OAXACA, Mexico—An average day:

7:15 a.m. Wake up due to extreme heat, bright sun in eyes and recurring, intense, ulcer-like pain in stomach that has lasted several days—or if no ulcer, then extreme indigestion.

7:15-8 a.m. Try to get back to sleep. Fail.

8-9 a.m. Get ready, put on sunscreen.

9 a.m. Step outside. Sunscreen melts immediately into eyes, causing burning and redness. Teenage girls point and laugh.

9-10 a.m. Find Internet café. Use Internet.

10 a.m.-1 p.m. Approximate work. Take cabs to small villages and look politely at pottery. Alternately, check hours at post offices, banks, hotels, restaurants.

1-2 p.m. Eat lunch. Feel ill before, during and after eating fried salty food. Actual physical yearning for Taco Bell takes place.

2-5 p.m. More “work” or something like it. Hot as hell. Backpack melts. Hair catches on fire. Approached by more laughing teenage girls. At first, this was funny. Now, annoying. Old women give me the evil eye. Old Mexican women distrust me. I look at back at them with ice in my heart, peeling skin on my back and hot sunscreen in my eyes.

5-6 p.m. More email.

6-7 p.m. Eat. Bleh.

7-8 p.m. Think about doing work. (Writing.)

8-8:30 p.m. Maybe work a little.

8:30-10 p.m. Sit around.

10 p.m. Sleep.