After I indulged in one too many American dishes over here, my body decided to take its revenge on Thanksgiving. I’ll spare the interesting details, but let’s just say anything that I’ve been storing up in my entrails for the past week has been successfully expelled one way or another today.

Family, don’t start feeling bad for me, because it turns out that when you’re in Burkina and all you really want is your mom to set up a little table for you with bland food and juice, your host family will come by your room one by one to provide you with tea, bread, rice, bananas, and of course to ask you if you’re feeling better yet, if you’ve taken any medicine, and why you haven’t eaten all of your food, because when you’re sick, they say, you really should eat well. And they all tell you that they hope you feel better soon and that everything will turn out ok. As I type this, I’m eating the biggest banana I’ve ever seen and my host sister is outside washing all of the dishes I’ve dirtied today. She is even heating up water for my bucket bath tonight.

So Chad is representing the two of us at the “Fangsgiving” celebration, and I am getting ready to curl up with a bowl of instant mashed potatoes and watch “The Other Boleyn Girl.” This has been a surprisingly good sick day.

And now for what I am thankful for at the moment:

• My family
• My host family
• Technology (computer, cell phone, and electricity which I will have for 3 more weeks)
• Care packages
• Photos, especially of babies
• The awesome group of people that we ended up coming to Africa with and the training staff who put up with my endless questions about the culture and language here.
• All of the snacks that I packed
• Thoughtful notes and updates that I have received from friends and family (including blog comments)
• Everyone who stopped by, called, or fed me while I was sick today