Mundane.

The lightning cracks the dark sky, announcing the beginning of another drenched night. The teenage girls next door scream and then giggle at the noise, running for cover in the dirty kitchen outside my bedroom. I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling as it begins to leak. My mother thinks the roofing is going to cave in during one of these heavier rainy season nights. That would be kind of interesting.

I am waiting. Any minute now the electricity is going to go out. I just know it.

Another volunteer gets so bored that she plucks her armpit hairs with tweezers. It makes her a little cross-eyed; but, she says, a girl can only read so many books before she goes a little nuts.

I get up to brush my teeth and reach into my cabinet for a cup. A startled roach scuttles away into darker recesses. I am disgusted in a detached, useless way. "Three more months," I think, and head back to bed.

When I got home from school, I deemed the world too hot to be useful and napped. For two hours. I woke up and tried to study for the GRE. Instead, I found myself dreaming busily about studying in a Starbucks, fantasizing briefly about flying to Manila in the coming weekend just for this purpose.

It starts raining and I turnoff my fan, testing the room temperature without its constant growl. It feels almost cold! I eye my lone pair of sweatpants sitting morosely at the bottom of my clothing pile and come up with a plan: I will take a bucket bath and put them on! I will be cold! Oh goody!

Another volunteer texts me: "I half-assed my classes and my students were bored today, but not as bored as I was." I text back, and a SMS conversation takes place regarding the longevity of this particular breed of loneliness. We conclude that such feelings are a part of life and not peculiar to Peace Corps, though they do show up more frequently here.

"Don't worry, there will be good moments to break it up," he messages. I'm not worried, these feelings never last and they do not compare with the internal benefits of this overall experience. However, I flash back to an old childhood anxiety: Whenever I was sad I would say to myself, "Hey, Julie, this won't last." But then I would immediately think, "Yes, I'll be happy again until next time I'm sad."  I wished that I could get all the sad over with at once, it scared me to think it would appear again unexpectedly, and perhaps in an even greater degree.

I was always too much of a thinker.

I bucket bath and put on the sweats.

The electricity goes out. The rain stops.

I am hot.

The pants come off.

I turn on a flashlight and open a book, but a girl can only read so much before she goes a little nuts.

October 15th is when I finish. Twenty-four months down; less than three to go.

The stillness of a gargantuan world seeps out of my fingertips, spurting across the page in small, welcoming gasps.

Does writing this down count as productivity?