A beautiful day

Holy moly it's hot outside! A gorgeous day for a walk down to the bakery to pick up a little pizza for lunch and a meat-filled pastry. Yum.

There's this one street that I take to get to the bakery that has my favourite house on it... the front of the house is filled with flowering trees and with the heat and humidity today the flowers smelled sooooooo good...

Thought about more stuff that I miss from home:
- drinking water straight out of the tap! i hate how many bottles of water i'm going through right now... Planet! I'm soooo sorry!!!
- taking walks... sigh. Cotonou is uber-polluted so taking a walk around the block isn't quite pleasant. And if the exhaust fumes don't get ya, the flies and mosquitoes will.
- grocery stores. the markets are fun n' all, but i miss going to ONE store and finding everything I need. Like meat. The market is good if I want to kill my own though! eep! (no, that's not true, you can find ANYTHING at the market... from hair extensions to extension cords to live chickens to carrots and herbs! I FOUND HERBS!!) too bad i don't have a freezer to store the meat in! how do people live with a bar fridge??!
- breathing. Mathieu has a motorcycle and riding around with exhaust in your face is just gross. On a good day Cotonou's air quality is probably like Toronto's when it's been 35° for 4 days straight. barf. someone send oxygen, stat! The beach offers some respite, but going to the beach on my lunch hour is difficult on account of getting bothered by random men when I go alone and after work I often go to the gym with Mathieu... so I guess I'll breathe on weekends or when I travel...

I also miss my shoes and wish I'd brought more pants. I've discovered that sweating is better than mosquitoe bites and my swollen and itchy feet are eased by wearing socks.

Guess who's going to bed with socks on. Had the best night of sleep in a long time last night! weeee socks!

OH MY GOD I'M SO ITCHY!!!

MOMMY!!! The bug bites are unbelievably annoying, but I'm trying to breathe deep (not too deeply, I'm wearing insecticide!) and relax and deal with it. Oh Africa.

Started to rain a little everyday, which only makes things more humid.

Work is great, and gets better everyday. My boss asked if I wanted to extend my stay... as much as I would love to, I'm going to need a salary at some point unless they want me living off my line of credit. Supposed to meet with government officials again tomorrow... pray for me!

I've started cooking more... I have to watch my food... the bugs, mice, roaches, ants, lizards, etc. are unavoidable... unless i want to bomb my house with insecticide and honestly, whatever - i'd rather cover up my stuff properly and live-and-let-live. I'm poisoning myself enough with exhaust fumes as it is...

Does anyone else remember that "public service" ad from 20-odd years ago?? All I remember was a guy going to a pay-phone-type-vending machine for oxygen because the air was so polluted... except the machine didn't work and he collapsed to the ground at the end of the ad. I could use an oxygen machine here.

Oh my roadtrip to the bush last week, I realized how clean the air was... made me think of the summer when we roadtrip from Toronto to North Bay and stop for gas halfway and realize we can suddenly breathe...

So... when is it we start to worry about the environment?