Tuesday, October 16, 2012

FLASHBACK YESTERDAY: Eight months' savings? That's one meal taken care of, then.

We've actually already arrived in Paris, though I began this post yesterday with the plan to post it while we were still in Ouaga. The power and water then both went out all over the city all afternoon, and it didn't come back until we were almost out the door going to our last dinner before we left. Emily says it made it a bit easier to leave, emotionally at any rate (it certainly didn't make our last-minute packing any easier), but it also meant this post did not get put up in order. Sorry for that. Also, if anyone happens to know how to adjust the time stamping on these posts to accurately reflect where we are posting from, please feel free to let us know - we did not land at three in the morning, and Emily didn't write about our trip at eight (the times were actually closer to noon and five in the evening).

Emily has been preparing for this trip for quite some time. She got herself a pottery bank a while back (it's not actually a piggy, but it is Tcheriba-style pottery, which is pretty famous in the region) and has been saving in it ever since.

Trip day is here! To avoid having shards of clay all over my courtyard, we threw down - literally - into a laundry basket. The damage:

Wait, there's some missing at the bottom of that picture! I had to include it though, because Emily is displaying the exact smile that once prompted me to ask her, "What fresh new deviltry have you cooked up now?" Anyway, here's a picture showing all that broken pottery and beautiful, filthy lucre, if a slightly less mischievous Em:

We gathered all that money up, and...

Dollah dollah bills, y'all. Well, FCFA actually. Something north of 70,000 of them. Which works out to about $140 or 100 euro, which is what we changed it for at the airport. Our plan is to go out some time this week to a prix fixe place, like Chateaubriand.

Speaking of going out, we're off now to walk around Montmartre and enjoy the cool air while shopping for bread to go with all the cheese Emily's aunt just brought back. Gosh, Paris life is tough.

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