Luanda Days, I Mean Daze

you know you are in one when . . .

• you have spent almost 5 hours in the car and only made 3 stops— for Portuguese class, the grocery store, and lunch take-out.
• you get lunch take-out from a restaurant and walk away 30 minutes later with 2 kabobs and $25 less in your pocket.
• it takes 48 hours to download a large file of photos.
• you get bumped off the internet 3 times right in the middle of your scrabble game and the next player skips your turn!
• you are desperate enough for celery to pay $15 for it.
• you have to shower with a 1 liter bottle because you have run out of water.
• the water coming out of your faucet is brown.
• no one in the store understands what you are asking for, even though you think you are using flawless Portuguese.
• you find your night security guard curled up and sound asleep on a piece of cardboard behind your car.
• you can’t find cream (when you really need it) in the entire city of Luanda.
• you don’t want to share the last of your special coffee beans because you won’t get any more til your next trip back to the U.S.
• your phone rings in the middle of the night because your kids forgot there was a 9-hr. time difference.
• you send your driver to buy 10 tomatoes but he returns with 10 kilos of tomatoes (happened to a friend of mine).
• you are willing to spend $300 per night to stay in a little rustic cabin outside the city just to get away!