Europe and Africa

This post is coming late because I have been without my computer for a few days now. I dropped it and it had to go in for repair - the hard disk was cracked, which required a replacement to be ordered and installed. This followed right on the heels of me dropping my camera and having to take it in to get repaired. Both items are fine now - over 300 Euros later. The upside of this is that I essentially got a brand new computer for 244 Euros. I have a new hard disk, which means more RAM and a faster processor, the newest version of OS X (Leopard), and upgrades on almost all of my programs, including the complete Adobe Photoshop suite. I used to have Photoshop Elements (Photoshop Lite, essentially) but the techs gave me the full version, and the latest version of Appleworks, plus some other stuff.

Yesterday was the day I got everything back, and also received a long-awaited package from the US. I would have been able to purchase the soil moisture meter I needed in the US if one of the collaborators on the project had returned my email earlier than 6 weeks after I initially emailed him. I had the moisture meter sent to be by Priority International post. Now, English is my first language, and my understanding of priority is that it means "most important", however, USPS seems to think it means "we'll put it on a plane whenever we remember to do so". When I called to find out where the package was (oh, they also don't provide tracking information for priority packages -wtf?) I was told it could take up to 14 business days. That's regular mail, not priority mail. It's not as if there isn't enough mail going to western Europe for it to make it here in 3 business days.

I've had to purchase a few more things for my project, which is also frustrating, given that I've been waiting to find out what I needed since the beginning of April and didn't find out until I got here, and some things which I was assured would be provided aren't. Thankfully, I got additional funding from my department. I find it frustrating to negotiate the preparations some times, especially when others aren't organized or punctual in their responses. I've never been there, but I get spoken to as if I should know everything already. The reason I'm a student is that I don't know this stuff - if I knew everything I needed to know, I wouldn't be a student anymore, would I? Hopefully everything will come together out there. The upside of having to buy things here is that it's saved me an excess baggage charge from the US to Europe, and since most of my stuff is staying in Africa in the field school storage, I only pay excess charges from Europe to Kenya. I might even be able to get everything extra into a small enough container to bring it on the plane with me. I can only hope.

Next entry will be about Delft, but I thought I'd post the unhappy post by itself.