The Food Here

Some time ago I decided it was a good idea to gain some weight before Peace Corps.
My goal was to gain twenty pounds before being shipped off to Russia based on the assumption I would be in mortal peril if my current frame became any leaner. So I ate and I ate. Even when I didn't want to. When stressed or lethargic I crammed something down my throat.

Slowly but surely over the course of a month I added an extra five pounds. I was quite elated by this. I was on the road to filling out six years after puberty. I kept on eating until the Avalon offer came on the table.

Within a week of my arrival I lost those five pounds.

Things were leaking out of me for days. If I can expel a liquid I have done it in this nation. First it was the cold. Snot coming out of my nose, snorted up and spit out. On my bed, on my floor, on my clothes. Then it was the diarrhea. The food initially reacted poorly with my Americanized digestive track. Every time I took a shit there was some bizarre concoction in the toilet. More a kin to fireworks than human waste. I still have yet to make a completely solid deposit over here.

But my favorite was the food poisoning. Some subway green peppers incapacitated me for a day. After a night of drinking and drunk food I expelled the contents of my stomach in too desperate bursts. The pink slime of the former Southwest Sauce burns. More than the vodka, the sandwich sauce expulsion was pure, unadulterated agony. When it was all said and done I think I threw up about seven thousand calories.

My precious bodily fluids have been affected profoundly by the food even in this very westernized country. Me, the man who ate four packages of pesticide-coated morning glory seeds and didn't vomit.

I leave you with the words of the prophet:

"If we have learned anything in this life it's that the more drugs you do, the better time you have."
-The Hon. Matt Moore