Exhausted and proud, in a way

In adjusting to life in a new place, lots of very important things can go wrong. When things go right, on the other hand, those successes may go unnoticed. I feel really lucky several pieces of my adjustment are going well.

1. Food and local bacteria... y'all know what I'm talking about. I drank bottled water my first few days here and moved pretty quickly towards tap water after that. With one bottle, about a week in, I went half and half bottled-source and tap. 
2. Not having some amenities for now, or at all. For example, I often wish ice cubes were more common here, but for good reason they are not. Other things, like hot water for showering, or pipes that don't leak, or extra pillows, are generally issues that can be fixed with a trip to the store, or waiting a few days for the landlord to intervene.
3. Days of the week - this will always flummox people who are here and work with diverse communities. Different schools, based on their religions and which side of the separation wall they are on, observe different "weekends." But even more generally, coming from the US - where Saturday and Sunday are nearly universal, with the exception of many service jobs - adjusting to sometime between Thursday and Monday being the weekend/start of the new week is so odd.
4. Time change. Except for a couple of nights, I've slept very well here. Again, this is usually joked about for a few days, and then expected to be over with after a week. Yet not only does my body have to adjust to the time zone; my sense of time concerning conversations with friends, family, and colleagues in the US (not the Middle East) has to adjust, too.

Thanks to everyone who has come to view the blog recently, and signed up for these posts to arrive as emails. If you haven't done that yet, its probably easier than trying to circle back to the page not knowing when there's something new. Love to you.

Photo from near the Theodosius Monastery