My Tuesday morning

So here is my blog. Namaste!

I’ll start with my typical morning. Let's take today. I wake up at the luxuriously late hour of 7:15 and snooze a bit before getting up. I get dressed: today, I break out some linen pants that haven’t been worn since the summer I bought them in Rome. I brought a bunch of cute summery skirts that I thought would be perfect for the office, but it’s just too cold. Even in jeans with sandals on, my feet are blue by lunchtime because of the excessive AC.

Breakfast is waiting for my downstairs. Today, there's couscous, sliced kiwi and apple, and a mango shake. Lovely!

I skim through the International Herald Tribune and say good morning to the security guards and other random people coming in and out of the house. It's still a mystery to me what all these people are doing-- I know there's a chef and also cleaners and a house manager, but there always seem to be new people wandering around as well-- a little strange.

Then I walk-- WALK! -- down the street to the office. I've effectively cut my commute time from up to 90 minutes each way to 10 minutes. Even though it's brief, I love the chance to be outside in the morning when it’s not too hot yet and the streets are relatively empty.

Two minutes into my commute, I exit our very nice half-built gated community. To the left are several large heaps of garbage, in some areas mixed with ashes from being burned the night before. Skinny stray dogs are picking through the trash looking for leftovers. Just beyond all the debris, there’s a make-shift shack selling some sort of hot breakfast food. There are five men sitting around on the ground or on pails chatting with the vendor. On the right side of the road, a man is peeling limes and stacking them onto his cart to make fresh lime juice. I’m tempted to buy some but the pitcher just seems a little too grimy. The symptoms of what Lonely Planet fondly calls ‘Travelers Diarrhea’ haven’t struck yet, and the juice doesn’t look appealing enough to risk it.