weekends are too long and too short

Much as I love working here, it would be really nice to get home in time to be able to take a walk or run in the evening before it gets dark. Yesterday I took a nice long ramble in the late afternoon and realized that I live tantalizingly close to real Africa (as opposed to the city). I encountered Maasai kids herding goats and prickly things that stuck into my jeans and tiny winding paths through fields. Somehow, after a lot of wandering, I suddenly ended up in the back yard of the army camp near my house, but there did not seem to be a problem with my appearing in the middle of the camp like there would be if I did the same in Rwanda. The kids greeted me and then a man said hello and we traded the few bits of Kiswahili I know and then I went on home in time to catch a dalla-dalla to town to meet some friends for dinner.

The ones who live in my house gave me a bouquet of flowers as thanks for putting up with them this weekend - and believe me, they took some putting up with. We had a pizza party on Saturday night which degenerated quickly into a drinking party because the pizza took so long to cook. I felt even more than usual like the only adult in the room (this is a sad state of affairs considering that I've spent most of my life being the youngest in any given group besides my family). I usually have a lot of fun with these people, but I've never been able to get into the drinking-as-fun world and this was taking it a bit further than my patience stretches (this is an even sadder state of affairs considering that I usually have very stretchy patience). They played Spin the Bottle (what is this, seventh grade? Spin the Bottle?) in the dining room while I chatted with D in the living room. Let's just put it this way: if we are ever opponents in a case in a conservative state and I'm feeling like using devious tactics to get any one of them off the case, I have a lot of ammunition. I also made my world-famous (well, now famous in three countries) coffee cake which was met to a great deal of applause even though I gave them the slightly burned half because they were too drunk to notice and/or to fully appreciate the difference.

All I can say is that I'm grateful beyond words that life has more meaning than that.