If You Have A Queasy Stomach, Probably Don't Read This 5/27/2014

You've been warned. Now proceed:

 Our zone had a barbecue on Monday for our p-day activity. The theme was 'bring your own meat' (clearly an activity thought up by Elders). We had just recently inherited some squid as an answer to Noun's prayers (she had just said that week, dang I miss squid. Ask and ye shall receive, brothers and sisters.) so we decided to grill that next to everyone elses meats. There's 2 different kinds of pieces, the round ones which are squid body and taste like a lego tire, and the tentacles which are kind of like a chewy fish-flavored licorice with little suckers that pop off in your mouth. Needless to say I ate the most squid out of anyone present, including Noun who had prayed it there in the first place. I like to win.

Noun and Walker with the Cambodian favorite, Squid. Me with the American favorite, marshmallow.

After the barbecue, we had some leftover marshmallows and a rekindled love for s'mores, so that solved the what-do-we-eat dilemma for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the next two days. Unfortunately our apartment has fire code law things so we're not allowed to have a campfire in our living room, even if it doesn't disturb the neighbors. So we're left to the stove top. We can't even use real sticks over a real fire. Clearly ​we're 

roughing it.

Not far in severity from the infamous Bird-Flu and Swine-Flu epidemics is Tacoma's own People-Flu disaster. All 4 of us in the Cambod house took turns having the flu over about a 3 week period until it mutated and went back around again. During this experience I learned that I have a non-functional gag reflex. We found that those of us who threw up were sick for less time than those who didn't, so one night of the flu when I was crazy nauseous, I decided to attempt to replicate what James Bond did in Casino Royale when he realizes he's been poisoned and drinks salt water to make himself throw up the poison. We put about a cup of salt in a full glass of lukewarm water. When we had done the same thing for one of the other Sisters, she barely took a sip and then immediately retched up everything in her stomach, so I was pretty confident this would fix the nausea. Yeah..I drank the whole glass. Nothing happened. My companion prepared me a second one, with double the salt just in case. I drank that one too and then just sat there calmly. After that it was just a game of what it would take to get the flu and the now gallon of salt out of my stomach. I pretty much boxed that little dangly thing in the bag of my throat as if it was a punching bag and I was this guy:

 

  Nothing. I tried being in a car driven by Noun which is almost guaranteed to make any normal person at least a little sick. Nope. I went to disney world and went on all the rides that hang you upside down and go fast. Actually I didn't do that but it probably wouldn't have made a difference. After an hour and a bajilion attempts at maneuvering a stick that could reach back to my tonsils, I finally coughed up like a supermodel's portion size of stomach contents. Not even a 1/10 of what I had in there. But at this point I was exhausted, and the Sisters were busy taking care of Noun (who had inadvertently thrown up just from hearing the sound of me trying to throw up. How is that fair). So I called it a night and accepted that I would just have a long, vomit-less bout of the flu. Evidently my stomach likes to win as much as I do.

Idea: when I get home I should apply for Fear Factor. People get out all the time for not being able to keep down the stuff they feed them. Evidently I was built for the eating challenges on that show.

I've been in the WA-TAC 52 weeks, which is a year, for a total of 62 weeks as a missionary, and I'm pleased to report that the church is true here too!

-Sister McQuivey, amateur boxer