My car here has a CD player, no iPod input, and a limited radio band (which I have not yet fixed), so I listen to a lot of CDs. I have many mix CDs from college and grad school, which bring me right back to the occasion for which they were made: a road trip to NYC for New Years in college, a long road trip to Lesotho during grad school, and many others. It's been a fun drive down memory lane. It has inspired me to download some of this music so it's in my current iTunes library and not just on a hard drive that no longer connects to my computer. I should probably do something like that. So, tonight, my soundtrack is Sublime. Ah, the memories!
I am at the point in my tour when I can't possibly claim to be new and clueless anymore, especially since after the summer transfer season I am one of the seasoned people at post. That's just weird; I feel like I just arrived, though it'll be ten months next week. I'm deep in the throes of mid-level bidding and trying to figure out this whole new facet to FS life and decide what I want to do next in my career. More on that in November when it's, hopefully, all over.
This week I sponsored my first family, an absolutely lovely couple with whom I have what seems like dozens of mutual friends. We've been exchanging emails for months, but it was great to meet them and hit off from the first moment. Their pet arrived safely (yay!), and they brought me cheese and chocolates from Trader Joe's - what could be better?!
It's been a crazy summer, and I'm just starting to wind down a bit, and travel planning is starting again in earnest. So many places to go, so many decisions to make, so many unknowns with bidding!
Kampala weather has been awesome lately - cooler than normal (70 instead of 80) and some well-timed thunderstorms. It's hard to imagine going to any other climate after getting spoiled here. I love walking outside and smelling the air every morning, just after dawn. Not the dawn part, of course, but it always reminds me of early morning safari drives, and I love that crisp cool air. By the afternoon the smell of burning trash permeates everything, so I treasure those morning moments.
The broccoli and cauliflower are pretty amazing these days, so I keep trying to find creative ways to use them. Plus I'm perfecting my ginger-molasses cookies thanks to an influx of new supplies from a recently departed colleague.
My neighbors and I successfully found homes for two kittens who were born on our compound to a feral cat. They're both domesticating quite well; there's one left we're still trying to find a home for. We'd really like to find mom and get her spayed, but she's wily and elusive. My cats were quite perturbed for several weeks because the kittens camped out outside my back door, sometimes jumping onto the kitchen windowsill and meowing pitifully. They really wanted homes; one even went up the stairs and meowed at a second floor door until someone opened it. While he did not end up living there, he did get a home on the second floor :-).
Life is good here; it's a comfortable life. Slow paced but not boring. I like it.
And isn't it amazing how I still know the lyrics to every Sublime song 17 years later? Really.
I am at the point in my tour when I can't possibly claim to be new and clueless anymore, especially since after the summer transfer season I am one of the seasoned people at post. That's just weird; I feel like I just arrived, though it'll be ten months next week. I'm deep in the throes of mid-level bidding and trying to figure out this whole new facet to FS life and decide what I want to do next in my career. More on that in November when it's, hopefully, all over.
This week I sponsored my first family, an absolutely lovely couple with whom I have what seems like dozens of mutual friends. We've been exchanging emails for months, but it was great to meet them and hit off from the first moment. Their pet arrived safely (yay!), and they brought me cheese and chocolates from Trader Joe's - what could be better?!
It's been a crazy summer, and I'm just starting to wind down a bit, and travel planning is starting again in earnest. So many places to go, so many decisions to make, so many unknowns with bidding!
Kampala weather has been awesome lately - cooler than normal (70 instead of 80) and some well-timed thunderstorms. It's hard to imagine going to any other climate after getting spoiled here. I love walking outside and smelling the air every morning, just after dawn. Not the dawn part, of course, but it always reminds me of early morning safari drives, and I love that crisp cool air. By the afternoon the smell of burning trash permeates everything, so I treasure those morning moments.
The broccoli and cauliflower are pretty amazing these days, so I keep trying to find creative ways to use them. Plus I'm perfecting my ginger-molasses cookies thanks to an influx of new supplies from a recently departed colleague.
My neighbors and I successfully found homes for two kittens who were born on our compound to a feral cat. They're both domesticating quite well; there's one left we're still trying to find a home for. We'd really like to find mom and get her spayed, but she's wily and elusive. My cats were quite perturbed for several weeks because the kittens camped out outside my back door, sometimes jumping onto the kitchen windowsill and meowing pitifully. They really wanted homes; one even went up the stairs and meowed at a second floor door until someone opened it. While he did not end up living there, he did get a home on the second floor :-).
Life is good here; it's a comfortable life. Slow paced but not boring. I like it.
And isn't it amazing how I still know the lyrics to every Sublime song 17 years later? Really.
