day 27 :: I don't know this person

I’m finding it hard to remember which side of the road I’m supposed to be on. This is a bit odd, because do you know how much time I’ve spent in my entire life in countries that drive on that other (wrong, non-right) side of the road? Three months in Tanzania plus something like 2.5 months total in Kenya and Uganda. Five point five months. Only seven days of which occurred in the last two years. Only two days of which occurred during the last three months. So it’s a little bit strange that last night, when my sister and I emerged from the Thai restaurant, satiated by lovely rice noodles, I thought to myself, “A. is driving, so let me get in the car over here… oh, wait. That’s the driver’s seat. Why is that the driver’s seat? Why is the driver’s seat over there?”

Today I was turning into a parking lot and a truck was coming from the other direction and I panicked. I could not remember which direction I was supposed to go. Right? Left? How do we drive here, again? Fortunately, my limbic system remembered, although my brain did not, and we (the car and I) went to the right, neatly avoiding any crashing into trucks much larger than us.

The other reason I do not recognize myself is that I’ve gotten so much DONE today. I initially started out at a café without free internet so that I would be forced to update my resume. So then I did that and then I drafted some emails (offline) and then I went to a café with free internet to send the emails and then I just kept, I don’t know, plugging on through my list of Things That Must Be Completed in Order to Take the Bar Exam. I mean, I’ve made progress on almost half of them. I have made progress on almost half of them despite the fact that I have many blogs and a good book to read.

This is officially getting weird.

…

The other night, my sister and her friend and I went to some hot springs. It was 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the pools were outside, and needless to say, we did not feel like getting out, especially since our flipflops froze themselves to the icy pavement and our towels froze into funny shapes. We spent almost three hours in 105-107 degree water. (“Just like the air in South Sudan!” I kept saying. Has anyone but me noticed that I’ve lost EIGHTY FIVE degrees Fahrenheit in two weeks? It hurts, really.) We also forgot to bring water – well, A. brought water and left it in the car; I brought water and left it at some pool, I forget which. And then we were in the water for three hours. It might have been a mistake. I felt sort of dizzy and headachy and nauseous for the rest of the night. Which wasn’t long, since we left at 10 p.m. and I turned off the light to go to sleep at 11:09.