Kind of bored, actually

The past two days have been kind of blah.  Monday was an Labor Day in America, so the office was closed but the rest of Pretoria was open.  I was awoken at 8:30 by my room phone ringing with a call for me from G-Connect, the dominant wireless Internet provider in these parts, letting me know that the connection to the hotel had been restored and I could surf from the comfort of my room again.  (More importantly, I could log my phone in again and make some phone calls.) I had planned to spend the day by the pool, but the deck was too windy.  Oh, and the pool was gross.  So I putzed around for awhile, took a quick walk, and was basically just a lazy bum for most of the day.

Around 4:30 PM I got motivated and went downstairs to have the concierge call a car to take me to Menlyn Park Mall.  I guess I’m a bit like Cher from “Clueless” in that whenever I’m feeling a little down or homesick, all I need is to surround myself with rampant consumerism to get back to my old self.  I didn’t buy much–a book, a latte, some biltong and a thingamabobber to convert the ridiculous looking South African electrical socket to the more reasonable European one so that I could plug in my alarm clock and laptop next to my bed.  I spent far less money at the mall than I did on transportation, which ended up costing 375 Rand round trip–about $50.  Cabs aren’t cheap here, and public transportation is pretty much nonexistent, so I feel a bit trapped in my hotel at times.

I didn’t sleep very well last night and definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, so today wasn’t the most pleasant of days.  Work was fine–things seem to be going as planned and the folks here seem to like us, I was just tired and cranky.  I think I just need to power through the rest of this week, enjoy the weekend, and move on to Johannesburg on Monday.