So I made it! After experiencing the first of what will likely be ongoing encouragement to study French my neighbor on the plane and I tried to have some conversation, an Italian that also speaks French and me with my ‘France at a Glance’ guidebook. As we touched down in Abidjan the plane broke into applause, quite touching, the plane was full of folks going home.
My sponsor picked me up at the airport, and we whizzed through the night traffic in the city. I often take issue with arriving in new places at night, since I am left with little perspective, but there were plenty of other distractions, so I don’t know that light would have helped. Even smelled like Africa (for any who have spent time in developing nations, you know what I mean, it seems each place has its own aroma of burning trash, local industry, and in this case, the smell of the lagoon nearby).
Apparently I had great timing, this weekend was a time of birthday celebrations, so we headed to the home of another colleague that came to welcome me – homemade leftover
s, thank you very much. Even homemade ice cream with these great walnut/pecan bars, yum (I’ll post the recipe for those of you who ascribe to ‘short and sweet’ rather than ‘long and lean’).
Finally got to my temporary quarters and lugged my bags inside. After a few days travel and time changes I ended up staying up most the night unpacking and showering. You see that morning in Paris I had set my alarm but didn’t actually confirm what time it was…so after I posted my little blog I called down and found out that it was 10 not 9am, which meant my cab was due to pick me up in 15 minutes and I still needed to pack my stuff up, shower, get my bags down and check out, HA. Anyway, the shower got nixed, what can I say… Ironically enough last night, first night here in Abidjan, I was getting ready for bed and realized that yet again I did not really know what time it was (yes that's right, two times in one very long day...), but that my ride would be out front at a quarter to eight the next morning… I had plenty I wanted to do in the morning anyway, for one; I wanted to see what everything looked like with a bit more light. So I set my alarm/timer for 6 hours and figured that would give me some cushion time.
After wondering through each of the rooms I headed downstairs to check out the yard, which is huge. When the morning guard greeted me in English I thought, hey, I bet he can tell me what time it is… So I asked, “yes” he says. What time is it? “Yes.” How much time do I have? “Yes.” Ahhh, well, worth a shot anyway. I wrote the whole experience off as acclimation to what everyone refers to as “Africa time.”
My sponsor picked me up at the airport, and we whizzed through the night traffic in the city. I often take issue with arriving in new places at night, since I am left with little perspective, but there were plenty of other distractions, so I don’t know that light would have helped. Even smelled like Africa (for any who have spent time in developing nations, you know what I mean, it seems each place has its own aroma of burning trash, local industry, and in this case, the smell of the lagoon nearby).
Apparently I had great timing, this weekend was a time of birthday celebrations, so we headed to the home of another colleague that came to welcome me – homemade leftover
s, thank you very much. Even homemade ice cream with these great walnut/pecan bars, yum (I’ll post the recipe for those of you who ascribe to ‘short and sweet’ rather than ‘long and lean’).Finally got to my temporary quarters and lugged my bags inside. After a few days travel and time changes I ended up staying up most the night unpacking and showering. You see that morning in Paris I had set my alarm but didn’t actually confirm what time it was…so after I posted my little blog I called down and found out that it was 10 not 9am, which meant my cab was due to pick me up in 15 minutes and I still needed to pack my stuff up, shower, get my bags down and check out, HA. Anyway, the shower got nixed, what can I say… Ironically enough last night, first night here in Abidjan, I was getting ready for bed and realized that yet again I did not really know what time it was (yes that's right, two times in one very long day...), but that my ride would be out front at a quarter to eight the next morning… I had plenty I wanted to do in the morning anyway, for one; I wanted to see what everything looked like with a bit more light. So I set my alarm/timer for 6 hours and figured that would give me some cushion time.
After wondering through each of the rooms I headed downstairs to check out the yard, which is huge. When the morning guard greeted me in English I thought, hey, I bet he can tell me what time it is… So I asked, “yes” he says. What time is it? “Yes.” How much time do I have? “Yes.” Ahhh, well, worth a shot anyway. I wrote the whole experience off as acclimation to what everyone refers to as “Africa time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment