Africa: Day 9 (Settling in)

Greetings once again world. I sit here at this moment, wrapped blissfully within the rapture of Vivaldi's Concerto for four Violins and Cello in B Minor, feeling the archaeology of music as it battles itself against the acoustic entrapments of this new abode. One thing can be said for my new dwelling… music is alive here. The arches and the marble give the strings a quality and the horns a resonance that I have experienced in very few other places. Music here breathes, it exhales through the air in rising sweeps that carry throughout the house. Overall, internet connection notwithstanding, the accoutrements are quite nice.

I have spent the day in the company of April, Tom and Tim, working tirelessly to turn this drab apartment into both a dwelling for us, an office for me, and a living space where we shant run over each other at every other step. It has indeed proved to be a long day. The previous team that left today were living here for five weeks and it appears as though thoughts of cleaning were last on their minds while they were here.

Six hours of collective effort on everyone's part however, has turned it into quite a comfortable place. The morning was spent purchasing the necessary amenities required to live and cook here for the following six weeks while we are in Libya. The Living room has been thoroughly cleaned, and rearranged to allow for a projection television to saturate the polished white concrete walls with color while we watch movies, or just enjoy the satellite television. The Dining room has been reconfigured with Office use in mind, providing a place for all of us to sit and work together. The kitchen had to be completely restocked. I'm not sure how others planned to live here, but I find it quite impossible to feed four people with only two pots and one pan to cook with.

Tonight should be a treat. This will be my first experience cooking in a foreign country, without all the amenities I have at my disposal at home. I plan to experiment a little this evening for dinner. If things go well, we will be having penne pasta, with home-libyan-made marinara sauce served over a grilled chicken breast. That is the plan. However, if things do NOT go the way I plan, we will be having grilled cheese sandwiches and pepsi. Wish me luck in this venture.

~~Brief Interlude Here~~

Greetings again. I write you now from the post-successfully completed dinner, meaning I'm fat, happy, and tired. It has been an extremely long day here for the team. Even though we did not go "to" work today because of the living arrangement situation, I am more tired right now than I usually am after three hard day in a row. It doesn't help that we come home to a hard marble floor rather than the nice plush carpet we're used to. It's a small thing to consider, but it will really surprise you if you consider that the streets and the dirt roads are much softer on the body in this country than the interior of your home is. Long days walking around the house are worse on us than long days walking around the job site.

I've been really in the mood to share the pictures with all of you out there in Cyberspace, but unfortunately, I am sans internet at the moment and thus am reduced to composing my thoughts in Microsoft Word and the uploading them later when I am online. The biggest hindrance to this process is the lack of any easy way to include pictures when I'm writing this way. I have downloaded a program that should allow me to compose my future blog posts offline, complete with pictures, and then post them to the world when I get to the internet, but I'm waiting to get to work tomorrow to download the last component I need to make this new program work. If it does, then I will have PLENTY of time here at the apartment with which to share my thoughts through both text and pictures.

It seems my thoughts are wandering a lot this evening. I'm trying in vain to locate a focus and proceed from there, but I'm mentally scattered today. Please accept my apologies. I have received comments from some that they really like my writing, and this has made me put pressure on myself to make sure that each post conforms to some semblance of aesthetic interpretation… however I seem to lack that these last few days. Those of you who read this will just have to bear with me while I muddle through this.

Tomorrow might be yet again my last chance to be online for a few days. Tim, myself, and Mohamed Torshi will be flying to Benghazi tomorrow. Tripoli, where I reside now in the apartment, is on the Western northernmost end of Libya, very close to being in Washington State if I were in the USA. Benghazi is closer to New York, USA, in the uppermost eastern quadrant of the country. We fly tomorrow for an unknown number of days and to an unknown destination at this point. I have neither address, nor phone number that I can guarantee to work while we're gone, but I will try my best to communicate online if connectivity is available.

Personally, this trip is going to be a bust in my opinion. Tim and I have instituted a company policy that our men are not to be left over the weekend away from Tripoli and our base of operations, however there is NO way we can possibly complete what we are being sent there to do before Thursday. So, by late Wednesday night, the locals in Benghazi might be experiencing two hands full of Toby Keith (Angry American). However, I'd like to keep a positive outlook on this upcoming trip and for that sake, I will assume that Allah will open the skies up to deliver me 72 helpers.. or 72 virgins. One would make us get done before the weekend and the other would make us not care if we made it home for the weekend or not! (kidding dear.) Although, from the perspective of a man who is almost 30 years old; who in his right mind would want 72 virgins? I'm expecting you to pick up on the innuendo here without me going into detail… if you missed it, you're too young to be reading this.

(Blog post ended because I had to clean the house… lol)