God put an angel in our path called Hamsa. I met her on FB and we had chatted on Messenger while we were still in SA. She gave us so much advice on where to find accommodation amongst other things. Yesterday she offered to take us on a campus tour and then to a grocery store. She picked us up at the hotel and took us around campus and showed us where the rental accommodation were. John took photos and this morning after breakfast, we will be making appointments for viewing.
As we were going to have lunch and dinners in our hotel room, I had to buy some basics, paper plates, cutlery etc. Our groceries cost us almost R4000 but I guess it will save us the cost of having to eat out all the time.
Our next challenge was finding adapters as all our devices needed charging. So we asked Hamsa to leave us at Friendly Centre which was close to UNCG. It had an Istore and John wanted to go there to see if he could find adapters there. She was very concerned that we would be ok but we said we'd just Uber back to the hotel and we would be fine. We were very happy to see our favourite coffee shop, Starbucks there and enjoyed a good cup of coffee in our new mugs that we bought that has North Carolina on them. I sat there enjoying my coffee while John walked round to the Istore. He managed to find one adapter and we needed about 10 between the two of us for our different devices. We were then advised to go to Best Buy where we didn't find anything. As bad as things are in South Africa, you could actually find help in-store. Here, they point you in a direction and you're on your own. We were then advised to go to Lowes, which was walking distance from Best Buy. We got an extension cable there but no adapters. Then, on advice, we Ubered to Office Depot, which on our arrival there, we saw was closed down. We decided to go home and take a break and pack away our groceries before going on another search for adapters. Why we didn't get them in SA, I can't explain. I just never thought it would be such a mission to find them.
On our second trip out, we stopped off at a Walmart Neighbourhood store not far from the hotel but discovered not all Walmarts are equal and this one was more like a convenience Walmart. So we Ubered to a Walmart Superstore and found some USB chargers at which we decided to buy. At least some of our devices would be able to charge even though we would need to charge one after the other. I was looking forward to seeing all those weirdly dressed folk I saw on Youtube but nothing caught my eye. Next time maybe.
After all this drama and exceeding my heart steps for the day, I was so ready for bed at 20h00 our time which was a good thing but then someone had moved in in the room on the floor above us and was stomping about like ten elephants with added creaking and groaning of the ceiling. I immediately fetched my Swiss Army knife (typical coloured) cause for sure somebody was trying to break into our hotel room. We had no idea that there was another level on top of us so we phoned front desk only to be told that most probably somebody had moved in there. The stomping ended around 02h00, I know cause I woke up every two hours, 22h00, midnight, 02h00, 04h00 and then every hour from then till I finally got up at 07h00 and started blogging. I hope to God they only stayed one night.
Weather-wise I was very happy to find a moderate 18 degrees celsius on our first two days here but today the max is 12 so it's slowly but surely turning colder. Everybody says it's abnormally warm for this time of year. God heard my prayer as I don't like being cold and I'm just being eased into the cold. It's a good thing I packed lots of winter clothes.
Getting ready to go for breakfast now and then making appointments for accommodation viewing. Hopefully, we find something soon in case there's more midnight stomping overhead.
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