last post til monday, i think

Some of you may remember the Americans I met a couple of weeks ago and wrote about. They kept telling me that Medan is "the Wild West." Yesterday a friend and I went out for coffee with her daughter. Her daughter is 10. I went to use the restroom and was not there when they ordered. I had an iced mocha, my friend had a green tea and her daughter received a choclatey looking thing with whipped cream and brown sugar along the rim of the glass. Her daughter kept complaining that the drink was too bitter and her mom tasted it and said, "that is bitter!" I was then asked to taste it and I said, "Well, I think it's actually whiskey." It was. She had ordered an Irish Coffee and the Mom had not thought about what that is and didn't think that a coffee shop would serve alcohol and certainly not to a little girl. Another friend of mine upon hearing of the incident said, "if a ten year old white girl wants whiskey in Medan, they give her whiskey." This is not everywhere, of course, there are many restaurants that serve no alcohol, but the ones that do cater to Western tastes.

I have also noticed that cabbies pretty much belch whenever they feel like it.

Today will be a long day, many classes and a staff meeting and then basketball. Once it's over the weekend will start and next week is a short week and so there should be time to rest up soon.

As one who has been begging for comments, I probably shouldn't comment on comments but I have received some anonymous remarks that are the same every time. That is they are a sentence long and use the exact same words every time. There is only one person I know who knows about blogs and is reading this, so maybe he could enlighten me, maybe there is a menu of pre-written comments somewhere that people choose from for expediency's sake. For the record, I am just one guy. No one but me puts this thing together, and there is very little to it. Blogging is basically typing.

I am always about four years behind the times but I've begun to be quite the text messager although I kind of hate it. Everyone here prefers the text message to the phone call, so what can I do? It takes 7 texts to accomplish what can be done in a single 1 minute phone call, and all the words are shorthand and no one's shorthand matches anyone else's. I guess it's the perfect form of communication for Medan.