Attack of the European Super-Germs

Before moving to a new country, and especially moving in with a new family, you generally try to prepare yourself mentally and physically for the challenges you may face while you're there. You read guidebooks, travel advisories and cultural analyses to try and integrate smoothly when you get there.

Some of the challenges you're going to face are predictable: dietary preferences, temperamental differences, language barriers. Some are less foreseeable: changes in your own goals and desires during your stay, new facets of culture shock (which generally comes in waves, but varies so much from country to country and situation to situation that it surprises you every time). And then there are things you should have considered but didn't, not that it would have changed anything if you had. There are a lot of things that fit into this category, but the one I'm talking about here is GERMS.

Though I'm not much of a history buff, I always found it interesting that a few European explorers managed to wipe out most of the native North American population simply by sneezing on them. Nowadays we generally view Europe as a "safe" option for travel with its drinkable tap water and lack of tropical diseases. But don't let these simple standards fool you! Hiding behind them are some undeniably vicious and opportunistic vermin.

Viruses and bacteria are colonizing France as winter sets in here, humid and chilly yet not frozen. My weak North-American system is like a playground for these European monster-bugs for which Baby-L is a propagation dream-come-true. Last week, after returning from my action-packed London weekend, the germs came and dragged me into their underworld. Chilled and achy and stuffed up I became an unfeeling, non-tasting zombie. My desire to communicate with anybody (even by e-mail) gave way to a new desire to lay panting on the floor, couch or bed far away from voices or text of any kind. My two favorite pastimes of sports and eating became dim recollections of hobbies past. I could feel no hope and see no future. I was losing my soul to the common cold.

Juju and L-Daddy were pretty sympathetic. They doctored me with advice and concoctions of strangely named drugs like Aspegic, Penzanole and Acetylcistene from their over-stocked medicine cabinet. And they kindly let me hide away in my room, away from kids and housework, so that I wouldn't put any of them at risk of infection. But it still felt like a long road to recovery.

Today as I finally cough up the few remaining microbes in my system and snort and drink my (hopefully) last doses of decongestants, I feel like I've undergone some sort of transformation from swamp-monster back to human being. My energy has returned along with my sense of smell and I have a renewed desire to go outside, see people and eat things! More importantly, I can once again envision myself doing activities and maybe even having a part-time job (for which I must now energetically translate my resume into French) during my time here, rather than spending my remaining 9 months cooped up inside this house wishing I could just sleep through all this discomfort. Proud of having survived microbial hell, the real me is ready to get back into the game again.

Nothing could have prepared me for a cold like this, but really, Foreign Affairs Canada should at least warn us about the kind of biological risk we're taking when we come here for the winter...