One of my coworkers got married yesterday and I had the privilege of attending! It’s funny to think I’ve been to two weddings in Africa, but have yet to go to a wedding in the states. I think I went to one when I was young, but I hardly remember it so that doesn’t count.
My morning started out a little frantic because I knew that I was meant to attend the wedding, but I hadn’t heard any news from the person who was supposed to take me. I reached out a few times but didn’t hear back, so I settled down to do some work and relinquished myself to waiting. For the time being at work I’m going to be spending the majority of my hours learning all the Excel “Power” tools. It’s coming slow, so I’m trying to put in as many hours as I can find to speed up the process—it’s one of those things where I just have to go in and mess around and make mistakes to learn how the systems work.
Finally around 10:00 I was called and picked up for the wedding. The first ceremony was held at the brides home. Unfortunately we were late and once we showed up, everyone had already left. Thankfully many more ceremonies remained.
The second wedding ceremony was held at church. We had a mighty hard time finding the church’s location, but in the end we finally managed to get there. It was interesting how the church ceremony went; I couldn’t understand anything going on, but I was informed afterwards. The church held its regular mass (being a Sunday) and the last 15ish minutes were dedicated to the wedding group, I guess.
Everyone then migrated from the church to the groom’s home. There we had lunch. Again we got a little lost on the way and showed up late, but thankfully the ushers escorted me and my friends to the front rows (which were much desired seats because they were first to receive lunch). After my companions and I finished lunched we were faced with a tough decision: wait for everyone else to finish and proceed to next ceremony or go out and entertain ourselves until the next ceremony. We decided on the latter, making our way to a nice coffee shop.
We left the coffee shop after about an hour and went to the final cake cutting ceremony. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay long—we waited an hour and nothing seemed to be happening and my ride had to get home to his family. I missed the whole walking down the aisle and cake cutting, but I think that’s also in most wester weddings, so I’ll get to experience that back home.
I got dropped off back at home around 5:00 and was feeling hungry even after a nice lunch. I wanted to go out to eat and decided on this nearby hotel’s restaurant.
I ordered the lam tibs which sounded good and was what I thought reasonably priced. And then this behemoth of a meal came out to me and I was more than satisfied with my choice. You can’t tell from the picture, but this thing could serve near four people. Two would leave extremely full, one (as was my case) would struggle. I took home the delicious left overs, saving them for today’s breakfast. And in the end this cost me around $7.
I was happy to find that my water situation was figured out last night, and I can now shower, wash my hands, and flush my toilet again. I went to sleep around 9:00, but not before showering for the first time in a couple days. Last night my mosquito net seemed to have some problems (I must’ve messed it up at some point throughout the night) and it turned more into a mosquito trap. I woke up this morning with about 10 mosquitos flying around on the inside of the net and my hands and feet riddled with bites. Thankfully they don’t itch yet, but in a day or two I’ll be feeling it, I’m sure.