Moving up in the world!

Things really are looking up in this town. It's been very odd today, as the electricity has been on now for 29 hours (and counting!). Really, truly amazing. When it started to get dark this evening (around 6:30 it starts to get a bit dark in the house), I almost forgot to turn on the lights, since I'm really not used to being able to turn on the lights at that hour of the day. I've been able to charge my cell phones tonight, I'm able to use my computer tonight without thinking about saving some battery power for tomorrow, I'm not sweating because I have my fan turned on... really, life is changing. I'm just not sure how long it's going to last... it would just be so nice if we could have a Sunday with electricity so we can sit in front of the fan and read or nap, instead of sweating all day!

We also found this week, a new flavour of yogurt! I don't know how often they'll bring it in, but you can now get (on occassion) plain, strawberry and apple mango yogurt in this city! Honestly, this is mind blowing to me, as it was just last year that they even started bringing plain yogurt to the city. I saw sour cream once, but I guess that didn't go over too well, since I've never seen it again :(

We tried out a new Lebanese restaurant for dinner tonight. The food was quite good, but they messed up Annamarie's order a bit - she wanted steak. I ordered a kabab. However, when the food came out, both of our plates looked exactly the same. Then when we got the bill, it was written out for 1 kabab and 1 kufta. Hmmmm... not quite sure what happened there. Wes ordered a side of chips, and ended up with a stack of fries all wrapped in a pita! So it was like a french fry sandwich!

The amazing thing is that this place supposedly delivers food to your house or office! I'm really not sure how that's supposed to work - the only thing I can figure out is that they would go by GPS coordinates. I mean, it's not like we have any street signs here. To get to our compound, you go on the road that runs between the police hospital and the university. When you see the big blue container (or the police post that's locked with a toothbrush), you make a right. When you see the burned out green car wreckage, you make a left past the hut made of sticks. Then you find our front gate.

I mean, really, that's the usual description of how to find things around here, so I can't imagine a delivery service would be able to go by real directions to find anyone's house! But the GPS coordinates could really work. And since everyone and their granny seems to have a satellite phone around here, it's pretty easy to figure out your GPS coordinates. I won't reveal mine here, as you would then be able to pin-point exactly where I am and what I do... or you could come and deliver a shwarma...

Anyways, on the way home from the restaurant which served us the wrong food, but was very tasty anyways, we passed by a brand new cafe! Annamarie and I both saw it at the same time, and freaked poor Jackie out. We were both hooting and hollering, and we eventually got Jackie to turn around so we could go back to check it out. It's SO nice. They have some A/C in there, but it didn't seem to be working, so it was a little hotter than I would have liked. But everything was so clean and shiny and new, and they had a beautiful espresso machine and a very tasty custardy sort of cake. Amazing. Of course, it's owned by Ethiopians, and it is pretty much up to the standard of Addis Ababa cafes... except for the fact that it was a little warm, I felt like I was back in Addis again. So nice.

So really, between the electricity, a new yogurt flavour, the possibility of "fast" food delivered to my door, and a posh new cafe... I really feel like I'm starting to live in a capital city! It's been a very good day :)