One year

A year here. 

Over a year. 

I arrived 16th February 2013, and now it is March, 2014.  Everyone says this, so to say it again is a cliche, but I don't know where the time has gone. 

How things become normal. 

That here, Orion lies on his side, as though resting in the hot night air. That milk is either UHT or powdered. That Larium and radio check Wednesdays, and femme-de-menage Tuesdays, Thursdays, have become the routine, along with locking your car doors automatically on entry and visiting three different supermarkets just to get the ingredients for a G&T. That fruit is orange or yellow or white. Papaya, mango, passion fruit, banana, pineapple, star fruit, mangosteen, lychee. That I don't know what films are out in the cinema, or when the next season of Homeland will start. That I get most of my popular culture updates through a Whatsapp group with my university friends. That looking out of the office window I can sometimes see multi-coloured lizards doing press-ups on tree branches, red yellow orange blue, the bright, garish colours of a child's paintbox. That occasionally there is a gecko in my fruit bowl, wide eyed among the wrinkly skinned passion fruit. That the heat becomes welcome, so that the entire time I was in England over Christmas I thought about the feel of the sun on my skin, and missed it, terribly. That I can tell now when a storm is coming, when the air presses down around you, to the point that the only possible release can be rain. 

It has been a crazy, tumble, helter-skelter of a year, full of music and dancing, of meeting new people and experiencing new things. Full of sunshine and pineapples and brightly coloured fabric and swimming in rivers and learning the French subjunctive. And without wanting to get all sentimental on you, or too rose tinted, because honestly the itch-like-hell mosquito bites will never, ever be a good thing, and the bonkers road traffic, whilst amusing for the Instagram photos, is more than a little stressful in reality, all in all it has been really rather wonderful.