I live on a tropical island with beautiful weather; the temperature hardly ranges out of 60s-80s, which seems dream-life perfect. In the potent summer months of December-February, you can't get naked enough to battle the heat-- even in your own home, there is no Central Heat and Air, and most of us have (if any) only one fan...if it hasn't broken yet. If the sun weren't so tantalizing, it would be almost better to stay outside rather than in the confining walls of a house. It's beyond sticky. You breathe your own salty heat, and others, and it's ridiculous to take umteen showers a day, so stinking is part of life.
But now, it's winter. I love winter in America...and cold weather, so this whole break from summer is faka-glorious. You can walk through town and not have a back-pack sweat line on your shirt, swass* isn't a problem. (For definition of "swass", see the footnote...or think hard for a couple seconds and let your mind wander.)
And I do love this "cold weather." It's wonderful. I think better with this breezy air, and it reminds me of America how I left it. (Sometimes, I feel like when I go back home, it'll still be October 2010.)
But. I wake up in the middle of the night with my ears feeling as though they'll break off their elvish form, and my toes feel like little vanilla popsicles. I don't have a blanket on my bed (who needs a blanket in THE PACIFIC!?!), and I'm more of a "just sheets" kinda girl, anyway.
And this freaking cold. Week 4 of Snotty McSnotSnot will be completed tomorrow, and frankly, I am quite tired of this! I hate taking medicine, and the PC Medical Dr. said it's going around and will just have to run its course. Antibiotics are a possibility, but...ehh. I figured it would be over last week. It was wearing down, I was getting all the junk outta my head, so things seemed bright and shiny in the near future.
But today I'm that dazed, dramatically un-energetic woman from the Claritin commercials, where the bright sunshine not only pierced my headache, but seemed more of a dull, ugly sherbert color. (Ugh, pastels.) And the kids on their Mufti day seemed not as colorful, too.* (Footnote #2)
At work, one girl said, "Somfing wrong?" I said, "Oh no, I'm okay." She then replied, "Well, I know faces, and you look not so good."
I walked in a few minutes later--after she had brought me a delicious Tongan fruit drink (kola, sugar and water...it's like a lemony orange), and I came back for more. Two ladies instructed me to squeeze a bit of kola in the cup, fill it with hot water, and add no sugar. "Tongan medicine!" they said. We shall see.
Until then, I'm burning through cardboardy tissues faster than Socrates, the rat in my house, is burning through my garbage. Sigh.
*Swass: combination slang of "swamp-a$$" or "sweaty-a$$." I blame my entire softball career on such indelicate language!
*Mufti day: All students in Tonga have to wear uniforms every day, but on Wednesdays, they can wear their regular clothes (girls in skirts, though) so their parents can wash their uniforms. At high schools and colleges (which are the same level), most schools charge 50 cents for Mufti as a fundraiser for the school.
❤❤❤
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