-Woke up 7:15am. Didn't have the neighbor kids screaming their heads off to wake me up. That was unusual.
-Cereal for breakfast.
-Walked to work. Took the main street route to work rather than the quicker back road. I didn't feel like having an awkward Swahili conversation and less people try to talk to me in Swahili if I take the main road. 15 minute walk to work. Got there at 8:20am.
-Started working on formatting 'Airstrip Guides' on my mac using the Pages application.
-Dan, my boss, and I head out about 9am to run some errands in town.
-First stop is my house. We are replacing a hose on my hot water heater we've been trying to repair for a few weeks. Thought we had it fixed before until it started leaking water down my hallway.
-Head to MMR, a mining company in town that we fly for occasionally. We had flown for them yesterday so we were stopping by to pick up the payment.
-We also met up with one of our Congolese staff, Patrick, there. He was helping someone in his church that morning. He drives the MAF van for us, among many other things.
-We stopped briefly downtown at Vodacom to pick up some units for the cell phones.
-We stopped in at the World Concern office to collect a payment from them as well. We had flown 4 of their passengers yesterday in the same flight as MMR.
-We were close by so we stopped at the drilling company's office that dug the well at the Carlson's house. We had a few questions about the pump.
-World Concern paid us via check at a bank we do not have an account at so we head down to that bank to cash the check.
-Our errands are done so we head back to the office around lunchtime.
-I have lunch at "McDonalds". It's not really everyone's favorite fast food restaurant but I like to pretend it is because it has low-quality tasty treats for inexpensive prices. I had a sandwich (ham, tomato, onion, lettuce, mayo), a croissant, and a coke for 1500 francs, which is $1.70.
-After lunch I worked some more on inputting data into the 'Airstrip Guides' template I created.
-Dan and Binene, another one of our Congolese staff, found a discrepancy in some of our financial records. Asked me if I could make any sense of it. I could not. But probably means I should do some more auditing of our records to see if I can find any errors to account for it.
-Called it a day at 2:30. Walked home again on the main street. Got talked to by 2 different crowds of guys wanting my to join them for a drink or just get a reaction out of the "white guy" walking down the street. I couldn't really understand because my French is still terrible so I just smile and say "Non Merci!" and just keep walking.
-Stopped by a fruit stand on the way home to buy some apples. 400 francs each. The lady tries to convince me I need 20 apples. I tell her 5 will do.
-Back home I fold some laundry I washed last Saturday. Clean up my room, which included sweeping up 3 dead roaches. They seem to think my bedroom is a good place to go and die.
-Shave my beard. 3 weeks overdue in that department.
-Roommate Ian was out to dinner with some other folks so I did not feeling like "cooking" dinner so I make a couple tuna sandwiches and slice up one of my apples for dinner.
-Start eating and getting ready for my "Skype Date" with Steve at 7:30pm. Power goes out at 7:29pm. Great. Plug in the power cord that supplies the internet connection to the battery so I can at least skype in the dark. Power comes back on while we are skyping.
-I had turned on the hot water heater several hours before hoping it would work and I would be able to enjoy a hot shower tonight. Turn on the shower. Cold...cold...cold...warm...HOT! Success! Took the first hot shower I have taken in my own home since moving here. Only my second hot shower since moving to Africa. It was glorious.
-Now just browsing the world news and social networks of friends in the States and finishing up this blog post.
-Bedtime. 10:50pm.
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