as the great month of september comes to an end…

I realize that I’m hitting a few mile markers in my life. I have officially lived a quarter of a century, as von loved to remind me every hour on the hour of my birthday, and Moz 14 has officially been in Mozambique for 1 whole year! I can’t believe it was already a year ago that I had the most amazing send-off party at scott and nicole’s and then I was sitting in my room at my host family’s house in namaacha thinking ‘what the heck have I gotten myself into?’ but here I am a year later, still alive and well! So anyway I just wanted to take a few moments to reflect on just how unbelievably blessed I am. I feel blessed to have had this opportunity to be a PCV in an unbelievably beautiful country like Mozambique. Really really blessed to have the most amazing friends back home and to be surrounded by great new friends here in Mozambique, where in tough times you can seem all alone. Also, I have the best roomie in the history of PC, and maybe in life =). And last but not least, I am seriously blessed to have such a supportive family that loves me day in and day out and is genuinely proud of me! Life here seems to be amplified somehow where the highs reach new heights and the lows go into the deepest abyss, and when I wrote my last entry I was probably at the lowest I’ve ever felt. But it’s a good thing it came right before my birthday cuz nothing short of one of the greatest birthday months ever could have pulled me out of that funk. Ok ok enough with the mushy babble!
SEPTEMBER WAS AMAZING!
Yeah we had the rocky start due to the rioting in Mozambique, which I know many of you had read about and were worried, but they were mainly confined to the major cities and mainly just Maputo at that. Most PCVs live in smaller towns so we didn’t even hear much about it, but for safety reasons we were all put on house arrest and everyone was kept safe, just a little stir crazy. But the house arrest was lifted just in time for the birthday weekend so we made our way out to Ilha de Mozambique! It was a girls night out on the island and it was soooo much fun! We ate lotsa good food, meat lasagna being one of them mmmmmm, and went to the beach, went on an Ilha pub crawl, and spent a lazy Sunday pool side! We even had a sunset yoga session with Michelle, at her friend’s beach house that looks like it came straight out of a crate and barrel catalogue, on their rooftop terrace and right as the session began we saw a whale! It was great cuz that morning we were going to go whale watching, but it was too windy so we canceled, but we got to see one anyway!! It was seriously one of the most picturesque snapshots that’ll I’ll always remember! And then on my actual birthday we were off to Nampula city, which is usually my least favorite place in the world, but Von had a dr’s appointment so we went in to at least get a good meal and turns out her appointment got pushed back so PC put her up at Hotel Millenio so for lunch we had Cajo’s delicious burgers and for dinner we had pizza, chicken tikka masala and naan!!! And we got to take hot showers and sleep in an air-conditioned room! What more could I have possibly asked for?? It was pretty great and then the next day we headed to Dillon’s site and she cooked up a Peruvian dish, Lomo Saltado(?), which was UNREAL, and for dessert, RED VELVET CAKE with homemade cream cheese frosting!!! Oh man oh man it was friggin so delish!!
The following weekend we went to Ribaue to visit Scott and Greg. Their site is about 6 hours southwest of us and we got to take the train there! I’ve realized that I haven’t been writing in much detail of the things we do here, so I’ve decided to pick one thing Mozambican in each blog and write as much detail as I can about the experience! So the train is this entry’s highlight and boy was it something. First off you can only buy train tickets one day in advance and starting at like 4pm. So our friend got there at like 4:15 and there were only 2 tickets in the 2nd class cabin, ~$3, available and the rest were 3rd class, ~$1.5, also there’s no first class so why not just call it 1st and 2nd class? Anyway so then we get to the train station the next morning at 4am, but the line to get on the train was already outrageous, cuz you don’t get an assigned seat so it’s first come first serve, but it’s completely chaotic to the point where if you’re not paying attention and the line starts moving in front of you, another person has the right to cut you in line… makes sense yeah? I saw this happen at least 6 times and everyone else just laughs. Well then we board the train and it leaves right at 5am, which is unheard of here, and since we weren’t there early enough to get seats, we waited til the dining cart opened and quickly snagged a table. We had yummy egg sandwiches, fried egg on a roll with ketchup and mayo, and played games and talked til we arrived in Ribaue. The scenery was beautiful and looking out the window doesn’t make you dizzy cuz the train only goes about 25mph haha. So this technically could be an hour trip with an Amtrak train, but alas it took us about 4 hours! After getting off the train we then had to get on an open back truck to get to their site about 15minutes away. As soon as we got there it was a non stop party with about 15 PCVs there and scott made us AMAZING coconut banana pancakes, like seriously restaurant quality fluffy delicious pancakes, and chilli with sweet potatoes for dinner. We started early with the Agua do Papa, which translates to ‘water of the fathers’ but it’s bubble gum flavored sugar cane alcohol gloriousness =). The next day, after not enough sleep, it was back home on the train, but this time it was not the most pleasant experience cuz the train was jam packed and we were basically standing in the aisles of the dining cart dying of heat and dehydration, but it was a really really good time and I’m glad I got to experience the Mozambican train system and see more sites!
This past weekend we traveled to Gorongosa once again to surprise Jordan on her birthday! I ended up ruining the surprise cuz I accidentally texted her something that I meant to text her husband brian, but she was just as excited! We actually made it allllllll the way down to Gorongosa in 1 day!!!! Which is a HUGE HUGE deal for us cuz we didn’t think it could be done, but we just got some really awesome hitchhikes and booked it there! There ended up being like 30 people coming and going that entire weekend, mainly PCVs but there were also some friends and then 2 cyclist doing a 8000km cycle up east Africa for a foundation called Against Malaria! Tom and Pete were super cool and they got super lucky to meet all the Moz PCVs during their trip through Moz cuz clearly we’re a good time! Haha GOOD LUCK BOYS!! So it was lotsa good times swimming, playing games, dancing, drinking 30 cases of beer and tipo tinto ‘ star of the orient rhum’, and lots and lotsa really really good food! Donna and luis whipped up a Mexican feast of chilaquiles and homemade salsa, Alice made us chicken and dumplings, we let Jordan cook one breakfast only cuz I was super selfish and wanted her bagels, Kendra made meat sauce spaghetti and choc chip cookies, Alexandra made mini lemon cupcakes with lemon coconut buttercream frosting, and I took the reigns on the rest of the weekend cooking a sausage carril(sauce) with rice, chicken peanut noodles, tuna egg salad sandwiches, sausage homestyle fries, and a vanilla birthday cake for Jordan with vanilla buttercream frosting! Nicole I woulda made you so so proud!
So now we're back in monapo and i even had a birthday package waiting for me from Migum and Bambo (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!), and we're trying really hard not to travel until the end of the school year, but we have about 1 more month of classes left and then we have about 2 months off to travel and recoup and not see students yelling "HELLLLLO TEACHHHHAAAA!" I'm really going to try harder to blog more often so keep checking!
Also a big big shoutout to the new MOZ15 group that just got in yesterday! Esp PAT!!!! YAYYY you're finally here!! can't wait to see you!!! We're all so pumped to meet yall and to have to fresh blood in our PCMOZ family!
ok folks that's it for me today!
miss everyone so much!!

panda

yes i WOULD like some cheese with my whine

So I was too busy eating, drinking and sleeping to post from spain, but go to facebook to see the three photo albums we put up with pictures from Barcelona and San Sebastian. I mean it’s basically food porn for the hungry soul, which in our case we’re all always hungry, but if these pictures don’t convince you that spain is awesome, I don’t know if we can be friends… = ) my return trip was interesting to say the least and we’ll just leave it at it having been a very very long, tiring and upsetting journey… but I made it back in one piece, with no luggage missing, and was reunited with von, which is really all that matters! Other than being back with von though nothing else has really gone according to plan. School has started up again and von was busy with the last stage of science fair, which was phenomenal, and we got to experience nampula in a whole new light where we got to hang out with friends we haven’t seen in a while and eat good food and take hot showers! Oh yeah that was another thing about spain… I think I averaged 2.5 showers while I was there! Days 1-5 I was taking like 3 showers a day, then I eased up a little in the middle, but towards the end when I realized I wouldn’t be able to take hot showers for a while again I was back to 3 showers a day~ haha it was amazing! seriously though, do not EVER take a hot running water shower for granted… NEVER! EVER! So then some more evil things happened when we were trying to come home from nampula and then we got some more bad news about one of our conferences getting cancelled… yeah sorry to sound so whiney but it’s just been a total bummer these past few weeks. and service has sucked so I haven’t really been able to talk to my family and I finally got through and talked to my dad for a little bit but the connection wasn’t great and I couldn’t hear him that well and my mom wasn’t even there so I didn’t get to talk to him… WAH WAH WAH. Dang I’m sorry haha ok but there’s more bad news! Haha so we’ve finally crossed into a very very special month, SEPTEMBER, and you know what that means, BIRTHDAY MONTH! Haha ps happy birthday nick and donna!! I love and miss yall so much! Hope yall had amazing amazing days! well so there are tons of volunteers with September birthdays as well so we had travel plans basically every weekend for different birthday celebrations but we already hit our first road block not being able to travel this weekend due to ‘complications.’ So we’re trying to make the most of it at home, but hopefully we’ll be able to travel by next weekend cuz that’s the important one! 25!!! HOLY COW! Quarter of a century! Insanity… but yeah we were gonna head to the beach for the weekend to celebrate my oldness so keep your fingers crossed cuz if that doesn’t happen either I’ll be really truly sad and depressed and will require mass amounts of booze to drown my sorrows! So yeah I probably shouldn’t have written this blog right now seeing as I’m the bluest I’ve every been in life, but wanted to get something on the blogosphere so yall would know that I was atleast still alive! Miss everyone so much it hurts!

E