My First Bedtime

During my first afternoon I met the rest of the girls. In addition to Miriam and Marie, there is Amy, Jessica, Brenna, and Kate. I will introduce them more in a future post. When it came time for group cleaning (usually held in the morning, but it had rained that day), I laid down to take a nap. I fell asleep listening to the sound of everyone sweeping outside with the straw brooms. I slept for quite a bit of time, but I woke up in time to go online for a bit and then attend evening prayer. Although Sona had told me I could skip it the first night, I wanted to be a good guest. After prayer I spent some more time on my laptop and had dinner. I had confessed to Miriam earlier in the evening that I was feeling very bad, like I wanted to cry. The other girls seemed to be doing just fine, so I knew that maybe this was just first day jitters. I told Miriam that maybe I was tired, jet lagged, and going through culture shock, but that I felt sorta panicky. She was so comforting. She completely understood how I felt. She even said "I'm sure it's even more disconcerting that everyone else seems to be completely ok." Without me having said so, she immediately picked up that I was questioning why no one else seemed to be freaking out. She told me about the adjustment periods for each of the girls and the ups and downs that each of them would have. During dinner I started to feel more relaxed and happy about the surroundings as I got to know the other interns here.

During bedtime, the other girls were really awesome. Miriam and Marie visited my room (after the spider incident) and we talked for about an hour. Amy stopped in as well. Finally, when I thought it was time to turn off the lights, Jessica came in and we ended up talking for almost another two hours. By the time I went to bed I was too exhausted to worry about bugs or the dark.

Since I don't have a roommate right now, I have a bedtime routine. I use my handy dandy headlamp to adjust to the dark. First, I turn on the white light. When I am comfortable with this level of light, I reduce the headlamp to the red light. The purpose of the red light is to allow your eyes to adjust to the dark while providing some light. This works really well. By the time I turn off the red light to fall asleep, my eyes are fully adjusted and the dark does not seem so scary. Each night I have been able to go through this routine more and more quickly.