I confess that I am passionately starting to miss the 100 degree weather. It's now raining every few days and it's almost like the terrain here just doesn't know what to do with water.  There are giant standing puddles that have this greenish film on them (probably from the oil-rich earth- have I mentioned that oil seeps up from the ground here? It's why we spread gravel on the earth).  It's still pleasant during the day, but at night it's getting quite chilly, to the point that I am wearing long pants, sweat shirts and the walk to and from the latrine is not fun. 

Here's a classic story for you--last night I got off of work, went to the chow hall with the plan to bring my food back to my room, eat, and then head to the gym. Well, as I am walking from the car to my CHU in the blackness I happen to step into one of those filmy pools of filth and I found myself ankle deep in muck. So balancing my dinner, I haul my caked feet back to my room, peel off my shoes and socks, and in sandals, trudge to the latrine. I then have to thoroughly douse my shoes in hot water to clean them of the crude so now the gym is out because my shoes are drenched.

I walk back to my room, take a hanger and start finagling with the air conditioner to rig my shoes so that they hang and absorb the air pressure. Then, because I am cold and because I think hot air will dry them faster I switch the unit from AC to heat. Well after several seconds there is a pungent burning smell and I casually think it's just from the unit transitioning from AC to heat. 10 seconds later my smoke detector starts screeching it's batteries out!!! So I starting tossing photos off my night stands, mount one on top of the other and balance on them until I can reach the smoke detector and silence it's screaming.  So I ended up trapped, shoeless, in my burnt-smelling room listening to my smoke detector chirp every 45 seconds until it tired out. Now that's a rocking Saturday night ;-)