Music to my ears

After just a few trips to and from work or the beach, I have found myself singing along to the music playing in our cars. I thought maybe there was just one approved cassette tape shared amongst all our drivers (we use tapes here people, no CDs or iTrips in our jeep). Turns out it's that there are only a handful of popular Liberian pop songs -- but the ones they have, they really, really like. The sound is a reggae-influenced pop, and they're all pretty catchy. I caught one of my housemates humming one to himself in our kitchen while cooking dinner, and the foundation staff who've been here for a while start singing along subconsciously on the way to work. Today's happiest moment, however, came when our department assistant decided we needed to spend the first half hour of the morning revving ourselves up to the Catholic radio station that she favors. She claims to like it for the news, but in that half hour I heard a good sampling of Celine Dion and Toni Braxton, and my light rock-loving self was quite content.

On the religion front, we started and ended one of our larger meetings today in prayer. I don't know if this is a common practice, but after sitting through a one and a half hour meeting that would have taken just 15 minutes in the U.S., I used the closing prayer to ask for patience and a lot more reggae to keep me going.