Beware of walking your dog

So I decided to help out a fellow USAID employee and stay at his place to watch his dog Cooper, a Rhodesian ridgeback, while he's in south Sudan for a week. This idea was agreed to at 12:15 a.m. on our way home from happy hour and not one of my best thought out plans, but does give me the opportunity to leave the "Real World Khartoum" and be by myself for a bit.

John has just moved up here from Nairobi and hasn't really settled in to his place because he'll be moving from the third floor to the first floor. So it's been a bit of a challenge. Like cooking the risotto I got from Stefanie (yum!) meant I had to unpack a pot, measuring cup, utensils, etc. Of course, this was much better than my snack attempt where I thought I would heat up some microwave popcorn and the microwave caught fire. Seriously. I don't make this stuff up. There's no need!!!

After dinner I decided to take Cooper for a walk. He's having a hard time in the heat so once the sun is down, it's much easier.

Now for those of you who know Lily, you know that even though she's packing 90 pounds, she's easy to control, obedient, fairly uninterested in other dogs, etc. Cooper is big, muscle-y and when provoked by the pack of dogs that live near his house, likes to snarl and lunge. So I'm getting a fair upper body workout. The problem is, at night, I can't really see anything. So we'll just be walking along and all of a sudden there's mass chaos!! Needless to say I'll think twice about this before agreeing again!!

But sleeping in a true queen size bed with new sheets instead of my two twins pushed together with annoying springs that get you every once in a while is very nice.

There's no TV or internet so my communication is a bit more limited....but I'll still be around.

This week I also got a photo of my pooch Lily from Kasey-my friend from USAID who's watching her. Kasey and her husband and two kids already had Thunder the German Shepherd. Now they've also got Lily. And they just adopted Lightening the yellow lab!! But from all accounts (and photos) it looks like Lily et al are just fine!