It's almost as though I've changed countries

I had a rough time sleeping last night. Woke up a lot of times. I almost looked forward to the alarm ringing in the morning.

I had packed almost everything the night before so there was little to do except shower and dress. The problems started when I went to put on my makeup. Did you realize that eyeglasses can completely disappear on dark marble? I so needed David to help me look for my glasses (as he does nearly every other day.) I even brought a spare pair which was conveniently packed at the bottom of my suitcase. Eventually a felt them rather than found them and I was off.

As I was leaving the hotel I made some last minute observations:

• This very posh hotel has an odd selection of towels. Four towels total for a room designed for two. No hand towel, and no wash cloth. Just a medium towel, a large towel and a floor towel. It was fine for me, I just thought it was interesting compared to US hotels.
• There was one thing I've never seen in a hotel room before ... a scale! I discovered that I like my weight MUCH better in kilograms!
• The TV remote was very odd. The power button turned the TV off, but only the channel up button turned it back on.
• Most of the channels were in English from South Africa.
• The clock behind the reception desk had four clocks built in. When I went down to the reception desk for the third time hoping they had found change the clock said that it was 7AM here, 1 PM in Hong Kong, 3 PM in Sydney and 1:05 AM in New York. That explains why New Yorkers are always rushing. They always think they're late when they are five minutes early!
• The front desk never seemed to have any change.

When I arrived, my driver gave me a cell phone to use while I'm here. Even though I almost NEVER drop my own phone which has a lovely protective case, I manage to drop this phone at least once a day and it splits in two and the battery goes bouncing around causing all who are watching me some amusement.

Finally! A picture of the flag waving in the breeze!

It's a pre-paid phone and I didn't know how much was left on it. My client taught me that when you want to put more money on the phone you find someone walking down the street who looks sort of like a newspaper vendor (you know, those guys who where that thing that looks sort of like smock with a big pocket in the front.) You give him 100MT (nearly $4) and he hands you this tiny plastic red strip. If you haven't lost it by the time you find a coin, you scrape off the thing that hides the code. Then you enter some series of stars numbers codes and hashes and then the phone sends you a text message letting you know how much money you have on the phone now. It's all very interesting. Now, if only I could hear the person on the other end of the call, I'd be golden, but I can't hear a thing.

The driver was late again. It was a different driver than I've had before, but he was very nice. He came up to me an asked if I was Jen Good. People here have a really tough time saying my name. It's usually something between Jen and Jane. When I got in the car I saw a note written on a paper saying Gen Good Man. Now I know why he looked so confused when he came over to me, he thought I was a MAN named Gen Good!

He had a tough time getting where I was going because he couldn't turn right due to restrictions. We had to drive way down hill so that he could make a U turn and then go to the top of the hill. I appreciated it because I got to see some of the city that I hadn't seen earlier including buildings that were abandoned since the time of the Portuguese colonization.

Reminders of Colonization

I heard a weather forecast on the radio. The only information provided was that it was going to be refreshingly cooler. I guess when every day is sunny and warm, what more is there to say?

I was aiming to get to the class at 8, the class started at 8:30 and I got there around 8:45. No one seemed bothered as the printed materials hadn't arrived yet, no one had Internet yet and not everyone had arrived. We finally had to pay the hotel 500MT per person (nearly $20) for wireless access and then we could get started. It took about another 30 minutes for everyone to by-pass all of the hurdles to get logged into the system. So by around 10:30 we were where we were supposed to be at 9AM.

I don't know if you can really call what I'm doing a class. The system is not very hard and what I could show them in total would take about 30 minutes, but the participants are going through every field carefully and deciding if the system works the way they need. When it doesn't, I go into the administration and make changes (or I make notes of what needs to be changed.)

Of course the day left me with observations...

• There's another awesome Mozambique sound that I wish I could show you. They were speaking Portuguese with each other so I don't completely know the context but I've heard a few times a high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeee. That I believe is supposed to express shock or it may be equivalent to the jewish "Oy" meaning "Oh no!"
• When class has a break for coffee, it's practically a meal. There are whole sandwiches available. The powder they put out for coffee was something I didn't recognize as ANYTHING like coffee so I passed. I think I'm going to bring my backup Starbucks Via with me tomorrow.
• I've seen a few instances, today being the most blantent, where a few people here seem a lot less self-conscious about picking their nose in public. And I don't mean a polite scratch, I mean digging for gold.
• When you pay nearly $20 for internet, you need to read the fine print that it pays for SIX hours of internet even though you're in an EIGHT hour class! You guessed it! Nearly two hours before we were finished I was kicked.

So I made it to my "new" hotel -- Hotel Cordoso. This is more like the hotel that I expected to find when I arrived. The rooms are about the size of the rooms in most hotels. The floor is tile, not carpet. The TV can only be seen from the bed. The desk seat is not something I'd want to spend a lot of time in. The balcony overlooks the street, not the ocean. There are no drawers so I have to hang everything. I traded my soaking tub for a shower stall. The four towels became three. Mind you -- I'm NOT complaining! This feels a bit more authentic in a way. And while I enjoyed the over-the-top luxury while I had it, I couldn't help feeling a bit guilty with so much poverty around me. This is still WAY luxurious compared to some of the places here.

Most importantly, this place gave me unlimited internet whereas, I guess I wasn't being luxurious enough in the Afrin Hotel because I was using up my 150MB too quickly!

The pictures that didn't all make it to the blog.