Last Day at the Pool

Yesterday marked my last day hanging out at the KAS (Karachi American School) pool with Lois. *sigh* Almost all of the expats are back in town, so if I were to stay, I'd have much more of a social life! Not that I want to stay, however. Things here are getting more and more dangerous, and I mostly just want to get the heck out of here and go home.

Via London, of course.

After swimming 20 laps (go Mandy!), we left the pool and went to our respective homes to get ready for the KAS Cricket match against the US Consulate staff. It was something of a grudge match, as the Consulate staff had lost the past two games, and they were quite determined. I still don't really understand cricket, but that's okay - I suppose I don't have to. One of the guys who was playing for KAS was a recent arrival from Austin, TX. A very friendly guy who had semi-recently been in a motorcycle accident, and therefore had to wear a neck brace when playing, since he had broken his neck. Cricket looks funny enough to me, but to see a guy swinging a cricket bat and fielding the ball wearing a neck immobilizer was just too much for me. I took pictures, and now that my return date is almost here, the odds of me getting around to posting them soon are quite high!

After everyone left, Lois and I had some dinner and decided to watch my DVD of "The Motorcycle Diaries". Well, we're still waiting, because there was no way for me to change the settings so that it wasn't both dubbed and subtitled in Vietnamese. Darn shame - I'll have to watch it when I get home, I suppose. Instead, we watched "King Arthur", but since...well, since it sucked we didn't quite finish it.

I have a lot of work to do for the Vietnam project before I leave here, so my reluctance to try to get re-involved in the project here is growing. Ah well. The office had a party on Saturday after work, so we went for a short while. It was a mango party, so clearly I haven't completely missed the end of the season. The girl that I am friends with there and I were talking, and peeling some mango for ourselves. I have my way of doing it, which isn't perfect by any stretch, but it works for me. She looked at me pityingly as I cut pieces off of the mango I was holding and said, with a note of sadness in her voice "you are not a very good domestic woman, I see..." I didn't know whether to laugh or take mild offense, but since she clearly wasn't being mean, I just laughed and said that her mango technique was obviously better than mine. She was also asking me about graduate school in the US, which I think would be a really interesting experience for her, if her parents would let her go. So I was telling her about steps she should take to see what's available, what kind of financial support she could get, etc.

I'd best be going, as I want to squeeze in a workout before heading to the office this morning, and I think I'm already pushing it as it is.

Only nine days until I'm home!!