Some cheese with my whine?

Today, I must admit, I had a bit of a whiney day. And I feel sorry for my dear housemate, Annamarie, who had to listen to most of it! There are just some days where I feel like things are rather out of control, and when everyone else is whining to me and I'm the only one here to deal with it, I start whining myself! I went to the office this morning to the girls who work in the house whining about not having any gas to make their tea. Well, there hasn't been any cooking gas here for a few months now, and it will probably be until next month before more comes. So I'm sorry that they have to wait until we turn on the generator to be able to use the electric kettle to make their tea! I also got some whining from a guest about why we don't supply our guests with computers so they can check their email. This was just as I was trooping into the computer container where all the VSAT equipment is to figure out why there was no power to the VSAT kit and inverter. Sigh. I admit I made a snarky remark to her about if she wanted to check her email, she could walk down the street to the internet cafe or go pay $100 per night in one of the fancy tents by the river! That wasn't very kind of me, though, and I'm feeling really bad tonight for all the whining that I was doing about everything else around here today!

But I actually DID have a really nice afternoon. I worked all morning (part of it was spent clearing out the house that was just vacated by our nieghbor, which was a sad thing to do, especially since I was all alone doing it!), but then I played in the afternoon! I met Annamarie at her office and we had a really nice lunch, together with one of her Eritrean friends! It was a good way to celebrate today's Eritrean Independence holiday. 17 years ago today they got their independence from Ethiopia. We had a really nice time, and this friend of hers knows some of the same people that I do. I love this crazy small world!

Then we went tromping off to the market, which was great fun. You never quite know what you're going to find in the market. Unfortunately, they've completely destroyed the market which was within a 10 minute walk of our house :( So now we have to drive across town to the other market, which I really don't know my way around yet. But I guess I'll soon learn! We each had a few things that we needed to buy for our offices etc., and Annamarie was more successful in finding what she needed than I was! But I served a good purpose in that I could practice my Arabic and get some good deals for her. Plus, it was just really a lot of fun to go into the market and feel fairly confident of how to get what I wanted in the local Arabic. I think I should really just keep going shopping to improve my Arabic... or maybe I just need a good excuse to get myself out of the office once in a while?!

It was pretty hot and sweaty in the market today, though, so we had to stop for some refreshment on the way home - of course, the little Eritrean cafe and bakery was right on the way. As I had already stopped at a couple of gas stations with no luck in getting diesel for the truck, we decided that since we were out already, we might as well keep on going to the station near the airport. Thankfully, they had some diesel to put into the truck, as we were getting a bit too low for comfort! All in all, I did quite the tour of the town today, and thankfully, stayed safe and didn't have any mis-haps whatsoever!

So now that it's 12:25 am, and I seem to have found at least a temporary solution to our VSAT power issues, I should probably go to sleep. I actually turned my fan off in my room tonight, since it's only 27C in here! Brrr... might be getting close to the time of year to get out a second sheet to snuggle under! And hopefully, I won't feel the need to whine quite so much tomorrow... but man, a nice lump of gouda or chedder sure would taste good.