Answering the "How Are You" Question

When people ask me how I am, I usually say fine. It's noncommittal, and answers the question without having to really go into it, which for the most part is what people expect in answer to the "how are you" question.  At the same time, it's a perfectly accurate answer, which is probably why it is so generic, because "fine" implies that we're good, most of the time, but it also accounts for the difficulties.  Mostly, I find myself hesitant to say that I am happy.  The reality of it is that I am challenged all the time in some way or another, I'm dirtier that I wish I was 100% of the time, I do miss the glories of a flush toilet and food that doesn't make me gag, I hate that I almost never have water and that the electricity craps out on me pretty frequently, I'm not a huge fan of the fact that we have a torrential downpour every day and my life is mostly mud, I don't like feeling like I live in a garbage heap or stepping in animal shit all the time, it's not my favorite thing to have absolutely no privacy, it's frustrating when no one understands a word I'm saying or I can't articulate what it is that I want to say, and it's obnoxious to have to wonder all the time if whatever it is I'm eating right now to be polite is going to make me sick for the next week.  However, despite all of this, overall, I think I'm actually happy, or at least more or less content.  I'm not a fool, I definitely expect to have brutally hard times, and I have already in different ways, but I'm doing pretty well.  I can't tell you why I'm so hesitant to say it, maybe I'm afraid of jinxing it, or maybe saying I'm happy doesn't seem to adequately encompass all the challenging or irritating parts of every day.  Maybe it's just weird to be happy, but also terrified and intimidated and uncomfortable at the same time.  I'm terrified of being alone in a room with 30 kids who don't speak my native tongue, and I have to teach them!  Being alone with 30 elementary school kids would scare me enough in the States, but now I have to teach them, and do it in Spanish.  It seems ludicrous. I'm stared at all the time and people make horrible comments about my body and my weight and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable.  And yet, mystifyingly enough, I'm not completely miserable.  In fact, I'm not really miserable at all.  I'm so NOT miserable, that fine no longer seems an adequate response to the "how are you" question.  I guess I'm hesitant to say I'm happy because I don't really see how it's possible given the circumstances and my every day reality, and yet, I guess it is.