Routine

Inspiration has been low lately.  Slowly life here is shifting a little bit.  Things that were funny just aren't funny any more.  Now instead of laughing at every English butchery, I'm nodding my head in praise when they come even a little close.  Spicy Thai food doesn't ravage my emotions anymore and instead I'm becoming used to crying in pain while I eat and accustomed to the necessary handfuls of cucumber or rice that I need to quickly swallow to make my tongue stop burning.  Even the maze of city streets doesn't baffle me anymore.  I still get lost but it's not with the same hopeless thought of never finding my way home again.  

It's weird when things suddenly become routine.  When you start judging the other white people you see for being on your street, or getting mad at Song Taew drivers for taking a route which you know isn't the quickest.  Even the intricacies of school are becoming common-place.   I am now used to the students bowing and am even a little offended when they don't.  I'm used to class starting about 20 minutes after the scheduled time and I'm used to telling 23-year-old men to stop passing notes to one another.  I expect to feel, at least once a day, like I am so hot I'm going to die, and I know that since I'm the first one in the office to use the hot water heater every morning that I have the duty of cleaning the ants out of the water.  

At 4:30 every morning the rooster outside my window starts to crow and at 7 the loudspeaker from the nearby school starts broadcasting god-knows-what.  My refrigerator moves across the floor if I don't hold it in place when I open the door and the best movies are on T.V. in the middle of the night.  

What will tomorrow bring?