Y’all should be guessing am almost stonned oh I mean skinned by now 🙂
With a hectic week behind me, a now running nose and a very stringent food budget thanks to my own doing by committing to ‘Lose It’, all I can do for this day’s wrap up is share some photos.
Made it to the conference centre on time to get my certificate from maybe a future Lose It coach? It wasn’t me 🙂
Found this on my way to the centre this morning and just had to snap. So awesome. Please use google translate cause am so tired but my sleep is all over the place thanks to the running nose of course 🙂
Getting my handbag fixed at some local mender on the street. I am an area girl and prefer me to go simple stuffs and avoid designers stuffs and all like the flea – sanity and stringent food and cash budgets 🙂
Also got my sandals fixed and all of these cost me just 200 frs – nothing near a dollar 🙂
Took this with a ‘local prince’ in my class and he said I could share on my blog. That’s one of their traditional grabs 🙂
All in all, had a wonderful day and evening. The civilisation museum was closed due to renovations, couldn’t catch no ferries thanks to ‘running and rambling nose’, got some meds to sooth that some, slept some and then went out to my 5:30 pm date.
Here’s hoping to a better tomorrow; now sleep sleep come my way 🙂
Hurray: today is the last full day of the conference… Tomorrow is a half day of wrap ups, official closing and farewell lunch… And then am free to roam around till my flight back home at 7 pm Saturday… I will survive and hopefully thrive…
So down to the business of this blog… Writing me mind musings about tits tats…
No breakfast this am so I could step on a dreaded scale which reads: Bingo… That’s for part 2 this evening…
Got up at 3:26 am to read and work but by 3:45 I was still blogging on my new phone… Excitement or lousiness? A mate told me yesterday to just relax about the conference work for the organizers know we can’t keep up with? The Ks of course 🙂
I did do a selfie yesterday to send to my ssh and my sons you know… Showing them how I was fighting the full blast AC in here… So there you go 🙂
Skipping breakfast definitely mean coffee break and lunch will hear from me: after all I have been under my food budget for two days now 🙂 but I did do a grab back from the restaurant in the hotel you know… to sort off calm my hunger down before the 1st coffee break at 10 am
5:45 am and yep am done with reading material and doing homework as best as I can. Hopefully it’ll be group work again and we’ll see how it goes. Am no longer the ‘shoot finger first person’ or glad to be group leader or even note taker: that was yesteryears… If it’s group and my contributions can be factored in, fine; if not, life goes on and am glad to have read and learnt the stuff… And yes I even got to fill their 4 huge pages survey of the whole event even if not yet officially over…
Am now ready for that walk even if mild rain out there; gosh I even have some nose irritation already from all that AC in that conference centre; but what can I tell you…
Exif_JPEG_420
7:30 am : I just came back from that walk turned hike… Lasted a good 74 minutes and I still couldn’t get to my target which was the other side of the river as you can see in the picture below… Oh my I had thought it was a walking distance. I could see it, actually took a picture, it’s the Sofitel, ah but no it’s a swimming mission impossible for me… Across the cocody and there’s no bridge… Either use ferry and taxi or hike maybe 2.5 hrs?
Exif_JPEG_420
Just look at my legs up close…
Exif_JPEG_420
OK let me get ready now to leave in 45 mins… See you all gentle readers and followers this evening
8.22 am and am publishing this now and off with the team in 8 minutes 🙂
Hello World, Sunday was technically my day 1 in Abidjan but since it was travelling and settling in day, I consider Monday to be my first day.
First thing I did outdoors the am was go for a run around my neighbourhood. That’s one way of facing my fear of ‘insecurity in a new territory where I find myself’, and that was also part of the Lose It efforts I have signed up to commit to daily and hopefully lose this nagging 4.6 kgs by December (I joined the Wondrous Writers’ group of my friends Dyane and Brian). I am however already a bit sad that I used up near 3/4 of my calories budget for the day before it was even lunch time – another lesson learnt…
Secondly, I discovered some stuffs on my run like some ferry stops, the post office, one of the large bus parks, a miniature golf course and a mini gym all of which I am putting on my to do/check out/ go to etc list before I leave the city… I already discovered a neighbourhood called Chicago which I don’t think will ever be on a list of places to visit because it could be the ‘harlem’ of this city. I just walked and walked yesterday looking for where to eat and I found myself there, I even lost 1000 frs but couldn’t dare look down nor ask anyone… well I made it back safe to my hotel probably because I looked so area like too hahaha 🙂
The programme for the conference was hectic as I found out, and the online conference library filled to the brim, and the speakers oh so experienced … I am loving it but then that’s for my intellectual wellbeing – nothing much to be blogging about here…I did however find some good spots worth fotographing in the conference centre where we are and hope you smile at them… well sorry photos wouldn’t load. They are of a Laction room (I’d never seen one before, and a little floor garden named Jardin du Bonheur)
I hope and plan to catch up with a family friend of long date who lives and works in this city, whom I haven’t seen for near half a decade. She actually works in the same building where the conference is taking place just that the security and protocol may hamper meeting her in here …
P.S: Well I did meet her for like 10 minutes and then we agreed to have dinner before I return 🙂
Hmm, the guy I didn’t want to chit chat with on the plane yesterday, was actually coming to this conference too and is lodged at the same hotel. He is even related to someone I am related to by my father’s adoption when he was a kid… simple huh? We again met at the lobby this morning as we awaited the navette to the conference venue, and I just sucked my embarrasment in and went to him and broke the ice of our eyeing each other over breakfast and wondering in our heads what next now… So now from not wanting to chit chat, am conversing and laughing and he’s promosing to accompany me to my house when we fly back in at the ungodly hour of 00:30 on Sunday 02/10…
I will go out with Pape after conference hours and I’ll be extra careful on what I eat, but I’ll also be excited to sightsee and will flatter him to bring me to the famous Abidjan Cathedral. Ain’t it a gorgeous building?
P.S: I did go out to meet Pape at the chic restaurant where he works called Akwaba, and I must say I have definitely started off my Lose It program on a ‘lousy note’ (to put it this mildly). What was I to do with all the food served me there at near 8 pm? And in our African tradition, it’s an ‘insult’ to pick at food offered you by a generous host, and we do know how to be hospitable. And so I tried, and I haven’t yet even logged in what I ate, the scales should be screeching now oh my: I had this for a glimpse served with halal bread and fresh vegetables mix and etc etc
MFavour's Blog 