wrapping up
i didn't plan to pass 5 days without blogging while on this trip, but the second week has been drastically different than the first. after moving to the crazy resort-like hotel, my life was overtaken by the real reason i came here - to participate in a conference with the prime contractor on our project, which was scheduled from 8:30am-6pm every day and usually ran over. these days were tempered by sharing a bottle of wine or a couple beers with a coworker afterwards, then doing more work after that and heading to bed. it's been great, but i'm starting to feel drained and possibly getting sick.
tonight the project manager based here took us to her house for dinner. her husband works for the state dept so they live in a government-owned and therefore bigger-than-necessary-and-quite-beautiful house that has a guard outside 24 hours. it was great to go 'off-site' a bit and see a bit of what her non-work life is like. her husband is great, too.
last night was probably the most blog-worthy experience of my trip, but i couldn't muster the energy to type up the story when i got back. we decided to have dinner outside this hotel compound and were recommended another hotel called the Safari Park which has a restaurant in the vein of Fogo de Chao, where the servers bring around all kinds of meat on skewers and slice pieces off for you. the food was great, and i had my first (and possibly last) taste of crocodile and camel. crocodile tasted fishy, and camel tasted like chewy beef. was really hoping for some ostrich, which everyone swears is the best meat ever, but they didn't have any last night. maybe i'll get to try some tomorrow or saturday.
in any case, the highlight of the night was an amazing dance performance by about 40 kenyans probably between the ages of 16 and 22. they started out with traditional african music and drums and dress, then it slowly got a bit more americanized, to the point that they were dancing to what sounded like spy movie music, and then the song 'Fever' complete with slightly inappropriate couples dancing, and then a song we swore would break into 'Thriller' because the beat was similar and some of the dance moves may as well have been performed by Michael Jackson himself. the performance quickly recovered and became more traditional again, and a group of about 8 guys performed crazy acrobatic tumbling tricks for a solid 10 minutes that left us all in awe. we hadn't known to expect a show along with our meal so it was a fun treat and we were very entertained...and laughed a lot.
i think we'll be on a good foot to start off the new project year come October. and man do i hope i get a good night's sleep tonight.
tonight the project manager based here took us to her house for dinner. her husband works for the state dept so they live in a government-owned and therefore bigger-than-necessary-and-quite-beautiful house that has a guard outside 24 hours. it was great to go 'off-site' a bit and see a bit of what her non-work life is like. her husband is great, too.
last night was probably the most blog-worthy experience of my trip, but i couldn't muster the energy to type up the story when i got back. we decided to have dinner outside this hotel compound and were recommended another hotel called the Safari Park which has a restaurant in the vein of Fogo de Chao, where the servers bring around all kinds of meat on skewers and slice pieces off for you. the food was great, and i had my first (and possibly last) taste of crocodile and camel. crocodile tasted fishy, and camel tasted like chewy beef. was really hoping for some ostrich, which everyone swears is the best meat ever, but they didn't have any last night. maybe i'll get to try some tomorrow or saturday.
in any case, the highlight of the night was an amazing dance performance by about 40 kenyans probably between the ages of 16 and 22. they started out with traditional african music and drums and dress, then it slowly got a bit more americanized, to the point that they were dancing to what sounded like spy movie music, and then the song 'Fever' complete with slightly inappropriate couples dancing, and then a song we swore would break into 'Thriller' because the beat was similar and some of the dance moves may as well have been performed by Michael Jackson himself. the performance quickly recovered and became more traditional again, and a group of about 8 guys performed crazy acrobatic tumbling tricks for a solid 10 minutes that left us all in awe. we hadn't known to expect a show along with our meal so it was a fun treat and we were very entertained...and laughed a lot.
i think we'll be on a good foot to start off the new project year come October. and man do i hope i get a good night's sleep tonight.
Comments