I think I would rather work five hours a day seven days a week than the other option. Yesterday was another well balanced day and I’m really loving it.
I took my time rolling out of bed and when I finally made it to the office life in the city was still quiet. I had gone to the office in order to use the WiFi there (my data plan and hotel WiFi seem to be conspiring against me) and I found myself full of energy to work. I spent four hours on a task that I desperately needed to finish, so it felt really good.
After that I hurried on to a farewell lunch with my coworkers. It was supposed to be at 4:00pm, but as I should have expected, the people didn’t show up until 5:00pm and the food wasn’t ready until 5:30pm. I’ve been really good about letting the lateness just be as it is, but I think that I might lose my mind if I had to live here full time and wasn’t just a visitor.
I spent the rest of my evening wandering about. I’ve acquired a lot of clothes and little trinkets over my time here in Shinyanga, enough to where I need another duffle bag for it, so that was last nights mission. I’m happy to say it was successful and I even managed to buy some more gifts for friends and family! I’m truly a very bad negotiator—my coworkers tell me how much I should be paying for things, but whenever I go out and about I have a hard time justifying the haggle over 20 cents (especially when the item only costs $1 to start with). Coming back to the U.S. is going to be very difficult in terms of going shopping—I think just about everything will give me some sticker shock.
I didn’t make it to the market or out for my run because I was forced to do laundry (take that to mean what you like…). Today I hope will be pretty similar to yesterday except that I might go out and watch the World Cup final, but I’ll have to see how I’m feeling later!