As of around 3:30pm today, three people close to me have pointed out that they were in closer contact with me, heard from me more frequently, and that I responded to emails more promptly when I was living in a landcrete hut in a village on African Island 1,000 kms out into the Atlantic ocean.
Required disclaimer: Anna has instructed me to indemnify her and hold her harmless in the event of any accusations that marriage has something to do with my being incommunicado with friends and loved ones. Its true: she routinely pesters me to call my friends more often, and to check my voicemails more than once a month.
Yes. Its true. There're reasons for it, but they're not really worth an entry (they mainly involve beeing overworked during the day, and sick of looking at computer screens and telephones by nightfall), so I'll letcha in on a secret: SMS is the best way to reach me, should one care to do so.
Ooh! Speaking of landcrete huts in villages on African Islands 1,000 kms out into Atlantic oceans....it seems Google Earth has expanded the satellite image coverage to include Cape Verde. Other RPCVs are strongly encouraged to browse their old villages from above, and have a multi-hour nostalgia sessions, but for the merely curious among you:
My old house is at 15° 3'49.80"N x 23°35'52.14"W
The Assomada market (where I would make my weekly pilgrimages for fresh eats and sundries) is at 15° 5'49.32"N x 23°40'1.81"W
And the old Portuguese slaving fort that caused all the ruckus from a previous entry is at 16° 9'54.00"N x 22°55'30.71"W.
Might be worth a browse....if vicarious peering into other people memories by means of an all-seeing satellite eye from like a million miles overhead is your bag, anyway.
In other news: Anna and I had the pleasure of spending the day in Baltimore this, following up on rumors of there being a vibrant Polish community there (we've been to Baltimore before and saw no such thing, but we're always game for a trip). Turns out that there's actually several geniunely Polish bakeries, delis, knick-knack shops, etc full of authentic made-in-Poland goods.
The DC region has no shortage of falsetto ethnic scenes (DC's Chinatown being a great example, where rising rents drove out every Chinese anything, except the street signs.) so I was really pleasantly surprised at the authenticity of the whole affair. These were the real deal: the signs and price tags were all in Polish, the Polish clientelle spoke fluent Polish to the Polish owners, Anna ordered Polish-labeled Polish ingredients for Polish recipies...they even has all the different specialized regional sausage varieties.
It was great fun, even though we did end up having figuring out how to integrate $75 worth of artesan sausage into our diet before it started to spoil. Luckily Polish cuisine has ample retorts to the question "What will we ever do with all this meat?," so we actually went through it all pretty quickly.