Monday

I had a weird feeling in the park Friday. It was around five. I'd just left the apartment to meet Sunshine before dinner. The first thing I had to do was cross the street. Rush hour can be amazing. Friday, it was actually safer to walk down the street than the sidewalk. The one-way traffic was directed and nearly at a standstill. Neither of those things were true of the scooters racing along the sidewalks in front of the Lê Quý Đôn Street School. So for the first few minutes after leaving our building, I didn't think about much besides staying alive. I've grown very used to Vietnamese traffic since arriving last year. I haven't relied on tactics like these in months, but today I walked a longer way, taking the safer route to the coffee shop where Sunshine waited. Therefore I was already halfway through the park before I realized I was having my weird feeling. I was chilly. The weather was clear and breezy. The temperature, with the wind chill, was somewhere in the very low seventies. I might have chosen to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt if I'd noticed closer to the apartment. As it was, I was marveling about feeling chilly in the tropics. I can't believe how habituated I've become. I spent the first thirty-four years of my life hating those forty-five day sunny double-ninety North Carolina Augusts (that's ninety-some degrees with ninety-some percent humidity; and, believe it or not, worse than the weather here in southern Vietnam). All that time, I fervently anticipated the two-month mild winters, with lows in the mid-teens. Now, I'm chilly before the mercury hits the sixties? Christmas vacation might be tough on me next month, but I should be normal again by that first really eye-opening Sarajevo winter. [Cavin]