Man, I'm freaking exhausted but it's a weird kind of exhausted as it's mainly about just recovering from the trip. It's a stress free exhaustion if that makes any sense. I know, I had ten days of vacation, but take those ten days and sandwich them with two all-night plane trips, lots of time spent touring, never-quite-dealt with jet-lag, and the sheer amount of energy it takes just to deal with family for ten straight days and you got one exhausted me. Even worse, there was a bug going around the wedding party and I might be fighting it off. It's hard to tell because I'm so tired, but I do know I'm feeling bad enough that I'm staying off coffee and trying to stick to tea, an idea which ain't really working that well.

The thing about the bug is that the person who first got sick was Sister-in-Law's mother. She, of course, had to do all the functions because she is, after all, the mother. But we're talking about South America and we're dealing with South Americans so that means there's a lot of kissing involved, and get your mind out of the gutters, I'm talking the peck on the cheek kind of kissing. It's true, South Americans love to kiss. There I was, not more than four hours in the country, going to a family BBQ of a family I've never met and the moment the big huge security door opened, I'm getting kissed. I don't know who these people are, yet I'm kissing them. Fine, I can deal. Whatever. Except Sister-in-Law's mother is sick and she's kissing everyone and I know she's sick. But what am I going to do? I can't say "sorry, no kissing today, you're sick" and I can't avoid her and I can't blow her off (see "Seinfeld") so I've got nothing to do but get kissed.

Which could be why I'm not feeling so well.