Corned Beef and Gordon

On Friday a number of exciting things happened, sadly none of them work related but I have high hopes for this week. Anyway after work Sarah and I decided we would go to a ‘supermarket’ not in the style of your Sainsbury’s or your Asdas that much I knew but I had been told of the possibilities lurking inside ‘Favourite Supermarket’ across town from us and so off we went. Firstly on the bus on the way there I got to sit in the front and got my own seat AND a seatbelt. Double excitement. Although this did also mean I got to see up close the shall we say erratic nature of the other road users which is never a good thing, all of the vehicles here have bumps/dints, cracked windscreens or some part of them hanging off or just missing. Best not to think about it really and here in Calabar there are so many vehicles and speed bumps everywhere you can never build up any speed to do any real damage, that’s what I tell myself anyway.

After getting out of the bus and wondering if I’ll ever be lucky enough to get the front spot again we made our way from Marian Market to the supermarket. It’s basically like a giant corner shop stacked so full of stuff it’s pretty hard to move around, most of it looks like it’s been imported from the middle east but is brands that we would recognise from home. The excitement levels were pretty high for both Sarah and I. Sarah is from Uganda and is also not loving the spicy food or meat markets so was just as happy as me to be going on this trip. Once inside I found an array of things that made me very happy indeed, they included pasta, corned beef, hob nobs, laughing cow cheese triangles (the closest thing to cheese I’m actually going to see here) and Gordon’s Gin. The best thing about the gin is that it was actually cheap! Just about everything else was probably either on a par with back home or a tiny bit more expensive and therefore for us on our allowance quite pricey and so we had to show restraint. They sold wine too but it was roughly the same price as the gin so for me it was a no brainer, I can make the gin last. I realise that last comment may have caused some of you to scoff, Kasia making gin last? Yeah right! I can though, two reasons for that, they didn’t sell tonic so I’m having to drink it with bitter lemon which is ok but it’s no G&T and even though it’s ‘cheap’ compared to back home, at 1800 naira a bottle (roughly £7) I still have to budget carefully on my allowance. Things like my internet modem and having credit for my phone come way higher on my list of priorities than gin. Surprising I know.

Next door to Favourite Supermarket is the High Quality Bakery and this provided yet more joy to us. Sam had told me about the bakery as all of the bread they sell in other places here is white and sweet and not my cup of tea at all. HQB however sell bread made with salt and an array of other bakery type items you might find at home. The funny thing is it was packed, you would think if it was so popular that more people would’ve cottoned onto the idea as people here are very enterprising from what I can see. Anyway I got to buy a loaf of lovely soft brown bread and when I got home I had a corned beef sandwich and gin with bitter lemon for my tea. A slightly strange combination but I was like a child on Christmas day who wants to play with all the new toys at once. At least I didn’t cook some pasta and eat hob nobs too.

So the weekend started well but as seems to be the pattern at the moment I felt very down on Saturday morning. It’s quite strange because I can be feeling fine one minute and then out of nowhere I’m just feeling quite teary and everything is too much. I know it’s still early days and I’m still adjusting so it’s all part of that and I just need to ride this bit out because when I’m happy I do feel grand, still quite uncertain of things but getting more and more confident each day. Doing tasks like your washing when you’re feeling like this is probably not the best idea, hand washing a double sheet became quite a trauma I can tell you.  All of these things however will make me appreciate just how easy life is back home.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, I got to Skype with my sister and niece in the morning it was just so lovely to see and speak to them. They really managed to cheer me up and hearing someone tell you that you will be fine really does help. Skype is probably my favourite thing ever at the moment. I’ve had calls this week with my Dad and then I got the video working and had a video call with my Mum which has been really lovely and makes them seem less far away. I showed Bonnie my Mickey Mouse draws and she told me to grow up (with some encouragement from Rachel), I think she’s just jealous of them of course. You can see for yourselves as I’ve added a photo of them in all their glory. I’ll be taking my camera out with me this week in an effort to show you some of my surroundings which may be of more interest than my furniture.

So it’s Sunday morning right now (I don’t think the clock on the blog is ever correct) and today we thought we might go for a bit of a walk around where we live to see what’s around us as bar the couple of streets near our house and the main road we haven’t seen much. Sunday’s are church days so relatively quiet in that mostly everything is shut until at least very late afternoon anyway but we’ll see what we can see. Until next time….