first of many unexpected adventures

Today we had some free time in the afternoon to go out and get lunch and kind of see the city a bit.  Thanks to jimmy, we walked down rape alley and got totallllllllllllllllllllyyyy lost.  Once we finally got our bearings, we found a cute little Malagasy place to eat.  After that, a few of us ventured over to the vazaha part of town where we hadn’t been before.  Finally, more foreigners!!!! There, we sat for a while and had a drink (jade ordered absinthe on accident haha).  At around 4:00 we decided to make our way back to the SIT center … so we took out our maps and tried to pick the best route towards a place of reference: Café de la gare.  When we made it there about 30 min later, we were incredibly proud of ourselves – “we’re practically natives, right guys?!?!?!” Immediately after that, we turned left when we were supposed to turn right, saw what looked like the same peak of a familiar cathedral where SIT is located, and booked it.  So when we arrived at the cathedral, of course it wasn’t the right one and we had just gone so far out of our way.  Since we had to make it back before dark, I decided to lead the pack by running back through the streets… which is insane because A) vehicles WILL hit you B) there are about 20 gazillion people and cars crowding every inch of the streets downtown at rush hour and C) no one runs through the streets, especially not vazaha. But it was necessary because the traffic was so bad that taxis would have taken too long and it is way too unsafe to be walking around after dark.  So there we were, four white chicks sprinting through cars and people like it was nothing, a spectacle for everyone around – I can’t imagine what people must have been saying.  I can’t really give the scene much justice through my explanation because it was just that absurd, but it was clearly one of the most dangerous activities we could do here… also it was literally so much fun.  Roland was right, lifesize game of frogger.  Good news is that we made it safely back to the center before nightfall (thank god) and we got to see basically all of Tana (whether that’s a good or bad thing I’m not sure?) AND we had a blast.