The first "real" day

The first “real” day
I’m sitting in bed on what is (hopefully) our last day “living” in a hotel in Ghana, writing this on a word document, hoping that tomorrow I’ll have internet access and will be able to sit down long enough to upload this to my blog. Yes, I used the word “hope” twice in the same sentence. It has come to define life here for me as I try to get our lives as settled as possible.
Today was the kids’ first day at day camp at their new school and my first day actually heading out to an office and working. We were up at 7am, had the hotel breakfast buffet and by 8:00, we were off to conquer the world – the kids armed with snacks I had stashed overnight in the mini bar and I armed with 2 laptops, 2 cell phones (more on that in a moment) and a large bag of dirty laundry.
The driver couldn’t find the kids’ school. We called the school 3 times for directions and must have stopped & asked directions at least 5 times. Finally, we arrived, about 40 minutes later to the school which was only about 2 miles from the hotel! There were several other kids there, mostly under age 6. The kids had a good time doing tae kwon do, tie-dyeing, dancing and art. By the time I picked them up at 4:00, they were both covered with a coat of red dirt – looking like they’d had a great day. They even said the food was good – rice with a chicken stew on top.
My day was incredibly busy and another test of taking deep breaths and letting go of the outcome. I won’t even get into my Iphone unlocking story, but eventually, I was able to get my cell phone to work and one laptop but still can’t access my old contacts very easily. We don’t have an office yet, but have started pretty much camping out at the office of another micro-finance organization and hoping they won’t kick us out until we’ve got a place to work. My day was filled with everything from viewing potential office space, to trying to get internet connected at my house to buying things for the house to meeting a new contractor for our project to completing a lengthy expense report (without a fax machine or scanner to send receipts). I’ll give you an overview of getting laundry done and that should pretty much sum up how the whole day went:
I have a fabulous housekeeper/nanny, Patience. She was at the house this morning as I arrived with a bag full of laundry. I gave it all over to her. Later, when I stopped to check in with the internet guy, she had been able to wash the clothes but not dry them. My machine is brand new & European-style where the same machine both washes & dries. She finally asked me to look at it & I couldn’t get the drier to work, either (yes, I even read the manual). I finally called the realtor, who called the dealer who called the realtor later and told her that we have to switch off the master power switch on the outlet on the wall after the wash cycle, turn it back on and then start the dry cycle. Not exactly intuitive. In the mean time, Patience had laundry hanging all over the place and had to hang it all in the kitchen when she left for the evening. Tomorrow, I’m hoping I’ll get the kids to school on time, that the hotel driver will help me schlep all our stuff to the house, hoping the mattresses will actually be delivered & the bank will let me pull out enough cash to pay for it (almost everything is cash – no credit/debit cards) and hoping the internet will get installed. High hopes, I know.