Today was awesome!! Avy and I slept in, ate breakfast, and got ready to go to the mall!! We had big plans for the day including seeing a movie, enjoying air conditioning, eating snacks, and going shopping. Before we could do all of those things, first we had to figure out how to actually get to the mall. Hm. We asked at the front desk and the guy told us where to go to get a tro. He said the walk was about 5-10 minutes. Okay, that’s not bad.
Ten minutes later, we were still walking and definitely not where we were supposed to be. Every block, we asked another person for directions, and I’m almost positive that they were all sending us to different places. We walked through some tiny, windy streets and finally ended up somewhere with a bunch of tros. Of course though, it wasn’t the right place… we asked someone and they pointed us across the street… which was a divided road with a fence in the middle. So I would say probably 20-25 minutes after leaving the hotel, we FINALLY found a tro that would take us to the mall. We think they overcharged us a little, but they dropped us off right outside so we’re over it.
First stop was the movie theater to check out the movie times and buy our tickets. There weren’t many options, and we picked Storks, some animated movie I’d never heard of (though that’s not surprising because I’m incredibly out of touch with the outside world). We had about two hours to kill before it started, so we had lunch (I had chicken nuggets and an Oreo milkshake! Does it get any better than that??), bought snacks to smuggle into the theater, and walked around the mall until it was time to go.
I can’t even describe how nice it felt to do something “normal”. We bought popcorn and sat in a cold movie theater and I stuffed my face with smuggled gummies and cookies for two hours (okay I didn’t actually eat the ENTIRE time, but that’s just because I ran out of gummies pretty early on). I enjoyed the movie, but honestly I would have been happy no matter what it was.
Afterwards, we went clothes shopping. At home, I generally hate going clothes shopping, but today it was perfect. I know that probably sounds horrible… like I had to buy some things to feel happy or feel like myself again. I don’t know what to say about that, but sometimes when you’re in a place where everything feels unfamiliar, you need to take a break and do something that feels like real life. Today, for me, watching a movie and buying a pair of pants apparently felt like real life.
By the time we finished eating dinner (a burger!), it was dark and we were not really into the idea of trying to figure out a tro to get home. We took a cab back to the hotel, and now I’m completely exhausted. It was a good day though.