Sights, Sounds, and Smells

How's that for a hodgepodge of topics?

Let's take them in turns.

Sounds:  I have been puttering around today with my iTunes playing in the background.  And I know it's a playlist of my favorite songs, but, man, is it really hitting the spot!  Every song brings great memories and associations.  Don't you love that?

Smells:  I came home the other day to a terrible smell in my apartment.  It smelled like something burning.  I assessed every outlet and appliance with no success.  I thought I had isolated the smell to the living room and opened windows to try and flush it out.  When I went to bed it was still not gone, so I let the cats into my room so they wouldn't spend all night with the awful smell.  They are not easy to sleep with.  So that meant I didn't sleep and was almost late for the shuttle for the next morning.  (I was almost late not so much because of the lack of sleep but because my hot water was nonexistent, and I spent the morning trying out each of three showers trying to get hot water to no avail.)  Before I left I hastily scribbled a note to my housekeeper to try and find the smell and eliminate it.  When I came home she told me it was from cleaning the oven.  Which made perfect sense!  I felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier.  She apologized for worrying me; it was not a huge deal so we laughed it off. 

In the good smells department, I have been getting fresh bouquets of flowers at the farmers' market on Fridays.  I pick out a weird assortment of flowers and have the vendor put them together prettily, and I am always amazed at how inexpensive the total is.  For such gorgeous flowers that would cost tens of dollars in the U.S. I pay a fraction of the cost because they're locally sourced.  This week I have an odd combination of fuchsia anthurium, gerbera daisies, lilies, and some purple baby's-breath-like thing.  It is making my house smell so amazing, particularly the lilies.  I love it!

As for sights, this is the really exciting one!  Way to bury the lede, I know.

I came home from work the other day and walked inside and starting putting things away.  My doorbell rang; it was a neighbor who had been a few steps behind me coming up the stairs.  She asked whether I'd seen the monkeys.  Umm, no!

Sure enough, I went back outside and found a whole troop of vervet monkeys in our backyard!!  I had only previously seen one monkey at a time, so this was super exciting.  The troop had one alpha male, several mature females, numerous juveniles, and two little babies.  There were about 15 in total.  They were inside the fence around our pool and on the stairs up to another neighbor's house and were having a grand old time!  They had absolutely no concern for us being there.  The juveniles jumped and played and fought and just were absolutely adorable.  The alpha male did some exploring, played a little hide-and-seek with us around a lamp post, and climbed up our building to get a better view.  The babies alternated between trying to play with the juveniles and cuddling with their moms.  At one point I ran inside to grab my camera and probably spent 30 minutes out there watching them until they finally moved on down the hill.  My favorite pics and videos were of the moms cuddling and grooming their babies.  The juveniles also provided some great comic relief by jumping into and promptly falling out of a very small tree.  A couple came close to us but never frighteningly close. 

My experiences in southern Africa with vervet monkeys was always overwhelmingly negative because they associated humans with food and made general pests out of themselves, knocking over garbage cans and literally stealing food out of people's hands at safari camps.  This troop in particular does not have that same association, thankfully, and none of our neighbors have any intention of doing anything to change this.  Our guards say they've never even tried to get into our garbage cans, thankfully. 

Anyway, I love these neighbors.  They only come around every now and then and are very self-sufficient and non-threatening.  People have come to find a monkey sitting on their porch furniture before, but that's about as invasive as they've been.  It's a nice little neighborhood :-).

Enjoy some of the pics below.  The videos won't upload with my slow internet, so these will have to do.  (Note: I reduced the files sizes to get them to upload, so the quality is not great.)

Juveniles playing in the yard

One of the more curious monkeys

Chilling

The tree they liked to jump into.  And fall out of.

Trying to coax the juveniles to get a move on.

Momma and baby.

Contemplating a swim.  They did not swim, thankfully.

Foraging :-)

Top 12 for 2012

I am going to try and follow in Donna's and Zoe's footsteps with a Top 12 for 2012 blog.  They both did a great job of linking theirs to blog posts, but since I may have been a bit lax about posting some momentous occasions, mine will be less awesome that way. 

1.  My family is healthy.  The year started out with a pretty major health scare for my mother, but she (and we) weathered it well, and we've been lucky otherwise.

2.  Weddings!  I attended the civil ceremony of one of my best friends in London in April, a beautiful affair joining two wonderful families.  In August I officiated at the marriage of my brother and sister-in-law, an absolutely perfect event that also brought together two wonderful families.

3.  I finished my first tour in the Foreign Service, in Jeddah.  This went a long way in proving to myself that joining the FS was the right decision for me AND that I can live in a difficult place for two years.  I had a great tour in Jeddah, with some days being harder than others, and it was a great place for me to learn a lot, fast, about the FS. 

4.  I moved back to Africa!  I spent much of 2003-05 living in South Africa and traveled extensively in the southern countries of this awesome continent.  I was excited but a little cautious moving back to Africa, albeit a different region, wondering if I'd idealized these youthful years.  I hadn't.  I love it here.  It's a huge continent with dozens of countries and thousands of different experiences, so generalizing is always a bad thing, but I think AF is a bureau I'm happy to stick with.

5.  Travel - I visited and/or lived in seven different countries this year, including four new ones for my life list (UAE, Oman, Uganda, and Ghana). 

6.  Friends.  2012 has been a great year for meeting new friends and reconnecting with tried and true friends. 

7.  Family.  I got to spend time with lots of family members, including all my brothers and their SOs and children, and lots of extended family.  My youngest niece and nephew are learning about Africa and Uganda and sort of understand why I'm not around all that much.  My grandmother and I did a fun road trip in WV this fall and discovered some new spots to visit and gorgeous scenery. 

8.  My cats not only survived numerous overseas and domestic moves this year, but they've become decent travelers.  Not good, but not as horrible as I had feared.  They love Kampala and are happy in my apartment.  Griffin is convinced the small guest room is his and guards it fiercely against intruders.  Callaghan prefers the top of the bookshelves or the linen closet.

9.  Between home leave and training, I had a great time reacquainting myself with U.S. culture.  I especially loved my time in DC and revisiting some favorite spots and discovering new ones.  Seeing lots of FS friends was great fun, as was the training itself.  Bonus was meeting a plethora of FS bloggers - such an awesome group!

10.  Parrotfish Festival - this one kind of goes along with #s 3 and 5, but it was on my Saudi bucket list and so long-anticipated that it definitely qualifies as a top 12.  And, really, where else could I have participated in such a phenomenally fun and offbeat tradition?

11.  I turned 30 in 2012.  And the world didn't end.  The two aren't related, really, but it was an exercise in patience and forgiveness to fully embrace 30.  Though I still get excited when demographic surveys place me in the 18-34 or similar group :-). 

12.  This is sort of a cop-out, but I really enjoyed getting to do things like go see the Celtics play, see Lyle Lovett in concert (twice!), go to the movies, and the like.  That wasn't generally possible in Saudi, and even in Kampala I've been able to go to a pantomime, Christmas concert, and a ballet performance in my first weeks at post. 

All right.  That was slightly more difficult than I'd anticipated, perhaps because I lumped a lot of things into pretty broad categories.  And I did manage to do more blog links than I originally anticipated!  AND I got it done before 2012 ended!  Though I clearly need to do some updates dating back many months...

Here's to an awesome 2013 for all of us!  I'm not into resolutions, so I won't go there, but may 2013 be all that you want it to be, and more :-).

Kittens in Kampala

I'm taking advantage of decent internet to post a few photos.  These are of my kittens in their various favorite spots in our new apartment.

Actually, this is the kitties in our NYC hotel during Hurricane Sandy.

Griffin finds the highest spot in the kitchen on our first night.

Content, isn't he?

That's more appropriate, ottoman in the living room.

Or chair in the master bedroom.

Callaghan playing with one of his favorite toys.

Griffin on top of the china cabinet.

Griffin in the (un)packing paper.

Callaghan on pillows on hangers on a chair.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

And I have been remiss about posting.  And this won't be too exciting a post.

Things have been quite busy here, which has been great.  I've gotten to participate in some neat things for work and feel like I'm getting a better pulse on the goings on here.  That feels really good.  When I left Jeddah, I was pretty confident about what I knew, who I knew, and what I didn't know.  Things were easy because I knew my way around.  My last official event was one where I knew almost everyone quite well, and the ease I felt with them had taken an entire tour to build.  Now, I'm starting over.  This is the way life is in the Foreign Service, and it comes with its own rewards and challenges.  Having one tour under my belt and starting over here makes me appreciate this reality a little bit more.

I've started driving here.  Just a little.  And only a couple days a week.  I still don't feel comfortable in rush hour.  I thought I'd be more comfortable driving than I am, but the perils on the road are numerous and difficult to avoid.  Traffic isn't the problem.  It's more sharing space on the road when it's full of cars, matatus, boda bodas, pedestrians, occasional animals, and more than its fair share of potholes and steep drop-offs.  This takes a certain familiarity that I don't completely possess yet.  But I can drive if I need to and know my way around well enough not to get hopelessly lost.  I am planning to hire a driver but arrived at the wrong time of the year for picking up someone from a departing family.  Maybe after the holidays my leads will pan out.

It's wonderful to come home to a home-cooked meal a few days a week!  My housekeeper is a fantastic cook and often knows what I want even if I don't.  She also keeps me well-stocked with fresh fruit salads and lots of great vegetables.  I take a huge tupperware container full of fruit in to work everyday and munch on it all afternoon.  It's perfect for those moments when my blood sugar starts to tank and I need a little pick-me-up.

A couple weeks ago I got a great introduction to Kampala's cultural offerings, attending a pantomime of Red Riding Hood and a performance by the Ugandan National Contemporary Ballet in the same week.  So much fun!  I can't wait for more outings like this.  I also attended a wonderful Christmas concert at a local church with a renowned choir, which was a fabulous way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I did a CLO-organized dinner cruise on Lake Victoria, which was very pleasant.  What a gorgeous setting with good friends, great music, and decent food.  I look forward to more lake adventures - though the very serious bilharzia threat will keep me out of the water itself for the most part.  There's something about parasitic snails...

I'm planning my first getaways for the new year, both in Uganda and out.  More on that later.  Some very exciting trips in the works!

Decorating for Christmas has been quite haphazard since I can only find 2/3 of my Christmas tree among my HHE - and the part that's missing is the bottom and stand!  So I have trinkets out here and there that the cats knock over for fun numerous times per day.  Christmas will be a fun day of celebration with friends and lots of food - I'm excited!  It's the second best thing to being with family.
Anyway, I hope all of your celebrations are wonderful, whatever your chosen holidays are!  More, with photos even!, soon :-).

Happy Kampala Days

I am firmly in the honeymoon stage of culture shock, and I'm loving every minute of it!

So here's what I'm loving so far (for those moments down the road when I'm deep in a culture shock valley):

-Work:  Awesome.  Challenging, rewarding, entertaining, and fun.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.

-Housing:  Awesome.  After Jeddah I was due some good housing karma, and I've got it in spades.  It has its quirks, but it's pretty darn wonderful.  And my neighbors are all awesome as well. 

-Settling in:  My car was in my driveway the day after I arrived.  My HHE and UAB were delivered within a week.  I have two internet sources set up, and today I had DSTV installed. 

-Weather:  Pretty much perfect.  I even love the rain!  60-80 every day of the year, give or take a few degrees?  It doesn't get much better than that.

-People:  Old friends, new friends, an abundance of good people.  Colleagues and Ugandans alike - they're all wonderful.  It's not every post you can get invited to a Thanksgiving with people you've just met and feel right at home. 

-House help:  I am lucky to have found a wonderfully caring and talented housekeeper my first week here.  She loves my cats, and they love her.  She cooks well, does the grocery shopping, and anticipates things.  And she's not too zealous about putting things away in places I'll never find them, which is always a plus!

-Happy cats:  The cats settled in quickly and never looked back.  They're slowly getting over their fear of strangers - Callie even emerged when the DSTV guys were here and making noise today!

-Green:  So, so, so much lovely green.  After two years in the Gulf, it's much appreciated.  I will never get tired of looking at banana trees and palm trees and fields of lush crops.  This is an amazingly fertile country.  Which leads me to my next point.

-Food:  The fruits and veggies here are great - fresh, quality, and affordable.  I do miss berries, but it's a tradeoff for the most wonderful bananas and pineapples and mangoes and papaya and...  I've been to a few restaurants, all of which have been really good.  I can get pretty much anything I need on the local economy, so I'm feeling good about this.

-Life:     No matter what time of day or night, the city is full of life.  On a drive to the airport a few weeks ago in the wee hours of the morning, I was amazed at how many people were up and about.  Comparatively, Saudi felt fairly sterile in terms of life on the streets as you drive through the city.  Some parts were more lively than others, but they pale in comparison to Uganda.  Or, maybe, it was dominated by cars and not people.  Here, I never fail to smile on my commutes to and from work - there's so much to see and take in!  People, shops, animals, markets, street food, farmers, factories, matatus, boda bodas, and more - it's awesome.  Someone said to me when I arrived that I shouldn't have the notion that streets were meant for cars to drive on - that's merely one of their many functions.  And it's true!  It's a little scary to imagine driving in these very chaotic but exciting streets, something I'll try out this weekend, but I'm excited all the same.  You really get to know a place by driving there, and it was something I missed out on in Saudi.  I do want to hire a driver for part of the time, but I am not over the novelty being allowed to drive. 

I know I'm forgetting something, but it's the end of a long week, and I have my bedroom finally almost perfect with the addition of working A/C, so sleep is a pleasant thing again :-).

So, dear reader, please remind me of this post in 3-5 months when I'm cursing many of these same attributes of post!  Gotta love the roller coaster of culture shock!

True Thankfulness

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!  I meant to post on the actual day, but I slept super late and got up just in time to go to  a coworker's home for a lovely, delicious dinner.  Even though I was away from family, it was wonderful to spend a cozy holiday with new friends :-).

There is much to be thankful for this year.  I have a phenomenal family, amazing friends around the world, a rewarding and challenging career that provides me endless adventure and financial stability, two fuzzy and loving kitties, and oh so much more.  But I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the defining events of 2012:  I am immeasurably thankful that my mother is still with me. 

I didn't blog too much about it at the time, but I came terrifyingly close to losing my mother to a brain aneurysm in January 2012.  But for luck and a world-class neurosurgeon and surgical team, things could have gone very badly.  It has been a long year of recovery for my mother, who also had a knee replacement in the weeks before the brain surgery, but she's doing phenomenally well.  The recovery has been frustrating and slow and, at times, just plain humorous, but she's back to work full time (and then some) and back to her old lifestyle (now improved with less knee pain!). 

I'm thankful that my father - who has been a rock through all of this - and I were able to lean on each other during that horrific week, when we came home every night from the hospital to an empty house, not sure what the next day would bring.  Along with my brothers, we clung to every improvement by Mom, whether it was coming out of her medically induced coma days earlier than predicted or yelling at nurses (anger is a common side effect of brain surgery, apparently) or taking her first unaided steps or coming home from the hospital.  We laughed and cried and celebrated together, and I'm not sure any of us could have done it alone.  And we didn't do it alone - our family, friends, and communities came together to support our family in incredibly touching ways.

And so, when my mother danced with my brother at his wedding this summer, to the family favorite "If I Had A Boat", I broke down (along with many others in the room) because it was something that we just weren't sure was going to happen months earlier. 

While I wish our family, and especially Mom, never had to go through this ordeal, I am thankful that we had the best possible outcome.  Not a day has gone by that I haven't felt thankful to have my family healthy and intact. 

And, in the parlance of my family's newest inside joke courtesy of a post-anesthesia/post-craniotomy haze, I am eternally thankful that the wombats weren't really out to get anyone that week.  Or any week since.

I hope you all had memorable and delicious Thanksgiving celebrations, whatever the circumstances and wherever you found yourself this year.

So Jet Lagged I Don't Even Know Any More

My lack of blogging lately is not so much related to settling in as it is to more travel.  My first week in Kampala was awesome - work is great, city is great, home is great - and was punctuated by the delivery of my UAB and HHE from Jeddah.  Quadruple YAY!!!!  Now my primary guest suite is covered in boxes, which I will make my way through as time goes on.  I finally have rearranged all the furniture where I want it, so I'm feeling good there.

But right after my first full week, I flew to Accra, Ghana for a week-long training workshop.  I was super excited for this training, and it was completely awesome, and it was fun to see Ghana, but...  I started really missing Kampala by about Thursday.  I missed my kitties and my bed and my clothes coming from somewhere other than a suitcase.

That's when I realized I've been in transition since mid-July.  That's a long time.  And I think I just met my limit.

Not to mention the jet lag - still overcoming the 8 hour transition to Kampala, then add in a minus 3 transition to Accra and then plus 3 back to Kampala.  *Mind explodes at complexity*

So arriving home today was blissful.  Even after a red-eye flight and a sleepless night.  And the tiring exercise of lugging my 26kg suitcase stuffed with goodies from Ghana up 38 stairs.  My cats greeted me at the door - well cared for by my awesome new housekeeper.  I took a four hour nap and feel slightly more human now.  It's time to eat the awesome ready-made dinner (chicken, stir fried vegetables, cabbage and kale, and fruit salad) left by my housekeeper and get a good night's sleep.

Photos and stories to come, from Uganda and Ghana!

Journey to Kampala, Part II: The Flights

See Part I here...

That night I packed everything up and got ready for the next day's journey.  I woke up in the morning and started trying to get a ride to the airport.  The hotel quoted me $75.  I decided to try a cab for $52.  Turns out, NYC cabs were not available for airport runs due to extreme gas shortages and new restrictions on number of passengers in vehicles entering Manhattan.  I called the bellhop again.  Car service prices had risen to $90 in 25 minutes.  I sighed but said fine.  When he came upstairs he apologized and said the price had jumped to $120.  He was apologetic and genuine, and I am pretty sure this was city-wide.  (At least it was according to a few other people I talked to at the airport.)  He tried to find someone else to share the fare, but the timing didn't work.

The other hitch - my flight was at 6:45pm, and I couldn't check out past noon because the hotel was fully booked.  I planned to hang out at the hotel where it was comfortable for a few hours, but the uncertainty of the car availability made me choose to go to the airport earlier.  I knew it would suck for the cats, but it was better than not being able to get a car out at all.

We got to the hotel at 1:15 and had to wait until 3:30 to check in.  I found a quiet-ish corner and faced their carriers out the window.  After two hours we made our way into the line with some difficulty (three suitcases and two cats and just two arms made it a process, even with carts).  We got a sympathetic gate agent who checked them in without issues.  She never asked to see the health certificates, and the total charge was half what it could have been (long story that worked in my favor). 

Once we checked in, it was time to screen the bags.  We made our way to the TSA screening section, where they asked me to remove each cat from its carrier.  I was prepared for this.  What I was not prepared for was the baggage assistance woman shouting at me the entire time, "hold on tight! Cat gets loose, cat is dead.  We get a lot of dead cats that way.  Hold it tight!  Don't want a dead cat!"  After she shouted at me for the entirety of one cat and then wouldn't help bring the carrier back to me so I could re-load him, I lost it.  I told her I knew exactly what would happen, that I had lost a pet in transit before, and that her shouting at me made both the cats and me more nervous and more likely to drop.  She stopped shouting but still muttered on and on about dead cats while I wrangled cat #2. 

Once that ordeal was over, her counterpart told me to just leave the cart with the cats and he'd bring them to the plane when it arrived.  I didn't really like this arrangement, but he seemed to know what he was doing, so I said goodbye and moved on. 

The flight to Amsterdam was on time, packed, and uneventful.  My seatmates were Swedish businesswomen who had been in NYC for a conference and were stranded by the storm.  They had seen me checking in and were all excited about the cats, with lots of questions.  The flight attendant checked on the cats for me and confirmed they were on board, and I relaxed and zoned out.

I had two hours in Amsterdam before boarding, so I had breakfast, walked around, and tried to check on the cats.  Nobody seemed to know where they were, which was disconcerting.  They assured me it wasn't unusual.  I sighed and headed for the gate.  The gate agent agreed to check again for me, and she told me a few minutes later that my cats were at the plane and, as she said, "were happy and jumping around."  Ummm - those are clearly not my cats.  Plus, the flight attendant on that fateful flight from Frankfurt to Jeddah confirmed Hattie was on board and "hyper and making lots of happy noises."  I didn't take that as a good sign.  But at least I knew they were alive and in the right place.  (I worry about traveling with pets A LOT these days...)

A flight attendant confirmed the cats made it on board and were sharing the hold with some "tiny birds."  I can only imagine how that went!

The 8 hour flight to Kigali was pretty quick, all things considered.  I lucked out and had an empty seat next to me on a very full flight, so I could stretch out a bit.  I worried a little about the Kigali stop but tried not to think about what could go wrong.  We landed in Entebbe early, and I was met at Immigration by an expeditor from the Embassy.  He was very excited to tell me that my cats had beat me to the terminal and were all set.  I was thrilled!  We sped through immigration, and I almost ran to see my cats on the other side.  They were both a little shaky but alive and well.  I let myself relax finally.  The baggage people checked the tags to make sure I was the rightful owner (which didn't happen this summer in Boston!), we waited for my bags, and off we went!  I couldn't believe how easy it was.  Granted the Embassy had helped out with import permits ahead of time, but still.  I was so grateful. 

My amazing sponsor met me in the terminal along with the Motorpool driver, and we loaded in and headed to Kampala.  Traffic wasn't bad, and we arrived at around 11:15 pm.  After lugging the cats and my luggage up to my apartment, I bid them goodnight and explored my new place.  It rocks.  Completely.

But that's a post for another day.  Suffice it to say I'm loving life right now.  I also love that, after Skyping with me and learning that I was finally "all the way in Africa" (how we refer to it with my niece and nephew), my almost-six-year-old nephew made my mom download him an African safari iPad app :-). 

Photos to come soon!

Journey to Kampala, Part I: The Storm

Greetings from Kampala!

Almost fifteen months after receiving this assignment I finally arrived.  And it's everything I hoped for and more.  I know we often have the honeymoon phase right after arriving, but I'm basking in it. 

Uganda is beautiful and welcoming - the land and the people, my apartment is phenomenal, my neighbors and colleagues are wonderful, my job will be a lot of fun as well as a challenge, my cats are happy, my car is in my driveway(!), and my HHE is in country.  Amazing.

Getting here, though, was a stressful experience.  I was scheduled to fly out of NYC on October 30.  Which, by about October 25, was clearly not going to happen.

There were two options - go with the flow or try and solve as many potential problems proactively as possible.  I can be go with the flow, but in situations like this it's better to be slightly neurotic and plan ahead.

On Friday I started making calls.  First was the umpteenth call of the week to the visa folks to see how my passport was working its way through the two different visa processes I needed.  It was halfway.  Which, after three weeks, was pretty frustrating and frightening.  They promised to overnight it on Monday to me for my Tuesday departure.  Which would be all well and good if there wasn't a massive storm coming.  So we had a 'what if' conversation and left it at that.

Next I called the hotel and booked an extra two nights.  At a significantly lower rate than my initial booking.  So I promptly rebooked the initial booking two.  The reservation agent was helpful but had not heard about the storm so didn't seem to know what I was talking about.  Which worked out in my favor, since there was availability at a reasonable price.

Then I called the airline.  They had no flight change waivers in place and had no real suggestions.  I was most concerned about rebooking the cats if our flight was canceled. 

I felt better but fretted through the night about the flights.  When I saw that Delta had implemented a flight change waiver for those in Sandy's path, I immediately called them.  And four hours later I finally got through to an agent.  Who was remarkably helpful, rebooking me at no cost on the same route two days later and making space for the cats.  (Or so I thought.  A look later at my booking made me think only one cat was booked.  Two more hours on hold later, an agent confirmed there were two cats on the reservation.  On a hunch, I asked her if it specified two cats in two carriers.  She thought it did.  Two days later, though, they THANKFULLY called me back because, lo and behold, they had booked it as two cats in one carrier.  All was fine.)  I was also super worried about their health certificate, since the new departure date would be the last day of the ten day validity.  The airline agreed that storm-related flight changes would grandfather the existing certificate in, so I could stop looking for accredited vets in Manhattan...

Anyway.  My mom drove me from NH to NYC on Sunday.  It was an easy trip, aside from the white cat in the backseat crying the. entire. way.  UGH.  We arrived about 4:30 pm, checked into our hotel, un-crated the cats, heard about the subway closure that evening, and went out to explore Times Square (just a half block away).  It was fairly crowded, but as we walked around we noticed that all the stores and restaurants were closing between 5-6 for the storm.  All of them.  We started worrying about food availability so we ate an early dinner at a restaurant across from our hotel that wasn't closing until 9pm.  I stocked up on water at the neighborhood store.  At $4.50 for a two-liter bottle. OY.

We got back to the room and watched the news.  And saw that NYC was basically shutting down.  My consultations for the following day (the entire reason for being in NYC) were canceled because the offices were closing.  In DC, the government was announcing its own shutdown along with Metro. 

Mom left early the next morning to hopefully beat the storm as she drove back to NH.  It's good she left early, because later on several of the highways and bridges she used closed down.  I went for a short walk in the intermittent drizzle and grabbed breakfast at one of the only open shops.  Later that afternoon I bundled up in rain gear, grabbed my camera, and headed out for a walk.  The streets were deserted.  Few cars, fewer pedestrians.  Nothing open.  I walked to Rockefeller Center, which was entirely abandoned.  Unbelievable sight.  Times Square had slightly more activity, but stores were all still closed.  The Naked Cowboy was wearing a life preserver. 

It was raining steadily by then and the wind was pretty strong.  I had to duck into several doorways to regain balance as I walked around.  I headed back to my hotel, dried off, and settled in.  I ordered in food from one of the still-open Vietnamese restaurants and prepared for the storm.  The airports had ceased all flights by now and would soon shut down altogether.  Schools and government closed up and down the east coast for the next day. 

I was extremely lucky as my hotel never lost power, and I had plenty to eat and drink.  My heart goes out to those who lost so much in this storm - their homes, their lives, their livelihoods.  The New Jersey coast in particular was just plain destroyed.  So, so sad.  A terrible tragedy that will take a long time to recover from.

On Tuesday I stayed close to home and tried to reassess my own situation.  While it pales in comparison to the stories of so many, I had my own unique set of problems as a result of Hurricane Sandy.  First and foremost, it was beginning to seem unlikely that I'd get my passport in time to fly out on Thursday.  Not only did I need one additional visa, it wasn't entirely clear if the government would be open the next day to work on my case.  About midafternoon the announcement of an open government on Wednesday was made, and I relaxed a little.  Just a little, because that's when I realized that none of the express mail services were operating, except to deliver supplies to hospitals.  (A decision I completely agree with, but it complicated things.) 

I weighed my options.  I could *hope* that mail was functioning enough to get my passport in time.  I could change my flight again, but that would probably mean change fees AND procuring a new cat health certificate.  Or I could just go get the darn thing myself.

Amazingly, I found a rental car company within walking distance of my hotel with available cars.  I made the reservation and then assessed the route.  It seemed all the relevant tunnels/bridges/highways were open.  The biggest question was whether my passport really was physically where I thought it was or if somehow it was in the ether of transit/processing.  I confirmed through a call to the passport duty officer that the office was truly open the following day, and I took a gamble.  I got my car the next morning and started off.  The gas tank was almost empty, which frightened me, since the first few gas stations I encountered had no gas or no electricity.  Thankfully I found a functioning one on the NJ turnpike.  (Which, as the day progressed, became one of the stations where people lined up for miles/hours waiting to get a few gallons of gas.)  My drive was long but easy.  There was very little traffic and no road debris or hazards.

I called the visa folks as soon as they opened and explained the situation.  They confirmed that my passport was there with my Ugandan visa and that I could pick it up that afternoon.  They even promised to try to get the other visa I needed.

So.  After that call I relaxed considerably.  I got to the DC area around noon and promptly encountered traffic due to a car crash.  Upon passing that, I made a quick stop at Target/PetSmart to get additional water dishes for the cats' crates (as the ones I'd ordered were lost in the UPS interruption ether) and a new GPS cord (same UPS ether for the TWO I'd ordered).  That hurdle jumped, I headed into the city.  I found the building and parking fairly easily, and I literally jumped for joy when they handed me my passport with BOTH visas inside.  YAY!  Mission successful!

I left DC around 1:45 and made it back to NYC at 6pm.  Not bad.  I filled up with gas in Maryland, correctly predicting that NJ would be a tough place to fill up farther north.  The amount of relief I felt was phenomenal.  Things were looking good.

See Part II for more...