Man I am tired. This survey wore me out. For the past 5-6 days, I have been having really strange pains in my leg. It started with my skin feeling very sensitive to the touch (my left leg) and now my left hip feels bruised and I keep getting shooting pains down my leg. Wonderful. I think this bed is my major problem, but I’m wondering if I also have a virus. I’m gonna give the doctor a call at home, I believe. I think I should. I can’t wait to get into a Marriot bed in St. Thomas… but first I need to go to Haiti first. Tomorrow. Yippee…. One of the last colleagues recommended that you don’t pay over $50 per day to a taxi which does not have a gun in the car. Ugh I can’t wait.
Anyways… moving on from the bad stuff, I’m a little excited about being on my own, although all in all I had a great time with both Joe and Patrick and now I’m on my own for the next 2.5 weeks. I think that it will be fun though, I haven’t been on my own for this short of a time on survey… ever.
Tonight at dinner, I ate a very interesting dish of banana, potatoes, gruyere cheese and fish. It sure was an interesting combination – it wasn’t too bad either. The menus here (unless you are at a hotel) are completely in Portuguese so Patrick and I did a lot of picking entrees blindly. I think maybe they think having your handbag on the floor is a sin. Everytime, at every restaurant we have been to here they grab another chair for my pocketbook to sit on before I even get a chance to throw it on the ground. Then there were prostitutes on the main street on the way home. I didn’t expect clean-cut, conservative, much too normal Brasilia to have such things as prostitutes. It has been an interesting experience. We don’t really know how else to describe it than – it’s just been fast, and weird. And really weird.
Today I had an appointment with the head of the housing department of the US embassy on the grass outside because my passport had needed to be turned in the day before in order for me to have been able to get past the security gates. Talk about strict.
The front desk people at the hotel here are great. They helped us in many ways and, one of the guys is going to make a point to buy a local fruit for me at the market tomorrow so I can try it. I think he likes me. He seems to have a really great personality and he’s always smiling. If only I had more time!
We hired a translator yesterday and he was a nice guy but he liked to be way too specific. Like, oh I don’t want to call this number, it’s too far from the hotel. Everytime I wanted to say but that DOESN’T MATTER!! As long as it’s in Brasilia it’s FINE! He didn’t understand what we were doing. Not that I really expect anyone to, but it’s frustrating when you want to say – no; no questions, just do it! And he knew everyone in the whole damn city which also made it difficult because he constantly wanted to call friends to ask them the answer – but we can’t use that info because we won’t have a contact to check up on the information next time because it was a personal call…
Tomorrow I am going back to a store I really wanted to check out in the mall. It is called Farm, and the clothing there seems just amazing, gorgeous patterns. I really can’t wait. The malls are great but they have all mostly high-end local brands, which makes it more difficult for survey.
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