Staying up late

Have I ever mentioned how much I love to stay up late? I love the wee hours of the morning, when everyone else is sleeping, and all I hear are the crickets, the frogs and the blaring music from the cultural centre nearby. It's cool, it's relatively quiet (that is, there are no cars or trucks rumbling by outside, no people wandering around or playing dominos on the other side of the fence...). It's just nice. Some people like the cool quiet-ness of the early morning. I like the cool quietness of the early, early morning. However, since we've had a workshop, and since I've been a bit on the sick side, I haven't really been able to stay up late lately. So tonight... I'm loving it!

I had quite a nice day today, actually. We had half-day work for the workshop, which was fairly low-stress for me. Everyone is just drafting stories in their languages to go with each lesson in the primer, so there's not much I can do to help, beyond making sure they're keeping the stories short and simple!

After lunch, I helped Richard fix our toilet and sink - both of which have sprung leaks again. Good thing I did a lot of light holding and fetching of stuff for my dad when he was fixing things around the house. All that practice is coming in handy around here, as I'm still doing my fair share of holding the light, balancing heavy objects and just in general being an extra pair of hands when Mr. Fix-it Richard comes around! Unfortunately, his solution to the toilet leak wasn't a very good solution, so we'll have another go at it tomorrow. But our sink is better than new :)

After working on our plumbing, Richard wanted to work on another idea that he had yesterday. We were complaining about these mobile phones (um, I mean, cell phones) that they sell in the market here. They all have these "made in China" batteries, which last for about, oh, an hour, before you have to charge them again. So Richard, being the comedian that he is, thought of the perfect editorial cartoon for the BBC's "Only in Africa" section. Here's his solution to the bad mobile phone battery problem:

Then this afternoon I went to the market with a couple of friends to buy some fabric. We found some really nice stuff. Of course, I couldn't get out of the market without buying a piece myself. Annamarie and I have too much of the same taste - so we decided to get one piece and split it between us. I want a dress made from it, and she wants a top, so between the 6 yards that are there, we should be ok! Anyway, the cloth only costs about $7 for 6 yards, so you can't really go wrong! I know that I have a few too many outfits already, but when a piece of cloth speaks to me like this one did... I just had to have it!

Following the shopping expidition and a shower, we had yet another amazing dinner party in our house! This time, we imported a chef from Belgium, and he made us a huge pot of delicious risotto! This is something I love to see - my kitchen full of OTHER people cooking dinner for ME!
We had a wonderful time all together, as usual! Good friends and good food... what more could a girl ask for on a Saturday night?