I am quickly approaching my one year anniversary of being in Indonesia. Although it has been a great year, I have recently realized that things that have become part of my normal routine and experience are not necessarily normal things for the normal person (I also do not know what a normal person is, but I am pretty sure that I am not normal). Therefore I devised a list of top ten signs that you might have been in the field too long.
10. You don’t leave the house without applying at least SPF 85 and wearing a big hat.
9. You pack everything from electronic equipment to clothes in dry sacs (even when going to the grocery store).
8. You shake out your pants and shoes before putting them on, because you never know who or what might be in them.
7. You think it is normal to have to stand on a tree to get your emails and text messages. It is also normal for Gmail to take over 5 minutes to load, even if you use the version for “slower connections”.
6. A toilet means digging a hole in the woods. You haven’t seen a sit down toilet that flushes in a couple of months. Showers are what you do with a bucket, often next to a river wearing a sarong.
5. You are so accustomed to wearing your binoculars every day, you often reach for them even when you are in town (when you start wear your binos in town, you know it is time to go home).
4. You forget that normal people don’t live in their tents. Sleeping in tents is a thing called camping, not real life. The same goes for not using your camping sleeping pad as an everyday mattress.
3. You can’t remember the last time a part of your body... hold on, I am scratching... didn’t itch.
2. It is an extremely special and rare event when you can drink beer, eat chocolate, and speak English.
1. Seeing amazing and unique things becomes so mundane and normal, you can’t come up with anything to write about for your blog.
