This happened to me last night, a day after returning from Morocco (please do go there, just use hand sanitizer more than I did) with a severe stomach infection. Having had this issue before in India and knowing what it was, I calmly walked myself to the hospital 12 minutes from my apartment. That is when I learned that the hospitals in Almeria are closed on Sundays. Like The-Walking-Dead-empty. I included a picture of the moment I started to panic. I still sat down and waited for a while before a friend messaged me informing me that it wasn't open that day.

 If I thought that I wasn't as sick I would have gone to a farmacia first, and I did try that, but I ended up in the emergency center. Luckily, they are open 24/7 and are very similar to American E.R.s and I was able to get an IV after a short 2 hour sit in the waiting room. I was discharged a few hours after that with a prescription for some anti-biotics.  This morning I woke up feeling physically ready for my first day of classes and tons more confident after getting myself through the E.R. in a foreign country - and that is the important lesson from this experience that I hope that I can pass on: that you can manage to get through the rough stuff if you need to in Spain. It's not even that hard; it's just a little scary when you feel like you're dying. If you want to move abroad as an auxilliar, though, fear is something that you probably already know you can push past.