Almost the end of September...

Well-today is the beginning of my 5th week here in Mauritius. I really feel like I'm getting used to it and am well-adjusted. I only miss certain things about home occasionally. I am still enjoying my job-still trying to make my survey the best that it can possibly be so that it will be of great importance to ATS.

The weekend was low key but fun. After I was finished with facebook (would have stayed on longer but my computer was about to die), I left to go to the beach for awhile. Audrey was gone all day as it was the last day of hunting season-she catered a big lunch for Dominique and many others-hope it was a good day!!

I decided to try to the local beach this time around in Tamarin Bay. I did not like it as much-I didn't stay long as it was extremely windy and sand kept blowing all over me and on my towel (I even found a decent sized amount in my purse). So I gave up and went to lay by the pool until I discovered that I was out of minutes on my mauritian cell phone-we really are spoiled in the states to have cell phone plans that you pay monthly. I ran to the store to buy a card to add more minutes - when I think about it, it actually lasted me an entire month because everyone here text messages instead of calling because you use less minutes that way. It was an uneventful afternoon as I read my book by the pool.

Yannick was supposed to go with to the concert that I mentioned but in the end we decided not to go as it was too far away and neither of us knew how to get there. Instead, I had my first experience in a Mauritian movie theater-Yannick, Fabien, and I. We saw Babylon A.D.-a Vin Diesel/Gerard Depardieu movie completely dubbed in french. It was quite funny to hear the french voiceover version of Vin Diesel.

After the movie, we went back to Yannicks where we sat around drinking wine and had intelligent conversations of what was happening in the world.

I didn't do much of anything yesterday except be lazy and try the KFC. It was actually pretty good-better quality than home for sure. Audrey went out for dinner with a friend so Alain and I had dinner without her-pork chops, potato salad, fresh tomatoes-delicious!

Some little things:
-people interchange french and english without even thinking about it-i equate it to the hispanic population at home who often switch back and forth between spanish and english
-I drove to Curepipe (where Yannick lives) by myself on Saturday evening. I got soooo lost as the road markings are terrible. I made a complete wrong turn and found myself heading towards the east coast. It was also raining and the roads were not well-lit.
-all current and former UF students will appreciate this - on the way to Curepipe I saw a Hara Krishna center-this brought me back to the funny smelling vegetarian cuisine that was served by Library West
-speaking of UF-WE LOST!!!!! completely unnacceptable...
-I showed Yannick on a map where Jacksonville is as well as where the rest of my family lives-he couldn't believe how far away everything was
-Alain stated to me quite seriously the other day that Americans only eat hamburgers. While some of you may remember that this was true for me at a point in my life-I felt the need to back up my country and say that in fact we eat all kinds of things
-thanks to CNN.com I have an idea of what is going on at home

Hope you are all doing well!!

More later....