We Walk To School All By Ourselves

Today is the first day of the new school term. Perhaps it should be called the last day of vacation because no one was on campus today. At about 3:30 the staff of the foreign affairs program arrived to work. I informed them that my toilet did not work along with about 7 other questions. The internet man was off campus as was my friend, Candy. The toilet was fixed ASAP though, and that was good enough for me. Internet is a luxury (sort of) but toilet flushing is a basic necessity. I can't complain though, at least it is a western toilet and not a squatty potty in some communal outhouse.

As I have been living off of bread, peanut butter, and jelly, I needed to return to Wal-mart for some other items. I found my friend that has been working as my interpreter and off we went. On our way to the bus stop, we met the other foreign teacher that I knew and some students walking back from the bus stop. One of the students stopped me and said, "I know you!" I just stared at him incredulously. I did not recognize him at all. He told me that he knew because I had been here before and he was one of our students. I was so stunned that (a) he remembered me and (b) that we had made that big of an impact on the students.

For the most part, things here are much cheaper, but certain things are not. My toaster, for example, cost about about $38 USD, and its just a toaster not a toaster oven. However, it was money well spent because cold, dry bread is not very good. One of the burning questions that I had before coming was what types of food would be on the International Food aisle at the grocery store. Some of the things that we had brainstormed were SPAM, peanut butter, popcorn, and macaroni and cheese. I asked my friend thinking that I would be able to get some noodles and spaghetti sauce and ground beef to make spaghetti. When I mentioned "international aisle" she just stared at me. Sadly, there is no international aisle here.

Fortunately, there are many American products here. I am getting used to shopping by picture. Some of the American products here are: Pantene, L'Oreal, Dove (chocolate and soap), Olay, Tide, and Lipton. They even have hair dye here! Interestingly, it is all brown hair dye. I'm not sure why they need brown hair dye though because everyone's hair is already brown. Oh well!