Escaping the pleasent green pastures

Festivities finally over. It was nice, but with my impatiency I could not have taken any more of it. Merely trying to find a local sim-card was a mission impossible, even for the locals who were trying to help me out. Everyone being on holiday not even a leaf on a tree moves. Full of growing frustration and enthusiasm I got up this morning, left children under the strict eyes of the hotel housekeeping and off to work I trotted, into my little cubicle on the pleasent green pastures - meaning an area isolated from the rest of my office, a huge area where there is no one but me, an area "to be re-furbished" as everyone assures me but which I have severe doubts about, especially when they add that "anyway you won't have time to spend much of time here anyway". Everything is Russian hospital green around me. Hence the name.

I spent a whole 45 minutes in the pastures, idly flicking through some reading material, testing my laptop and pc and organising my impressive collection of stationary - scissors, a stapler, two pens, two notebooks and the two packs of post-it notes. Then I escaped. And realised the beauty of the pleasent pastures: I can sneak out any time without anyone noticing.

Only six hours later I returned to find two sweets and a telephone left on my desk. Someone had discovered I wasn't there.

I had spent the day filling forms in an administrative section, visiting the dispensary, making a hell of treck in the dirt and dust to another programme office to discuss schooling possibilities with a collegue, trecked the way back, had a coffee with another collegue over which we made some housing agent contacts, collected the children from the swimming pool and took them to a blood test to find out their blood groups, met with a housing agent and saw two very different housing possibilities and collected some forms at a bank prior to opening a local account, realising I will need every possible proof starting from my grandfather's birth certificate to be able to do that. Same for the pre-paid phone card.

Head's spinning now, thinking about a future house, pondering how it would be to start a home from nothing (exciting!) and how many rooms do I really need to store our three suitcases into (possibly a few?). The incredibly spicy noodle soup washed down with a couple of beers are not easing the spinning at all.