Cam and his mom, Ana

A few things have changed since Cam's mom showed up, for the better...

1. We have someone else to talk to. And she's adorable. Camilo and I, after 4 months of having no jobs and being together every day, have turned into one of those really, really old married couples who complete each other's sentences and speak almost entirely in inside jokes. It's kind of creepy and good to have someone else around...
2. Our accommodation and eating has improved dramatically in quality. That's a picture in the hotel bar - we are practically sitting on top of the Alhambra in Granada. And today we ate 3 meals and none of them came from the grocery store.
3. We have all the new Grey's and Office episodes so I can be caught up when I get back to the States, thanks to her computer and hotel internet access.
4. She brought me a birthday present! A bag and a coin purse from her and her mom and sister. Seriously, could she be any nicer? (and she doesn't read this blog so it's not sucking up)


Tomorrow we head back to Madrid - Cam and I spent one night there before we got his mom from the airport and took the train to Granada. She got us a room in the Intercontinental and it was so nice it made me imagine what it would be like to live in the developed world with a job...not that I have any plans of doing that in the next 2 years. We have 3 days there (his mom has a meeting) and then we are going to Barcelona for the last 3 days of the trip.

It's now less than a week until I'm back and I think it's going to be okay. They say the culture shock is worse coming back but since it's only temporarily and I've had so much time between Guinea and now I hope it's not as terrible as people make it out to be. And I got a slightly disconcerting email from the PC, saying that they were shipping my stuff on a boat and it should be arriving in the US in August, at which point it will be shipped to my house. I'm hoping I wasn't supposed to be on that email list, since my things should stay in Guinea until May. They told me that they would keep them in case the program reopened and send them to a new country if I ended up doing that. Cross your fingers that there wasn't a major fuck-up. I don't like the idea of my stuff sitting on a ship while I'm headed back to West Africa!!