Because I spent 20+ hours confused about what time it was on a plane, that's how.
Alisa and I spent our final day in Moshi attempting to spend all the shillings in our pockets - and managed to spend most our dollars too. Tanzania shillings aren't legal tender outside the country, so except for the few (thousand) that were taken home for commemoration, we needed to spend them.
One USD is about 1600 Tanzania shillings, so converting while trying to bargain was always fun. $25 equal 40,000 shillings, but mostly they are just a lot of zeros and I start getting confused when I have a 1,000 and a 10,000 shilling note in my hand.
We didn't have to check out of Springlands Hotel until 10:30, even though we were up at 5am with the call to prayer and then again at 7am when we got hungry and it was light outside. So we hung out in the room, read, took our fourth shower in fourteen days (in true CS major fashion), and got our buffet breakfast. (Neither of us had the porridge - shocker, I know.)
I had some gifts and souveniors I wanted to buy, and Alisa was always interested in looking, so we took the $1 shuttle a quarter mile into town and started wandering.
There was a row of shops, and the first we stopped into gave us pretty decent prices up front, so we didn't do much haggling and came out with some hand-carved stuff. Both Alisa and I wanted Christmas ornaments, so we found some keychains made of cow horn that could service, but we didn't want to pay more than $1.50. The first shop, we talked them down to $2, but weren't satisfied with that. The next shop, we asked for prices and the girl started them at $10! It is always more fun to haggle when you know that actual valuation of what you are trying to buy.
None of the shops would go down that far, but we stumbled upon one with beautiful beaded and metal animal ornaments, so scooped up those instead. I'm hoping that using the Masai blanket I bought there too as a picnic blanket isn't offensive...
Traveling back to the hotel, we saw Thomas again and said our hello-goodbyes again. Other than that, the next 24 hours were hotel-airport-plane-airport-plane-airport. I got a few hours of sleep in there, watched some movies, and was driven crazy by the guy behind me tapping on the touch screen right behind my head while playing a game.
We did run into another couple that we had sat with at dinner, then again at breakfast, then again on the way to the airport. In Addis Ababa, we played cards for the duration of the layover, so it went pretty quickly, thankfully. All of the international departure terminals were much nicer than the international arrival terminals, so we weren't sitting on the floor being hot and sweaty.
We made it to Dulles, where a friend (who I'm highly indebted to for getting to the airport at 9am on a Sunday) picked us up to take us to my grandparents' house. Alisa's car was still there (yay), and we went our separate ways. During the trip, we did figure out that I'm headed to Pittsburgh in two weeks anyway, so it isn't going to be long until I see her again anyway.
My day was seeing Rosie (who is headed to a conference for a week, so needed to make sure I said hello-goodbye to her) and trying to stay awake and failing. I don't think a 5-hour nap is going to help me sleep soundly tonight, but I'm still tired and ready for bed - so here's to hoping that jetlag isn't as bad going west!
No comments:
Post a Comment