“shopping” in Mozambique

***note from the blogger: haha i wrote this like a week ago but didn't have internet to be able to post it so here it is! but now i'm in barcelona and it's AWESOME! i'll blog about it soon! enjoy!!***

so pretty much every time von and I go to the market to buy food, I’ll say ‘oh we’re going shopping,’ or ‘yeah when we went shopping,’ and von always corrects me to tell me that we didn’t go shopping, but more like “made purchases.” Anyway so when we went down south during our travels we visited our friend colin. Well colin was unfortunate in that he got robbed last December, Christmas eve to be exact… it really sucked for him as pretty much alllllll his stuff including clothes and other valuables got stolen. We have been fortunate to not have had any thieving issues, other than peter and his 3 other rat friends stealing our food, and let’s all hope and pray that it stays that way. (knocking on wood for von) well since his break in he’s had to go clothes shopping in his local market and has gotten really really good at it. he even showed us the ropes when we visited, and he took us to his market and we hit up all his favorite ‘stores.’ Well the markets here are basically just a lot of wooden stalls next to each other like a ghetto flea market and they either sell food, bike parts or clothes. The clothes that they sell are pretty much bags and bags of goodwill stuff that doesn’t pass the bar of US sales so I think they come here. Well so there are A LOT of clothes from summer camps, gyms, retreats and most are hideous but once in a while you’ll find that gem, that diamond in the rough and you bargain it down to about a dollar or two. Well colin tends to get anything ‘american’ and i even got to see one of his purchases which was a tank with the American flag and a bald eagle soaring across it… it was great! Haha well so von and I kinda just laughed it off and never really felt the necessity to seek out clothing, but the other day we went into our market looking for something and finally decided to give this clothes shopping a go. We went into the pits of our market, parts we never even knew existed, goin through back alleys and circling around the same stall 4 or 5 times cuz they all look the same, but in the midst of this craziness, this traveling panda found her perfect panda shirt! I have been wanting a panda shirt for a very very long time and I tried ridiculously hard to get the Johnny cupcake panda eating cupcake shirt, but by the time I tried it was already sold out and discontinued cuz it was a special edition shirt. Anyway so here we are wandering through our market and I turn the corner and see this perfect shirt out of the corner of my eye. It’s a lime green wwf shirt with their panda logo on it! it’s AMAZING!!! and he wanted like 2.50 for it but I got it down to 1.50… I got this bargaining thing down to a T! anyway so it’s awesome and now von and I have the shopping bug and are probably goin to continue to scour the markets for cool new stuff and develop secret codes with vendors for when they get new shipments in hahahahaha.

So the past 3 weeks have been end of trimester test weeks and testing always gets my moral down down down in the pits… I know I’m not the best english teacher in the world, but these kids make me feel like I’m a complete failure when they still to this day can’t conjugate the verb ‘to be’ in the present tense, or they don’t trust their own ability and cheat to get a few extra points, but end up getting a zero cuz I catch em… sucks… anyway enough about that cuz it’s depressing…

on to more exciting news…. Drum roll please darrrrrrurrrrrrurrrrrrrrrrrr~
I’m leaving for spain in 2 days!!!!
The day I never thought would come has FINALLY arrived!! Mir and I have been planning this trip for about 2-3months now and I have been waiting to go to spain since high school so it’s a pretty exciting day for me! We’re going to be in Barcelona for about 8 days and San Sebastian for 4! i’m first off super excited for my first and last meal of the trip to be McDonald’s at the jburg airport, mmmm cheeseburgers, chicken mcnuggets, crispy fries, fountain diet coke and sweet and sour sauce…. Mmmmmm….. and then for all the other amazing Spanish food I’ll be partaking in, mmmmm sangria, tapas, wine, meat, beer, arzak, sangria, sangria, meat…. Mmmmm, and last but definitely the MOST IMPORTANT, I GET TO SEE MY SISTER!!!!!!!!! For the most part I’m pretty used to spending long periods of time away from my family, but this is a whole different ball game! Granted my parents call me WAY more often than they ever have in their entire lives, the family is the bestest and I miss them tons so even though I just get to see miray it’s gonna be awesome!

Also congrats to vonnie who is now a godmother to little baby kellen!! He’s shoooo cute!!! And congrats to von’s cousin! 3 boys eeepah good luck!!!

Aiight I think that’s it for now, but I’ll be posting pictures and an update from spain soon!! love and miss everyone!!

Panda


the glorious new panda shirt!