The room was probably nice, but I hadn't really given it a proper look before bolting to the thermostat on the wall and frantically clicking the down button until it would go no lower. I had collapsed on one of the beds, luxuriating in the fact that the blankets and sheets on the bed were several degrees cooler than my skin. I didn't even want to consider the fact that field work was impossible to do from inside well climate controlled buildings, that was a problem exclusively for future me. The hotel room door clicked unlocked and I cracked my eyes open to make sure it was Tammy coming in.

"It feels amazing in here," she sighed, tossing her bags at the foot of the other bed. She sat heavily into the chair next to the TV and kicked her shoes off with enough force that they flew across the room and thudded against the wall. "What a day, huh? And it's not even dinner time yet."

Tammy turned on the TV and flipped through the channels, looking like she was searching for something in particular. Eventually, she settled on something that looked like a weather forecast channel, though it was all in french. Luckily, even toddlers can figure out what the pictures mean on the screen and it looked like there were thunderstorms predicted for every day this week. To make matters worse, the icon next to the temperature was wavy red lines, even without knowing what the celsius conversion was off the top of my head, it didn't look pleasant.

"Eww," Tammy said, "the 'coldest' it's going to be this week is about 85."

"I hope you're about to say that it will be okay, because we're going to be spending most of our time indoors talking to people or looking at the corpse or something."

"That's a good one," she said with a short chuckle, "but fieldwork never works out that way. I hope that both of us packed enough deodorant."

I let out a deep sigh and sat up, pointedly did not look behind me, I was fairly certain that I had left a sweat stain on the bed. My eyes looked over to the bags I had tossed beside the bed, it would be the hygenic decision to get out of my damp clothes.

Tammy sighed and stood from her chair, pulling her bags up onto the foot of her bed. "Let's get ourselves unpacked, we'll probably be staying here a few days before I can convince someone to be our guide into the rainforest. Going alone is just asking for us to stumble out days later starving and dehydrated, and that's the best possible outcome.There's all sorts of poisonous and venomous flora and fauna and we won't have a clue what most of it looks like, you need a local, one that's particularly knowledgeable, to get you through any deep excursion alive and mostly unharmed."

"Ugh, but all I want to do right now is relax, maybe take a shower," I complained. I realized that I sounded childish, but I had already spent most of my fortitude not ripping my airplane seat from the floor during takeoff and descent.

"This is the part where I have to be the stern boss. We need to get settled in, then get some food in us, then we have research to do."

Right, I wasn't just here for fun, she held my graduation in her hands. All it would take would be one phone call for her to invalidate my degree. She didn't seem like that type of person, but I hadn't known her long enough to feel one hundred percent certain about it.

"Come on, just get your toiletries and such in the bathroom, splash some water on your face and we'll see what kind of food they have here. I didn't really research too much on the food aspect, but we're near the coast, so I'm betting at least the seafood is good."

Resigning to follow directions, I stood and dragged my bigger bag onto the bag and zipped open the front pocket, my bathroom necessities tumbled out of the pocket. The toothbrush already in its protective case made a run for it, but I managed to grab it before it rolled off onto the floor. Looking up to see if she had seen the sweet save, she instead had a look of distress. She held up her own necessities, neatly packed into a clear, plastic container complete with labels over what each item was.

"How do you put up with that?" she said with a shake of her head. "Are you sure you have a biology degree? Everything has a place and a label, at minimum. Science is only done when you quantify and record."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." This was certainly not the first time I had gotten this lecture. Far too often my backpack would explode when I went to get a pencil or a book from my bag during class, then the professor would blow a gasket. It was pretty funny the first couple of times, but it got old rather quickly. "I promise I'm much better when doing actual work."

"Are you sure?" she questioned with a raise of her eyebrow. "Generally people who are meticulous in their everyday life have practiced enough for it to be second nature, those who don't have to try harder and are more prone to thinking 'mostly good' is good enough. I'm afraid that I'm not going to accept anything less than everything in its place, labeled, and recorded twice, once on paper and once digital, minimum."

"I get it," I promised, "I just can't be so uptight all the time or I'd lose my mind."

"Hrmm," she grumbled, but walked away to put her bag in the bathroom.

I scooped everything up as best I could and followed behind her, making sure not to drop anything and make her go off on another rant. She shook her head and muttered under her breath, but didn't say anything more when I dropped the pile onto my side of the counter and pushed it to the back against the mirror so nothing would roll off.

The lobby was fairly empty, only a few people were trickling through the door to check in. All of them were reasonably dressed in shorts and tank tops, I wondered if I had perhaps made the wrong choices. I had brought a couple pairs of shorts, but the fieldwork blog had insisted on long pants. I hadn't thought to research if the person giving the advice had ever been to an equatorial region before, it was starting to become apparent that I had walked into a situation that I was not adequately prepared for.

"Hello," Tammy greeted. She had led us to the concierge counter. "We are looking for a good place to eat, something very close and light would be nice."

"First time in the country?" the well-dressed woman behind the counter replied with a thick accent.

"Yes, for the both of us," Tammy answered.

"Well, if you are not looking for a full meal, but want something refreshing, there is a shaved ice and ice cream shop not far from here. They use local fruit, so it should be very different from anything you have had before."

"That sounds perfect," Tammy said with a smile. "Which direction should we go?"

The concierge brought a map up from below the counter and unfolded it facing us and traced a path with her finger while explaining where to go. The route seemed simple enough, it was practically around the corner, which I very much appreciated. As much as my stomach felt empty, I would rather have gone without food then have to face the humidity for too long.

After giving our thanks, we braved our way out the front door of the hotel and back into the sludge. It was not only just as awful as before, but between the time in the hotel and leaving, dark clouds had started gathering in the distance, billowing angrily on the horizon. The incoming storm made the air feel even stickier along with feeling ominous, I hoped that we would get our food and then get back to the hotel as fast as we could.

"If there wasn't a promise of something frozen, I think I would have just turned us around," Tammy said, looking back at me. "Those storm clouds look pretty angry, I wonder how bad thunderstorms are here. I'm a midwestern gal, so I'm used to lightning, hail, and the threat of tornadoes, but I have a feeling that storms in this part of the world aren't exactly the same."

"You came from the midwest?" I asked. As hard as it was to talk through the humidity, it did a decent job of taking my mind off of how uncomfortable I felt.

"Yep," she replied, "Nebraska born and raised. That's where I did my undergrad before moving out west. I was content enough at home, but I don't think I'd move back there again, I think I culturally fit better along the coast. What about you?"

"I was born in California, but my parents were from North Carolina originally. They moved out west just before I was born, my mom had always wanted to get into acting and my dad was deep in puppy love so he was willing to go wherever to keep her happy."

"That happens to a lot of people, I've heard." She stopped walking for a moment to orient where we were, before crossing the street. "One person in a couple wants to sing, dance, or act, and their partner comes along for the ride. Did your mom ever get into acting?"

"No clue," I said with a bitter laugh, "she ditched us when I was only a few months old. Didn't really leave any reason behind. My dad said she just started to get less and less interested in me and her relationship with him and one morning he woke up and she and her things were gone. He panicked for a minute and thought she had taken me as well, but she had been kind enough to leave me behind."

Tammy glanced over to me with a sympathetic expression. "Sorry to have asked."

"Nah, it doesn't really bother me the same way anymore," I said with a shrug. "She might have birthed me, but my dad was a wonderful father and mother and we didn't need her."

The brilliantly pink canopy of the shop came into view as we turned the street corner, the facade of the building painted in a correspondingly happy shade of aqua blue. There was a little line running out of the door, a sure sign that whatever they served, waiting was worth it. We stood in line for several minutes, but luckily service was swift and it was not long before it was our turn at the counter. After much tortured deliberation, I ended up ordering mango sorbet with some kind of fresh fruit called a rambutan. I had no idea what it was, the outside looked like some kind of spiky stress ball, but the inside was very slightly translucent white, kind of like a pale, skinned grape. I couldn't help but take a taste of just the fruit on its own as soon as it was handed to me. It had a familiar, but surprising flavor, nicely sweet, but sour on the aftertaste. I wasn't sure exactly what to compare it to, while it looked kind of like a grape, the texture and flavor was different. Whether I could describe it or not, I liked it and it did not take long for me to eat a third of my dessert before we had even gotten back out the door.

"Wow," Tammy chuckled, "I guess you were hungry."

"It's not going to last long in this weather," I countered. The heat felt like it had risen a degree, that or the chill of the sorbet had already cooled me down.

The clouds on the horizon were much closer and thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance.

"Let's get back to the hotel, we'll have enough adventures in the rain on this trip, I don't feel like starting now," she said, doubling the walking speed from our journey out.

I did my best to keep stride with her while shoveling more sorbet into my mouth. I hadn't been wrong about how long it would last, every bite I took was more and more melted, until the very last one was nothing more than a piece of rambutan in a tepid pool of mango. At least I felt slightly more refreshed, though now more worried about her declaration that we would definitely be out during these kinds of storms later on. While she was used to thunderstorms, I was not, I preferred it when my weather stayed fairly constant and around seventy to eighty degrees.