My head is a balloon, coated in slime and stuffed with cotton. My body is a lead weight. These symptoms, combined with the "orange-flavored" powered medicine I'm taking to try to dry out my sinuses, makes for mild nauseousness. When I'm on the train and hearing all the sniffling and nose-blowing and coughing produced by myself and the other passengers, a small, paranoid part of me starts panicking, "We're dying! We're all dying!" Yes, okay, so that is technically true, but not at the rapid rate that this paranoid part wants to believe. Perhaps reading The Stand wasn't such a great idea at this time of year.

I was supposed to go with Shannon today to her lunchtime classes to meet the students (since those are the classes I'll be taking over starting next week), but the first class wanted to take her out to lunch and there's no way anyone would be able to keep an appetite with me around so I had to skip that one. Will meet her a little later to observe her last Elementary class though, and then will muddle through my Pre-Intermediate evening class before coming back home and collapsing into bed again. Was able to get about 13 hours of sleep last night due to my monring class being cancelled, so hopefully that will help me get through this afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon I met a new friend. His name is Andrew. We clicked immediately. He's a tall, skinny fellow with dark brown hair and large eyes. Could easily pass for a European man, most likely Italian or Spanish. He appears to be approximately my age and is originally from California, but he spent two years teaching in Sevilla and last year in Bologne and he moved to Madrid four months ago. I'm having coffee with him on Friday so he can tell me the story of being caught coming through immigration in London and deported. I'll relay the story once I have it, as I am guessing you are interested too.