Sleepy, Hungry and Excited

Been waiting for a status update on the edge of your seat? Here are a couple of key words to describe our experience with the PCV Challenge thus far:

SLEEPY: Our first night was - for lack of a better word - miserable. This week, Caroline and I are sharing one L-shaped Ikea couch (sleeping head-to-head), and powering through an August heat wave sans air conditioning.

Around 2:30am Monday night, Caroline woke up. Hot, uncomfortable and (we would soon discover) hours away from a bout of the stomach flu - she tossed and turned until 4am. Your faithful blogger is not a sound sleeper, so for an hour and a half I also lay awake, silently cursing both the heat and my roomie's inability to just lay still. Then, at 4am, Caroline simply could not take the heat anymore. She took the fan that we had purchased over the weekend at Target (but had both been too lazy to construct) and her toolkit and retreated to the bathroom. Please remember, aside from the family room and kitchen, this is the only room in the apartment available to us this week. She built the fan, angled it full-blast at the couch and we both fell into a fitful few hours of sleep.

The next morning, I powered through an exhausted Tuesday at work. Caroline came home around noon with the flu - and with total dedication to the Challenge, neither turned on the air nor retreated to her bedroom.

Tuesday night, utterly worn out, we did not even need to worry about how to entertain ourselves sans TV/access to 50% of our apartment. We both popped some Benadryl and were sound asleep by 8:30pm.

HUNGRY: Stop and think for a moment about how you would make a day's worth of meals without using your refrigerator or microwave. Not that easy?

We agree.

We have both packed the exact same lunch for work for the past three days (a peanut butter sandwich, crackers and a banana). I made spaghetti on the stove for dinner last night. But what to top it off with? Not sauce or Parmesan (both are refrigerated items). I settled for olive oil and pepper - spoiler alert: not satisfying. Tonight for dinner, I ate oatmeal and a banana. I was surprised to learn that making oatmeal with milk (refrigerated) over water really does improve the taste.

EXCITED: I don't want to jinx anything, but it appears that you, dear readers, are not the only ones that find our venture into third-world-conditions compelling. Over the last two weeks, several Challenge participants and I have talked to reporters that want to write about both the PCV Challenge and (more importantly) what Pete/Steph are up to abroad. Stay tuned on the blog, Facebook and Twitter for more details!