About one week into things

     Its Sunday night. It was a nice weekend starting with Friday when a group of us went to the market. I bartered with several local Togalese shop keepers and had a lot of fun doing so. They laughed as I tried to get them to cut their prices down to a quarter of their original prices. I was able to get them down quite a bit. When I got back to the ship, a more seasoned crew member told me that I had gotten some good deals. I felt better then! Friday night, a large group of us went out to dinner to a German restaurant of all things. Here I was in West Africa, eating at a German restaurant with British, Dutch, German, Scottish, Canadian, and other American nurses. It was funny. They served us cocina shells baked like clams before dinner. I made myself try at least three of them. It was a fun time to get to know some of the nurses. Being with so many people from other countries makes me realize even more that I need to be bilingual. All of the international nurses are at least bilingual, some know multiple languages. Its only the American nurses and some of the Canadians that only know English :(

     Saturday we had bought tickets to swim at a local resort, but it rained and was cloudy so we didnt get to do as much as planned. Fortunately Sunday, someone had a free ticket to the resort so I went again and it was hot and sunny! I had some amazing smoothies by the pool and yummy food. There is a large Lebanese population in Lome and there are quite a few French ex pats. It was funny being at the pool because all of the sudden there were so many Caucasians around. This morning I attended a local church service in Lome. The worship was awesome. People were dancing in the aisles. There were two choirs that sang back and forth to one another. It was so much fun. The sermon however was hard to get through because it was completely in French. I zoned out. Well that's all for now. I need to get up for a 6:15 am workout... i'll let you know if I really do...