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predictions.
    At the market, we see a few tourists for the first time, distinguishable from the resident expatriates by the cameras around their necks; the expats are carrying jute bags loaded with tomatoes and onions. Tourism is carefully regulated, we learned during orientation, so that Bhutan can preserve its culture. The number of annual visitors is kept low by a daily tariff of two hundred U.S. dollars.
    After the market, we go to the bank to cash travelers’ checks into ngultrum, the Bhutanese currency. I feel I have walked into a scene from Dickens. In the gloom inside, dozens of clerks behind wire-mesh walls labor over massive, dusty ledgers, writing figures with leaky fountain pens, counting stacks of money, tying up sheaves of yellowed paper, seemingly ignoring the customers who are pressed up against the counter, waving slips of paper. I am required to sign my name an inordinate number of times before I am given a brass token and told to wait “that side.” I head in the direction of “that side” and wait for an hour, folded into the crowd at the counter, standing on tiptoe to see what the clerk in the cage is doing, straining to hear my number, irritated with the whole disorderly, inexplicable process. There’s no sign telling me where I should be, there’s no line, people push and press and squeeze in front of me, and the clerk is ignoring us all as he chats to a blue-uniformed guard with an ancient, rusted rifle. Do these people have all the time in the world or what? This is something I have already thought a good number of times, waiting for breakfast in the hotel, standing at the counter in shops or offices, stuck behind a truck blocking a lane, wondering why the bakery isn’t open yet when the sign says clearly OPEN 8 AM and it’s already 8:20. Everything seems to take up more time, and the more time things take up, the more time people seem to have. “Doesn’t this just make you crazy?” I ask Lorna.
    She shrugs. “It’s not like we have to be anywhere,” she says. It’s true. We aren’t going anywhere. What is my problem? I have all the time in the world, and I am more impatient than ever.
    After the orientation session, we begin a week of language lessons. For a small country, Bhutan has an extraordinary number of languages and dialects; at least eighteen have been recognized, some confined to a single village. Lorna, Sasha and I are to learn Sharchhog-pa-kha, which means “eastern-staying people’s tongue,” the main language of eastern Bhutan. Chuni, the pretty, soft-spoken young woman who is to be our teacher, says we can call both the people and the language “Sharchhop” for short.
    Sharchhop has no script. We cannot hear the difference between b and bh, d and dh. I cannot pronounce tshe or nga. The grammar is incomprehensible, the verb must dangle its legs off the end of the sentence, and our progress is slow. After two weeks, I can count to eight, ask where are you going, and have two possible answers to are you a cowherd: no, I am a teacher; no, I am a nun.
    I am learning another language as well: lateral road, hi-lux, landcruiser; out-of-station, off-the-road, in-the-field; expat, consultant, volunteer; United Nations Development Program, Food and Agricultural Organization, World Food Program. Are you a consultant? No, I am a volunteer. Where are you going? I am going to the field. Are you taking the Vomit Comet? No, I have a ride in the FAO hi-lux.
    I have stopped eating meat. I don’t know if it was the trip to the market or the story of tapeworm cysts. In fact, I cannot eat much at all. I use bottled water to brush my teeth and wipe the droplets of unboiled, unfiltered water out of my glass before filling it. Sasha frowns. “I don’t think we have to be that careful,” she says.
    “You never know,” I shrug. Anything can happen. You can’t be too careful. Better safe than sorry. Prevention is better than a cure. I have turned into my grandfather. Jesus Christ,