Enough of the sappy stuff. Today is Saturday, and thus a day of rest for us busy bunnies in CI. Amy and I have been doing some shopping and went on some adventures by ourselves. One adventure was a great success. The other, a moderate failure. Our shopping adventure success occurred when we went out this morning to get some typical African fabric and get some outfits made. The other night when we went to the Vietnamese restaurant, we walked by a bunch of fabric stores and made mental notes to go back and get fabric to have clothes made. So, on our day off, we took the 20 minute walk up the hill to look at some of the beautiful designs. After much deliberation, I chose a cobalt blue fabric with a large yellow and white diamond in the center with some intricate vines and birds in the center. The base of the edges of the fabric are white and yellow stripes with some geometric designs. It's a Ghanaian fabric, which was moderately disappointing, but I love it. The woman would not really bargain with us. She took one look and decided that we could pay a higher price than normal. Which is why we will be going with our new friends to the main market.
After we had gotten our fabric (Amy couldn't choose, so she got one Ivorian and one Ghanaian), we went back to the hotel to see if they could direct us to the tailor. Luckily, the manager (who is one of my favorite people here) speaks English very well and was able to take us to a tailor who she knows quite well. When we got there, we looked through books of designs that would work in the US but would also fit our fabric. I chose an A-line skirt and a short sleeved, V-neck shirt. I'm interested to see how it turns out. We're going on Thursday for our fitting. They probably ripped us off because we look like we have money, but the whole shabang from fabric to finished product will probably cost $45. Not too bad to have an outfit perfectly tailored to you.
At the market
This afternoon, we went to Cocody Market (the largest market in town) to look for some souvenirs. Let me tell you, that was intense. Intense. Envision a small alley way lined with tons of shops all carrying more or less the same things. The proprietors hang out of their shops waving sandals, tee shirts, purses, wooden masks and traditional cloths and your face. They go a little crazier when they see that not only are you a European, you're an English speaking European, so clearly VERY rich. Luckily, we again had our hotel manager with us to help negotiate and make sure that we weren't ripped off. They were throwing prices around like mad. I think I got pretty good deals, but who knows. We weren't getting things for 50 cents, which was what I hoped would happen, but we definitely did some damage and helped the Ivorian economy in an extremely short period of time. When I say a short period of time, I mean a short period of time. We left the hotel at around 3:15. Got to the market at around 3:30 and had bought all of our stuff and gotten back to the hotel by 4:45. Mayhem.
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