As I write this post at 8:18am, it is already 82 degrees with an 87% humidity.  As the day progresses, it will just keep getting hotter and more humid.

Since this is an extreme change from where I live in Michigan and where I have been in Peru, I have quickly developed some changes to my normal lifestyle while in Puerto Alegria and Iquitos.

1. Buy cold bottles of frozen water (from the freezer) in stores in Iquitos.

2. Ride on the back of Gene´s bike

3. Play in the rain (very easy to do since it rains almost every day)

4. Take long, cold showers, with water that comes from the River Itaya.

5. Buy a chunk of ice for 50 centimos (about 17 cents) to take back to Puerto Alegria to have at dinner. (This never really works as well as it sounds since the ice almost completely melts on the way back from the city to the home.)

6. Wear light gaucho pans and thin t-shirts.

7. Swing in one of the hammocks down at the maloca (gazebo) at Puerto Alegria.

8. Sleep outside (but not during high malaria season).

Things that do not help avoid the heat (but I have done):

Help in the kitchen, hold a boy on your lap when on an overcrowded bus, sleep indoors since it is a high malaria season, wear a sweater, participate in a bonfire, sit in the sun keeping score and time for the daily soccer game, and wait at the dock for a boat back to Puerto Alegria.

Despite all this, there are so many great things about the Girasoles program and Puerto Alegria that it is worth living in the heat and humidity.