this is why i'm hot

September 27, 2010
The Philippines are gross. I am so hot. We’ve not had rain in over a week and it is miserable. I actually like wind chill. That’s right I said it. I like wind chill. Whatever way I can get it it is welcome.  Lately we’ve been having mini-brown-outs in the middle of class. There is nothing more claustrophobic than a brown out. The heat has a presence. It is heavy and the humidity makes it wet. Oscillating fans are a must have. The thing about those fans is they don’t work without the electricity. So brown-outs mean fan-outs. I hate that. The past not quite week we’ve had them for about an hour here and there. How is one supposed to learn a completely foreign language when she is quite literally turned to goo in her chair?
All this heat and misery and it is only October. While you are at home with your brown leaves, and pumpkins, and whooping cranes, and balloon fiestas, and apple pies, and scraping windows just remember it is blazing hot here, and the worse is yet to come. I have no idea at this point in time how I am going to survive April and May. Luckily I’ve got a rainy season coming along soon to break the monotony of heat. Now if we could just get a shower today to calm things down out there.

what's with the altitude?

One month left and my mind is a mess. I know I'm in for a world of change, but the main thing on my mind these days is the change in world. The physical environment is just going to be so completely different from anything I've experienced.

• Climate: I currently live in a high desert. Very dry lots of sage brush, and yet very harsh winters. I went to school in New Mexico, lived in a desert there also. Before school the high desert as well as many other tiny communities in Wyoming with harsh winters and if summer ever came it was mild. Not quite the story in the Philippines. They are the tropics with 10 degrees difference all year round. They have typhoons and a rainy season, and always humidity. Deserts don't have humidity. That may do me in.
• Land forms: Wyoming is a mountainous state fairly land locked, and by fairly landlocked I mean 2-3 giant states sit between it and the ocean. Very similar story with New Mexico. The Philippine Islands are just that. Islands. 7,000 plus islands right smack dab in the middle of the Ring of Fire. Which means volcanoes, several of which are active, see Mount Pinatubo . Also earthquakes and there fore tsunamis. I've experienced countless earthquakes with out even knowing, but have yet to see a tsunami.
• Altitude: In all my life I have never lived below 4,500 feet. The highest point in the Philippines isn't even 3,000 feet. Can we say energy galore? I'm going to be bouncing off the walls.

These are just some of the things I've been thinking about, not even to mention the other aspects of culture. More on that later, and welcome to my Peace Corps experience.