a little more info...

I've officially been here for two full days now. It's been quite the experience already. Monrovia is different than I thought it would be and the same all at once. I guess one thing to help describe the city is that there are no 'good' parts of town. When you drive around, you expect to get to a place where there are less vacant and destroyed buildings, less people living by the side of the streets, less trash everywhere, and maybe, just maybe, a little less poverty. This place does not exist here. When I arrived on Wednesday, the director and his wife picked me up from the airport. We went to dinner at the Royal Hotel because they have a guarded parking lot so we could park the car and be fairly certain that my bags would not be stolen. After dinner we drove to the compound where we live. As Gary, the director, put on his blinker I was trying to figure out where he was going to turn as I saw no driveway and no building (it was dark, so it was more difficult to see anything). He turned up a dirt 'driveway' beside a pile of rubble also known as a shop that makes furniture. I wasn't quite sure what we were doing. We pull up to a big gate and the guards opened it and we pulled into the complex. Most of the parking lot of our compound is filled with UN trucks. Big white four wheel drive vehicles with big black UN letters stenciled on the side. It's quite a site. Most of the people who live here either work for the UN (duh) or are Americans doing various things. There's a few country representatives to I think. I haven't met too many people on the compound, but so far I like it.

My apartment is small and utilitarian, but it's not bad at all. We have electricity 24 hours per day, which is a perk that not all compounds have. All electricity is pretty much supplied by generators at this point. Our electricity goes out about twice a day, but only for a few minutes each time. We think this is when they are switching over the generators. They only thing they do turn off at the compound is the A/C. I didn't even know if we would have a/c, so I can't complain. They turn it off twice a day from 9-11am and from 2-4pm. Not a bad deal at all, especially as once school starts I won't be here during those times anyway. I also have a tv with about ten channels ranging from the action channel which shows action movies all the time to aljazeera news channel. There's also a channel which shows american shows like 'Friends' that are subtitled in arabic. We do have the discovery channel, bbc news, cnn news, and espn. There's also another channel that shows mostly horror movies. I haven't watched that one yet.
The compound backs up to the ocean. I can hear the waves as I sit in my apartment and type this post. Unfortunately, we don't swim in the water right here as it is very polluted. There's a pipe a few meters up from where we are that dumps raw sewage into the ocean. There are oceans not too far away to go to, though, for swimming, surfing, hanging out, etc.

We aren't allowed to drink the water here, but we use it for everything else. We wash our dishes with it, shower with it, and brush our teeth with it. Some people have boiled it and then used it for coffee and tea and they're fine, so it doesn't seem to be such a big deal. The shower is hot and just lovely.

It's a city, so there's not a lot of wildlife around these parts. I did, however, have my first encounter with a roach this morning in the bathroom. He was quite large by Virginia standards, perhaps three inches long. I let him have his bathroom time and tiptoed around to brush my teeth. Liberians on the street will catch animals and try to sell them to people. I was offered a boa constrictor the other day when leaving lunch at another hotel. My co-worker said someone had a sea turtle outside the gate the other day when she came home (yes, 100% illegal. Trust me, it's not the only illegal thing going on around here.) She was also given a crocodile by some men once. Unfortunately, Henry was eaten by the guards at her friends compound where he was living in someone's bathtub (the ducks didn't make it either). There are miniature deer as well (Duikers), but I haven't seen one yet.

The ex-pat community here is huge! I went to trivia last night with my co-worker (a little different than what we have at Mellow) and met people working for NGOs, UNMIL, the US Embassy, a start-up microfinance company, and a guy whose biking around the world. They were from the states, England, Norway, Denmark, Germany by way of Uganda, Mexico, just about everywhere. It's really quite an interesting mix of people here. The Lebanese population here is also large. A lot of Lebanese have been here for years, so they're more settled and own businesses, etc.

I have internet at the apartment so I'm able to regularly check emails, etc. It's quite slow, though, as it is at the school. Honestly, I'm happy just to have it. I'm not feeling very well today, so I'm sitting at home on a Friday night posting to my blog. I think the anti-malarials I'm on are making me a little out of it. Nonetheless, I'm happy to have the time to sit down and write this out. I feel like it's been a whirlwind of anything and everything lately! On that note, I will say goodbye here. If you've made it this far--kudos to you. I will post again soon. Next week we're starting to get ready for school, so I'm sure fun and interesting things will be happening then.