Gaelle, the iPod, new observations and cake!

Thursday morning, I was walking up the street to grab a taxi and ran into two school girls. I happened to be wearing my bucket hat and sunglasses, and one of them had a bucket hat and sunglasses on too. The girls smiled and greeted me, and I told the girl with the hat on that I liked her hat. She just grinned and said she liked my hat back. When we parted, she said, “I love you.” Kinda weird, but hey, whatever!

When I reached the orphanage, I was greeted with open arms by Champion and Gaelle. Gaelle is Maria’s niece, and Maria is the orphanage administrative assistant. Maria will bring Gaelle some days to the orphanage so that she can play with Champion since they are close in age. Gaelle is 2 and just as cute as can be with her little turned up nose and round face (see her pic below). I had no choice but to pick up both kids, one in each arm, and carry them up the steps into the sitting area.

I introduced my iPod to the orphanage kids on Thursday, and those interested in it were actually very patient waiting to get an ear piece. The kids love to listen to it, which I don’t mind sharing it with them since they don’t have a radio at the orphanage and the TV no sound. I was going through my ipod’s menu yesterday when I noticed it had a video on it, which was odd because I don’t watch videos on my ipod and hadn’t downloaded any. I opened it up to see a 6 second close up of Janvier’s face-lol. He had no clue he was caught on video, and I doubt the kid who made the video knew what they were doing either!

I came to the realization this weekend that with Africa being a large coffee bean grower that I haven’t seen coffee sold or served anywhere here. You know how the U.S. has a Star Bucks on every corner or some kind of coffee shop, but you don’t see that here. I’m not a coffee drinker, but I just thought that it was interesting that I haven’t seen coffee anywhere. It is actually kind of refreshing not to see restaurant or coffee chains here like McDonald’s, Star Bucks, KFC, etc., because these chains are in Europe and kind of take away part of the ambiance of the European experience (or at least I think so).

Eggs are sold everywhere here and are not refrigerated. Stores/stands will usually have cartons with about 24 eggs stacked on top of one another right next to the checkout counter. Akobe and I stopped the other night to buy some eggs, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the difference would be between refrigerated and non-refrigerated eggs. My guess is that refrigerated eggs probably last longer.

Akobe bought a cake mix this week for me. She said she never knew a white person who didn’t like to eat cake. Come to think of it, I don’t know any white people who don’t like cake either-lol. It will be interesting to see what it tastes like, and I’ll be curious to see if there will be frosting on it. What’s a cake without yummy frosting, right?

I’ve had a few people ask me about donating items, and I have found that shipping here is quite expensive. Please stay tuned soon for a blog explaining about material/monetary donations…