Saturday Mornings

There is no way that God created mosquitoes. Seriously. What do they even do? Do they do anything good or is it all just to bother humans. Let's think about mosquitoes.....they eat blood, they can get into tiny little spaces, they multiply like crazy and you can't feel it when they get you. The only thing that would make mosquitoes worse is if they had some sort of long hose thing that sucked blood right out of you....OH WAIT! Mosquitoes do have that thing too. I think mosquitoes are Satan's little servants or something because they don't do anything good. My room is full of them at night because I have to open my windows to let some of the heat out. I have a mosquito net, but somehow they find their way into bed with me. I don't sleep well here for a number of reasons, one of which is the trouble of sleeping when I am so worried about getting bit by mosquitoes. Every time I feel the hair on my legs or arms get blown by the fan I think it's a mosquito. My worry for dengue fever has limited my sleep a lot. Luckily I got some Raid yesterday....let's see how those mosquitoes do in chemical warfare....I think I have the upperhand. 

Well it has been a long week to say the least. Last Wednesday I hadn't been feeling well in the morning time. By 11:00am I found myself back at my house, lying on the floor in pain. I made a little bed out of some chair cushions and went to sleep, hoping I just wasn't feeling well. Well I woke up with a fever, headache, and some rockin' body pain. The workers were motioning to give me some sort of shot, but I quickly talked them out of that with some aggressive body language. There is no way Indian medicine beats Tylenol and DayQuil. Well to make a long story of diarrhea and vomiting short, I am better now. I'm struggling to write this blog because my whole week has consisted of me laying face up on my bed staring at the ceiling and making frequent runs to my hole in the ground. I usually like to write with a lot of detail...but I will save you the details on this one :)  When I was sick earlier last week the power went out. My fan doesn't work great, but it felt like wind from heaven when I had that fever. When the power went out, I remember staring up at the fan. It wasn't spinning. It wasn't gracing me with that invisible breeze that felt so good on the fever. It hung there motionless, almost mockingly so. It was at that moment that I realized how great air conditioning really is. I am so grateful to live in a place where I can demand control of the weather and it responds. I can just flip a switch and suddenly it's a nice, cool day in my house. We are lucky. 

Well my new hobby is cricket. It's a sport that entrances this part of the world and with my newly-attained health I have set out to figure it out and play with the local college kids. I miss being around guys and playing sports, so this is my solution. Well I have a pretty funny story about earlier today. I set out with Poorna, the new male translator that is helping me learn Telugu. He and I went to Andhra University to meet up with a ton of kids that were playing. For the first hour I just watched, but after a while they all started trying to get me to play. The young men were placing bets on this game, so I didn't dare get involved in fear of ruining the game and losing someone's money. Well Poorna got the bat for me and said I could give it a go. So there I am in front of the students in the engineering college about to try my luck at cricket. I played baseball growing up and I golf all the time, so hitting a ball with a bat is comfortable. So Poorna bowls at me and I crush it. I hit it hard. The outfielder finally chases that ball down and looks kind of upset at what he finds. He doesn't throw the ball in, he walks it in to his friends. He yells something, and suddenly the crowds start dispersing. I am clueless. I was silently celebrating in my mind for hitting it so far, but why was no one else happy for me? Come on, this was my FIRST time ever batting like that! Well Poorna slowly walks over to me with a solemn look on his face. "You break ball so they leave." Are you serious? I broke the freakin' ball? I felt so dumb. The kids had to divide the money back out and go home. I offered to go buy a new ball but apparently it was quite a ways away from the stadium. I felt pretty badly. We will see if Poorna wants me to go play with his friends again :)

Well I want to share a story from about 10 years ago that has nothing to do with India or my research at all really. I just had a dream that reminded me of this last week and I wanted to share. It takes me back to when I used to play AYSO soccer as a child at Luther Middle School. I must have played thousands of soccer games on those fields. Those fields were home for me on Saturday mornings. All week I would look forward to my next game on Saturday. Friday nights I could hardly sleep. I would get my uniform all ready to go and just have to wait for 8 hours to pass before I could put it on. I remember the nervous feeling that I would have during warm ups. I would never feel ready to play during warm ups. I was always awaiting the arrival of my biggest fan. My father always had to work really late, usually through the night, on Fridays. He would get home early Saturday morning and crash for a few hours. If I had a soccer game, he would have to come straight from work if he wanted to see me play. During warm ups I would always be looking for the roof of his big catering truck to pull into the parking lot. I could spot that truck from so far away. My "saturday morning" eyes were trained for it. I needed my Dad to be there. He seemed to always show up right at the very end of warm ups right when I was in the center circle standing over the ball for kickoff. He always came at the right time. I wish I could explain the feeling I used to get when I would see his truck pull in the parking lot at Luther Middle School. I guess it's the feeling little children get on Christmas morning. Or maybe it's the feeling of putting on a new pair of socks. No, maybe it's the feeling that you get when you are walking up the path to your home after a long day of work. That feeling you get right before you open the door to family and comfort. That's how I used to feel every Saturday morning when my Dad would arrive at my soccer games. I usually wouldn't get to say hello to him until halftime, but I knew that he was there, watching me. That's all I needed. Just knowing he was there to cheer me on. It always made me run faster and play harder. No matter how tired he was from the long night of work before, he would always take me out to get a Slurpee after the game. I would always get the Mountain Dew flavor and a big bag of 3D Doritos. I will never forget the Saturday mornings when I was little. It's those memories that I hold dear to my heart. The kind that help get you through a long day. Find your own "Saturday Morning" stories and hold on to them forever. 

With love from India, 

Kory