80 degrees and counting

Right now, it's just after 9am and the humidity is at 92%. Not that I am complaining. It's barely 80 degrees, and it's supposed to rain later.

Yesterday, three days of travel culminated with my arrival at the Banda Aceh airport around 12:30pm. It was actually better than I thought it would be. Aside from the inevitable fatigue, the pounding of my sinuses against my brain, and the fact that I can now hear out of only one ear (my head is being held hostage by this damn cold), traveling was actually relatively relaxing and fun.

The first flight seemed to go quickly until the final descent when my ears began to pop unbearably. This would continue until, well, now. I'm going to the medical clinic in about an hour to see what can be done. I took a sleeping pill on the second one, so I don't have much memory of it. The third was equally as uneventful. I met some people from MercyCorps on the last flight. A couple with their two young children who were coming back from a month of annual leave in the states. They've been living here for over a year now, and the kids (they're around 3 years old) speak Bahasa Indonesian.

The Singapore airport is very nice, by the way. There are two transit hotels in the terminals, a spa, swimming pool, gym, movie theater, and nap and shower rooms. Prada. Gucci. Cartier. I napped for about 5 hours on what could be likened to a very wide and low massage table, showered in the morning, and grabbed a few cucumber sandwiches from the lounge on my way out.

Nevertheless, the high point of the weekend came when I got to Medan yesterday morning and peed in a squat toilet while simultaneously holding all of my luggage. I have never been more proud of myself.

In Banda Aceh, many of us from the office are staying at the World Food Programme housing campus. We each have a little room on a raised deck platform, our own bathroom complete with a hot shower (which, upon seeing, caused me to do many acrobatic tricks), REAL WINDOWS (i.e. no bugs), and a flat screen tv complete with cable hook-up. The glass door slides open and I walk outside to be met with a warm and quiet breath of air and large, feathery palm trees set against a cerulean sky.