not in california anymore, toto

regarding jon's post: no. no anacondas yet. the only really exciting fauna ive seen so far are these cool geckos. except the species that are here are tri-colored. i think they have a brown head, grey body, and red tail.

this morning i woke up to a choir of sorts. outside, not 40 ft. down the street, there was this little group of singers outside one of the house's gate. they had muslim clothes on, and played the drums and an eastern-sounding instrument. it was interesting. and why were they outside, playing to one specific house?

today i am sick again. last night a stomach thing came on me suddenly. i was shaking and i almost threw up. i fell asleep with it really bad, and woke up better, but not great. i stayed home today and worked from here. i think it might have been from an accidental bit of water i had. it wasnt even an ounce, but i dont know what else it could have been. the tap water here is practically brown. the first time i took a shower, i looked at the collecting water at my feet and marveled at how dirty i had been. but no, that was just the water. usually i remember to use the bottled or filtered water for cooking, but this time it just slipped my mind.

so, speaking of work, i havent told you what ive been doing here. thats mainly because i wasnt doing anything for the first couple weeks! i interviewed people around the office for my own benefit and for some school requirements, and read up on the UNDP and learned a bit of french. so basically i did nothing to help. it was very taxing for me to do nothing, honestly. those first weeks passed by like a parked car. however, this week was quite different. i was given the task of reformatting some "problem trees" (charts of developmental problems) that were being submitted this monday in a big report to the prime minister. there were about 20, and they were in various styles depending on the teams that created them. so my job was to put them in a single style and clean them up. this (formatting, editing, designing) is actually something that i like and that im decent at. and its something that they really needed. so thats what ive been doing. not life changing, but necessary.