a trip to the doctor.

*disclaimer: my English has gotten bad. My sister tells me this in our gchat conversations. That's not English, Lisa, she tells me. Oh yeah, I reply. But the strange thing is that it's not like my Fijian is improving all that much. Mysterious, I know, and perhaps another conversation for another time.

And so it begins. One simple trip to the hospital, and I return x-rayed and fine, but having learned so much more than why my foot hurts.

My feet are flat (thanks DAD), and apparently walking miles upon miles in Chacos aren't good for them. But there are so many rivers to cross! Running shoes are just impractical. So after several months of the same pain in the same place, I decided to get it checked out.

So I go to the hospital in Suva, which i have never been to before. Actually, I haven't been to a hospital since I was getting the last bits of my medical clearance taken care of back in America for my Peace Corps application. I walk inside, and, my God, it's like I've been transported somewhere else. It is so clean i could make a sandwich on the tiles I am standing upon. The lights! The shiny bins! The organization and order! The absolute lack of chaos! Everything in its right place. And that is just the beginning.

i get really cold in the waiting room. The air conditioning is so uncomfortable and unnecessary. I wait, wait, wait, and then remember, oh yes, I'm still in Fiji, because there is plenty waiting. But I am too distracted looking at people walking in straight lines and making directed, calculated movements that I don't care. There are manicured and meticulous parents wearing logos from Fijian companies sitting next to their groomed and well-behaved children who occasionally cough and flail in their seats. Everyone is wearing shoes, and polished shoes, at that. One Indo-Fijian female doctor keeps walking past with the clickety clack of heels. Heels! I stare, I smile, and I look down at my own calloused brown feet with splatters of white paint from a mural project we are doing at the school. I am slowly learning what stepping away from 16 months of rapid change, so rapid new limbs practically sprout overnight, feels like. In the thick of it, one day blends into the next and life just seems normal, static, ho hum. But when you're removed from it, taken out of your familiar surroundings and plopped into a new place, you get it. I was starting to slowly get it. Finally, my name is called.

I walk into the x-ray room and the whirring of the machine, the faint light emanating from its center, the sheer monstrosity of that piece of science sitting in that dark room, are all so remarkable I want to just stand and gaze. I may as well have been looking at a spaceship. But then I remember I need to walk up to the machine so that I can get my x-ray. I get to step closer! I actually get to sit on the thing!

We take pictures of my foot, and I put back on my Chacos that have caused all this mess in the first place. I go back to sit in my chair, and this time I take a seat next to the television, the moving pictures with sounds. I watch advertisements that I recognize from the radio, but now have faces and movement to go along with them. I didn't realize there was local news in Fiji, but it reminds me of action 7 news or the like from Albuquerque. Local people, talking about sports and weather and happenings. How fun.

I see the doctor, he tells me my foot is not broken (I had an idea that was the case) but that there is a tendon issue there, perhaps. As he pokes and prods my foot I am suddenly embarrassed by how weathered and beaten my feet look. Against the cool white tile, away from the hard village ground and brown woven mats, they look foreign and strange. Are these really my feet?

I get back to the waiting room and wait to reconcile the bill (thanks America!). I want to stay longer, just to observe this new amazing place, but I go, because I am meeting a friend, and I need food, and wow, had 2.5 hours really just gone by? I remember hospitals in America, and I think of my dad, who gets to work inside one every day. How fascinating.

Isa. A sneak peek at how hard readjustment is going to be. Or, how exciting? Like seeing with new eyeballs? We shall see.