Back in Africa

How you know you are back in Africa:
10. Starting to sweat as soon as the cabin door of the airplane is open.
9. At the airport, you are accosted by people wanting to push your luggage to your car for you.
8. Stopped at a military check-point as you enter your neighborhood on the way home from the airport.
7. Not being able to sleep because you lay awake listening to the sounds of the neighborhood (which you had missed the whole time in the states and had a hard time sleeping without)
6. How can you forget in two weeks how slow the internet is here? (and its faster in Abidjan than most places)
5. You take a bath after Bible study even though you took one earlier in the day, just too much sticky sweat.
4. You leave for church fifteen minutes after it was supposed to start and you are right on-time. (and its a fifteen minute drive)
3. Because you are the only native English speaker in your English Bible study they elect you to sing the group song for the Easter service. (AHHHH!)
2. At the end of the Bible study the teacher asks you to tell about your trip to the states and to give what you had brought back for the group. (you didn't realize gifts were expected so you give them blessings)
1. You go to buy butter at a little kiosk (small corner store) and ask for butter and are handed small individually rapped packets to equal a whole stick.
0. You go to make icing for a cake and find ants had gotten in the powdered sugar bag while you were gone. Not to mention cake mix that had been eaten by mice.

Dad and I went through all my stored boxes looking for music CD's to load on our new toys, MP3 players.

Things to cherish about the states:
· Entering an American grocery store and walking the isles looking at all the pre-cooked, just add water/milk packaged food. (ahhh sweat memories)
· Walking softly, not because of the mud, but because of the snow and ice.
· Putting something over my nose and mouth to protect them from the cold, not dust storms!
· Spending a whole day at church and being able to understand the sermon and praise songs.
· Eating fast food
· Having white lines on the road
· Drivers sticking between the white lines on the road and following traffic laws.
· Red lights that work and no policeman in the middle of the intersection directing traffic.
· WEARING JEANS!
· Eating fast food