A week of Firsts

In the past few days, I've had some "firsts" in Jb.

1. I browned ground beef that was bought in Jb! That's a first. I had forgotten what it was like to cook meat and make it into spaghetti sauce! Amazing. I'm still not quite sure where to find the shop where it was bought - the stuff I cooked up was given to Annamarie, but I've been given directions to the shop where it was bought... so I'll go searching for it when I come back!
   
2. I bought toothpaste - CREST! I bought it at my favorite Eritrean "supermarket", which just got a new shipment in. Normally, the "brand" name toothpastes can only be found at the special expat grocery store, which is super-duper expensive. And thus far, I've been able to keep myself supplied with toothpaste brought in from home or from Kenya or Uganda. But I've been in this town for almost 6 months without leaving... so I finally had to buy some toothpaste. And just at the right time, my favorite Eritreans brought some in from Saudi Arabia. At a very reasonable price - $2 for a tube. You know you've been somewhere a LONG time when you start having to buy toothpaste and underwear in a city. I've not gotten to the point where I've had to buy underwear yet... but oh man, it's definitely time to go home and replace what I've got!
3. I ate Turkish Delights that our dinner guests brought for us on Friday night. Yes, we hosted yet another dinner party on Friday evening - it's becoming a habit... a very good habit!
4. I went to the new Chinese pre-fab palace shop. Quite the place, full of clothes and furniture and household supplies, all direct from China! I actually broke down and got myself a pair of flip flops with a little flag from this country on them! They're really quite cute - they have a pink surfer theme going on, with palm trees and surfers, and then have an imprint of the country name and a little plastic flag glued on the toe-piece. Very cute. But don't tell Grace - I got her a pair, too, but they're a surprise. Now we have yet another pair of matching Jb shoes. Our Thanksgiving matching shoes are a bit worn out, I think.
5. I went to a new Eritrean restuarant which isn't too far from our house. It's quite nice - decorated in sort of a "nouveau tukel" decor. Bright solid colors on the walls, tasteful furniture made of chunky wood. Very sophisticated, actually. And they were playing this lovely easy-listening jazz sort of music, rather than some obnoxious East African pop, Celine Dion or Amharic music. We ordered some shiro and tibs, and then I spoke some Tigrinya to the manager. Then the price suddenly went down! It was good food. Nice fresh injera, nice laid back clientele. Helpful waitress. We liked it so much, we went back again this afternoon for lunch :)
6. I installed a program on one of the teams' computers which didn't require a whole bunch of logging off and logging in onto different user accounts to make sure it worked across all the accounts - I think I'm getting the hang of some of this software and multiple user accounts! Yup, I spend Saturday morning in geek-land and it wasn't such a bad place to be...

So there were a few good 'firsts' over the past couple of days. I'm looking forward to a nice quiet week. I think tomorrow is a holiday - Eid al Adha or something. But I've got several things on the go that need to get finished before the week is over and I fly away home! By the way, it's currently -4C with light snow where I'm going. It's currently 30C (at 9:13pm) with light dust where I am. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment - maybe you all will have to come see ME at my house when I get there, 'cause I might not be able to drag my frozen little bottom out the door once I get there!