Surreality

Being jet lagged makes regular, everyday phenomena seem slightly surreal. Yesterday, my 3rd full day in Manaus, we had a weekly meeting of all the members of our project; over 20 people, so we met in a large auditorium where they have a U-shaped row of desks in front of the stage for small conferences. People use microphones to speak because the room is so large that the sound is dissipated quickly. The meeting started from 3pm, at which point I was already feeling a little tired, and by 4 o' clock my eyelids began to feel as heavy as lead (if you'll forgive the pun: eye-leads).
Most of the project members were speaking in Portuguese, and discussion had become so heated that our translator had pretty much given up covering every word and would just give us summaries at the end. That meant 10 minute stretches of people speaking back and forth in Portuguese on microphones, sitting in this dimly lit auditorium. And to make matters worse, I had forgotten to wear my glasses so that the people facing us sitting on the other side of the desks were slightly blurry, which made them look like frenzied talking heads. My head began to spin and I could barely hold it up any longer; as the jet lag kicked into high gear, my body clock was signaling that it was 5a.m.
Luckily, the meeting wound down and I shook myself awake for the last 10 or 15 minutes. I found my legs and stood up as they announced the meeting over and shuffled back to our project office. It was time to go home.