3_ It was a great honeymoon...

Fortunately for me, the ebullience of arriving in country has worn off... and I can begin sharing the stories I secretly believe are responsible for the scant draw of friends and family to this blog- good 'ol stories of hardship.

Actually, nothing I've experienced thus far counts as hardship- if anything, it reminds me once again of how wildly disproportionate our level of security is in the United States and the West compared with the rest of the world.

I did get sick recently though; FRE-8 is in the training phase of our service (for the next five weeks) and we meet once a week to watch a traditional cultural performance from the Fijian or Indo-Fijian community. Half way through the performance I started to get a case of raw throat and I knew a full blown sore throat was only a night away.

Exacerbating the issue was my inability to quickly adapt to my host families living situation. My host father is a dairy farmer who wakes up at 4:30am every morning to milk the cows. His wife wakes up at 5:00 to begin breakfast prep for the children who need to meet the bus by 6:45. Even with my ear plugs, my room still fills with light because the walls of my room (which is an addition to the corrugated shed-like structure of the house) don't quite connect with the ceiling.

On top of that- the dogs in the settlement are in heat which attracts all the dogs from the neighboring villages. They've been fighting and howling outside my window (which normally begins around 3:00am (doesn't everything?!). The dog issue will resolve itself but the roosters also need to chip in (the coop is caddy corner to the house) and they fire up anywhere between 2:30am (normally just an errant cock-a-doodle-f-you) to a full blown repeat after me between 4:30 and 6:00am.

Much like anywhere else, the radio gets cranking with Hindi pop music (a mix of the sugary top 40's singing set to techno beats) as soon as maataajii is up. So to make a long story short, I had been rocking a pretty gnarly sleep deficit. Then I got the sore throat.

I woke up with chills and went to training day looking like it was an Erie autumn. I tried to snag an hours rest over lunch and talked to our medical officer who was absolutely awesome. She confirmed my sore throat and was ready with the antibiotics if the situation got worse. She also got me a gift- industrial strength ear-plugs.

That night I went to bed around 8:00am and slept straight on till 6:30am. I had completely bundled up and just sweated the bug out. I'm feeling great now and looking forward to a good night's sleep with my new ear plugs.