I lay down to sleep at 8:30 p.m., and 50 minutes later I woke up feeling like I had slept hard for 2-3 hours. It's a terrible feeling. Naps do not normally make my body feel better. Then make me feel like the sandman has pistol-whipped me. I hate the feeling.

I glanced out the window and, to my shock, it was dark. This time of year in Kazan and Moscow it would not be this dark, which set my mind to thinking about relative latitudes, which, via Google, let me to mapfrappe.com, which has a nice little tool to compare latitudes and longitudes. It produced this map:

The lower blue line indicates the latitude of Phoenix, around 33°N. The upper teardrop indicates the location of Moscow, around 58°N latitude. I can tell you that the long days and short nights of summer in Moscow were always difficult to adjust to, and the 25° difference doubtless accounted for part of that.The lower teardrop indicates the location of Bishkek, around 42°N. That is significantly closer to Phoenix's latitude. My curiosity is now satisfied.

Hypothesis: since exposure to light and darkness affects the resetting of your circadian rhythms, the relatively longer nights in Bishkek will mean our students overcome their jet lag somewhat more easily than they would have in Moscow.

Points of interest:

• The red line on the map indicates the "anti-latitude" of Phoenix; that is, the latitude 180° opposite, which means I will be closer to exactly on the opposite side of the planet from Phoenix than I have ever been before.
• Where would be the precise opposite point on the planet from Phoenix? Somewhere in the middle of nothingness in the Indian Ocean, roughly at the latitude of Capetown. I can't even find an island there.

Wow, I feel crappy. I kind of feel like I have heat exhaustion. A quick look at wunderground.com tells me the high today was 89°... but it got to 94% humidity! No wonder I feel lousy. I did a *lot* of walking today with no hat. Yes, I tried to drink a lot of liquid, but now I have got nausea, headache, thirst and atypical emotional timbre. Weird. And embarrassing: how could an Arizonan get heat exhaustion in Europe?

I think my fridge has a freezer here. I wonder if it has an ice-cube tray? ... searching... Of course, it doesn't. Damned Europeans.