Random bits

Since I live a bit further and drive more (and drink my morning coffee in front of the window, watching the traffic), I've noticed that there is public transport here as well. And not only the crazy motorbikers, but minivans like the ones I've seen in Kigali. Two major giveaways made me realize that they are more or less regular buses. One is that there is always a guy hanging out of the middle door, shouting the names of the stops. The other one is that they always stop at the same spots. Mainly in the middle of the roundabouts.

I also noticed, while standing in the window wiht my morning coffee, that it isn't only the suuuper slow cars always right in front of me that have the steering wheels on the wrong side (i.e on the right), but basically all of them without the big UN sign. Including the buses stopping in the middle of the roundabouts. Which is funny if you consider that the traffic follows the continental European pattern, driving on the right. Apparently it's because most of them are ordered from Japan.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the weather doesn't really change much here, and therefore it's quite difficult to follow how time passes. I think we skipped a small dry season, so it's been raining almost every day since the end of August, and some days are cooler than others (right now I'm sitting in the living room in shorts and knee high socks, it's half past seven the evening, but the boys run around the house without t-shirts most of the time. I don't think it's weather specific though, they believe that their personal contribution to improving the quality of life should be that they don't deprive the public (me) from the sight of their magnificent torso. Today's socks can be explained by the fact that I got to bed at 6 the morning and am having a rather destroyed Sunday.), but in general we have 22-24 degrees, and that hasn't changed much since June. This makes it a bit difficult to believe that we've entered the advent period, and the fruits the market offers (pineapple, papaya, strawberries, passion fruit) don't help either.

The lakeside party yesterday and its aftermath resulted in me sitting on the living room floor at 4 in the morning, trying to convince the flatmate also known as „the kid” that for sleeping purposes his own bed is much more comfortable than the living room floor. Somehow this lead to the whiskey bottle making its way out of the fridge, and my polka dot shoes making their way out of my room, and soon I was taking salsa lessons. Which is perfectly fine. But when we stopped between two dances and looked out the window, we were stunned to see that at half past four, in the dark, masses of teenagers jog down the street. First I only saw a group of about twenty, but they kept coming, and when I went to bed at six, they were still circling. It's important to note that we live on a boulevard (asphalt and all that jazz), and if I really orced myself, I could see why they were training there, and why that hour, but on a Sunday??