Thoughts of the day...

I remember one of the best feelings in the world as a kid was getting new shoes. My sister and I always got new shoes at the same time, something about mom not being able to deal with multiple trips to the shoe store. The shoe shop was great! New shoes everywhere, each shoe full of potential to make you cool or nerdy, lightning fast or left in the dust. Choosing the correct shoe was definitelly a process. First mom would go off with my sister to get her shoes and would leave me to play basketball or videogames, which Shoe Carnival, in it's infinite wisdom, thought necessary to have in a shoe store. Finally she would come back and it would be my turn. I'd try on the first pair of the day, walk up and down the aisle and then legs and arms becoming a blur run in place to see if these were the shoes that were going to turn me into a track star. Inevitably the first pair would fail the test. What fun would picking the first pair be? Then mom would try and pawn off some white, no color, way too heavy pair on me and I would scoff. Three or four pairs later, and multiple mini-sprints later I would find my pair of shoes. Of course my sister and I would insist on wearing the shoes home. When we got home we would tear around the house looking for dad to show him our new shoes, somehow dad managed to get busy with work or household chores he'd been putting off right in time to miss shoe shopping. Dad would grab the two of us, collect mom, and we'd all go in the backyard to see how fast our new shoes made us. I felt like I could fly with my new shoes. I'd leave my sister in the dust as I pelted full on into the back fence, which was wooden and left a few marks when I, in my excitement, forgot to stop. Those were good times, shoe shopping and running into fences.

I had another bout of culture shock yesterday. At least I think I did. I had to ask my friend if it was possible to have reverse culture shock while you were still in the country you were supposed to be having initial culture shock from. To attempt to clear that up a bit...
After football yesterday my friend to me to the UNPX, the UN grocery store. It was a really really odd experience. First of all all of the prices were in dollars, which I couldn't figure out and had to keep converting to Leones, the official currency of Sierra Leone. Then there were things like ham, bacon, and real cheese, which I haven't seen in nearly a year. Finally there was a side room full of electronic equipment that looked new, not new in the Sierra Leonean sense of washing off something old to give it a new appearance, but new like they might even give you the thing you buy in the box it's supposed to come in. The whole thing was strange and has made me think about the last time I traveled back to the west after spending a year in Africa. Last June I arrived back in the states and my dad couldn't stop asking me if I was o.k. because of the haze I was walking around in, not talking much, eyes flitting around everywhere trying to take in everything. I wasn't expecting to have that experience for a few more weeks.

I had the best meal in the world yesterday. I took my ham that I'd bought at the px along with the pickles I also bought at the px. Bought some five blok bread from down the street and a 1,000 leones worth of mayonaise, grabbed the mustard and had a ham sandwich to die for. It was one of the best things I've eaten in a long long time. Acutally the thought of having another one in a few minutes is makeing my mouth water. I think I'm done with my thoughts now and I'll go get that sandwich!