Hi everyone!
We're leaving on friday to spend a week in the villages which means a week without internet, so I thought I'd update the blog sooner rather than much, much later!
There are a lot of geckos all around the city and our neighborhood so inevitably, one got into our house. The first time, I wandered into my room, turned on the light, and saw this little orange thing dart along the wall! I went to grab my roommate Kara and we both just kind of stood there for a few seconds. Trying to act nonchalant about the whole situation, both of us agreed that, hey it's only a little lizard, what harm can it do, let's just leave it alone. And then the thing darted across the wall and into kara's luggage. Both of us screamed and very quickly decided we needed to get this thing out of our room now. The problem was, he was hiding in all of kara's stuff and moving very quickly, darting into corners and crevices of our room. So, after moving furniture and bags and backpacks to the other side of the room, we finally found the little guy again, only to have him dart through our legs, into the hallway, and into the living area of our house! one of our housemates finally trapped him with a pot lid and paper, but the poor guy lost the very tip of his tail in the process! So last night another housemate called out saying their was a lizard in the bathroom and sure enough it was the same guy! Same size, same color, and with a little bit of tail missing! Once again, trapping him and getting him outside the house was a looong process!
And here's another random story - The program owns a big van and two cars to get all around the area for program organized activities. However, the student coordinators thought it would be a good idea to teach us how to take taxis here. Instead of having meters that keep track of how much the taxi ride is, you are instead supposed to negotiate with the driver how much you want to pay for a ride even before you get in. So we all took taxis to a restauant for dinner one night. On the ride back, I guess my cell phone slipped out of my pocket! The next day, somehow, the coordinators called the same taxi driver to come get them from the house. He then told them that someone (me) had left their cell phone in his car (woops) and he would bring it with him! I felt like an idiot but the taxi driver was really nice about the whole situation. Of course I immediately checked my history and realized I had received a call from a restricted number about an hour earlier. Of course, I had just given my number to my parents the day before and I had a strong inclination that the call had been theirs. When I called them, I asked if they had called my phone recently. They had, and the taxi driver answered, speaking a mile a minute in french! Of course they couldn't understand and thought that they had reached a wrong number - sorry guys!
Everything is going well and I'm definitely starting to get used to the rythme of life here. As a random tidbit, the food here is pretty good. It's a lot of starch: either rice or cous-cous with some sort of sauce (that's almost like stew) for both lunch and dinner. For breakfast we always have french bread with butter or jam and tea. We also usually have a mid-morning snack of fruit: pineapple, papaya, watermelon, and apples so far. The really nice thing is that all of this food is made for us by three women who work as housekeepers/cooks in the house: Sallimata, Bibata, and Absetta (I'm probably butchering the spelling of their names). On the weekends though we're on our own for food. There's a really good retaurant not too far from our house that makes excellent pizzas and has already become a program favorite!
Talk to you all when I get back from the villages!
Caroline
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