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Day 147 - 27 November 2005 Thanksgiving away from home so who spent Txgiving with the fam? I sure didn’t. but I did get to spend it with some friends and a bunch of other folks, some who speak English and many who don’t. so there’s this hotel who has ties to the states and throw a thanksgiving dinner every year with imported turkeys and a few other traditional dishes intermixed with some not so traditional ones. it was good eats all around and was almost worth it. the family is so gracious and hosted a good number of locals, tourists and us, the PC family. so we all had a good time and our gracious host (fellow volunteer) took us out with some of his local buddies and showed us a good time. the next time I went shopping (yuck) for a blanket or bedcover of some sort with no luck (poop). I shoulda got some stuff, but I’m never in the mood to just be buyin things for my place (especially since we don’t have much $$ to begin with). coulda found a fan or pillow or lockbox for my room, but didn’t really look too hard. it sure would be nice to have a trunk-like lockbox for my room to double as a li’l table and to put my clothes in. one day I suppose. oh yeah, and a computer with a screen that works. I think I blew the inverter. poop on that. ah well. I can still hook it up to a monitor at my youth center (gheettooooooo). so the funny story goes: with the crappy hard to figure out boat schedule, we go to the port to catch the afternoon boat home, and a man approaches us as we wait up at the bar to catch a fanta some 13. he asks if I’m Italian, and I say no, I’m American and the woman with him says “eles falá inglês” and we add Portuguese and Kriolu also. so then he tells us there isn’t a boat this afternoon, but there is one tomorrow morning. DOH! so I look at my friend and I can tell she’s goin over it in her head and tryin to figure out how she can get back to her school tomorrow morning to teach her Saturday morning classes. so I laugh and say muito obrigado to the man and look at her. in a matter of minutes, her face changes from a pensive ‘uh oh’ to a more intense ‘oh crap’ and then she starts to laugh about it nervously, then more genuinely like she just realized that there’s some humor in having to stay for longer and miss work, cuz it’s the boat’s fault and out of our control. after talking it out to me, she relaxes a bit, cuz hey, what can ya do? the whacked out boat schedule is unpredictable and unforgiving. so we laugh, play a bit more 13, then head back to our buddies place in town. since we have to stay till the next mornin’s boat, we get to kick it for one more night! SWEET! a li’l pre-party here, a li’l chawarma and fataya there, a li’l club here and another there. good times for all! took the usual pre-boat nap and then another on the ride home. so today I had the apartment all to myself. and guess what I did? YES! movie marathon! I retreated into the American cave of a living room and sat on my butt to watch movie after movie! ok, well, I did go out into the community to get some food to cook, while I watched movies of course! how useless am i? pretty durn. it sure was a nice break from the ‘hustle & bustle’ of ‘work’ and people and constant translating and speaking outside. I feel like my sitter from back home- a ‘stay in bed and watch movies all day’ type. now I understand! miss ya sista! <--- plateau                prova prova prova! --->