Day Four: Raleigh

The good news is that I managed to get through the night without falling out of my very high bed  When I woke up this morning, Tim had already been out to a nearby Krispy Kreme to get some coffee. He couldn't resist buying a couple of 4th of July doughnuts as well while he was there  

There will be meals at the university for the rest of the week, but because the course doesn't officially start until Monday we were left to our own devices today as far as food was concerned. We set off into town to try and find somewhere to get breakfast.

Although it was only about 08.30 in the morning, it was already unbelievably hot as we walked past the state capitol building.

We ended up in McDonalds, where we discovered that the breakfast menu had some different options to at home. We decided to try "biscuits and gravy", which sounded like a very American dish.

It was edible, but a bit strange. The biscuits are like very doughy, almost stale-tasting bread. And the gravy is a peppery sort of sauce, with small bits of sausage in it. Interesting to try, but not something we'd want for breakfast every day!

After breakfast we walked back to the university. Tim spent the morning working on his course and I caught up with writing the blog for the our first three days.

One of the other Esperanto teachers was going to an out-of-town shopping centre around lunchtime, to charge his electric car. He invited us to come with him to a Venezuelan restaurant, where apparently we'd be able to try something called arepas. We'd never heard of these before but they sounded potentially tasty; some sort of maize buns, filled with meat. It was interesting to drive out of the town too and see that there were lots of retail parks, full of shops and restaurants. There are remarkably few shops in the parts of the town centre we've seen so far; it seems like they're all on the outskirts instead, only accessible by car.

The arepas turned out to be delicious. Tim and I both had a "carnivore" one, which was stuffed with three different types of meat plus cheese.

After lunch, Tim went back to work on his course and I went for another walk around Raleigh.

There were some interesting churches, some of which looked older than I expected.

There was lots more greenery too.

This park had what I thought was another war memorial...

...but which turned out to be a monument to firefighters.

From a bridge near the railway station I got a view back towards all the tall buildings in the centre of Raleigh.

And on the walk back to the university, I came across this one with an enormous globe outside  

After walking around outside for an hour or so, I was very glad to get back inside to the air conditioning! The Esperanto course kicks off officially tomorrow and next week will be a normal working week for me, just in a rather different time zone to normal. But hopefully I'll still have some time to go out and explore a bit more of Raleigh; it seems like a really interesting place