The BIG ADVENTURE

This afternoon (about 3:00pm) after we had been filling out paperwork (and meeting the girls) all morning we finally managed to snag a bite for lunch and then we headed back to our apartment.

To our dismay, we had left the charger for the cell phone we use to keep in touch with our facilitators back in OtherCity!  Oh No!  We really, really DO NOT WANT our lifeline to the only people who know what is going on over here to run out of power.

We looked up how to say "I need a new power adapter for this phone" using Google Translate and set off to a store we remembered seeing after lunch that seemed like a cell phone store.  We went upstairs, showed a nice lady our message, and she gave some handwaving and pointing directions (after telling us that they did not sell adapters).  We followed her handwaving directions and ended up in the stockroom (I think we took a wrong turn).  We found a dude downstairs (maybe he was tech support or something) and he didn't sell phone chargers either.  He did write something on our paper and indicated it was a block down the street (more handwaving).

We went down the street, looking for anything resembling the words on our paper.  We saw the word in the distance, but in front of it was a little trailer kiosk that had pictures of cell phones on it, so in we marched.  Apparently it is a combo business (e.g. "Jim-Bob's storm doors and computer sales"). This guy apparently sold fireworks (and cell phone chargers).  When we walked in, we gave him the message saying what we wanted.  He looked at it a looong time.  "Charger?" he asked.  "Yes!" we answered happily.  If we had known it was a charger we could have skipped all the steps of figuring out how to say "Power Adapter".  He got one off the shelf, plugged it in, showed us that it was working. 

There was some miscommunication over the price (he said 40, we thought he said 34) (this was $5 US).  In the end though, we had our new cell phone charger.  Kelly and I walked back to the apartment feeling like we had flown to the moon without spacesuits and returned to tell about it.