Jet lag

Yesterday we arrived in Johannesburg at around 3:00 pm. We probably got to the place where we were staying at around 4:00 pm. I showered and freshened up and I decided that I wouldn’t allow myself to take any naps so that I would be tired when it was time to go to bed. I succeeded in keeping myself awake but by the time 10:00 pm rolled around I decided that I would get in my pajamas and go to bed. Of course, 10:00 pm in Johannesburg is 1:00 pm in Provo and … you guessed it … it was like taking a freaking nap and at midnight I woke up refreshed from my nap and ready to face the “rest of the day.” I tossed and turned for about an hour and then gave up and read until 4:30 in the morning. It probably took at least another 30 minutes to fall asleep after I put my book down and I had to be up at 6:00 am. I think I’m going on day 3 without more than 2 or 3 hours of continuous sleep – and it’s not even finals week!!!

We arrived in Beira, Mozambique today. Beira is interesting. It reminds me a bit of the small towns we would pass through while driving from Quito to Guayaquil. Yeah, it’s third world at its best! The place we are staying at is also interesting but it’ll work and compared to the other stuff around town it’s fantastic. I have my own clean sheets and towels. I have flip flops to wear around the house. We have plenty of bottled water. We have an air conditioner. We have a bathroom with running water (although we didn’t have water when we first got in because they had an accident with the pipes down the street but we have water now so I’ll be able to shower tonight). We have electricity the vast majority of the time – I’ve been told that the longest power outages last about 4 hours, but again I’ve dealt with worse. We also have a person who will be cleaning the house and washing our clothes, so it’s kind of like being on vacation with a maid (yeah, that’s making it sound a whole lot more glamorous than it is). I’ve only spotted one mosquito thus far and it wasn’t on my arm. In fact, it wasn’t even close to me, after all I pretty much bathe in mosquito repellent – I’ve decided it’s my perfume for this trip! We are getting settled in today. We fixed up our room a bit meaning that we put sheets on the bed and hung up some of our clothes. We also went out to exchange money. We currently get MTn 25 (the local currency – I would tell you what MTn stands for but I can’t spell it) for every US dollar. We also went grocery shopping and spent about MTn 1500.00 which equals about $60.00 and we got plenty of stuff to last us for a while. For those of you who are familiar, the supermarket was probably like one of more run down markets in the Nordeste. We tried to go earlier to today we couldn’t get the car to start. We tried hard – I even helped push the car to see if we could get it started but we failed miserably.

There is one other person staying here at the Care for Life facilities. He’s the nephew of the guy that we met in Provo from Care for Life (Joao) and he’s been here for 2 months and knows all the tricks to surviving here. It’s nice because we can ask him questions about anything.

Yeah, so that’s kind of the update. Oh, we also don’t always have internet connection here. So, if I don’t e-mail you daily – don’t freak out (mom) – it’s because the internet is down but it’ll be back in a few days and I’ll be sure to e-mail you then. I love all of you and miss you a ton!

P.S. Andrea (my travel companion) also has a blog and she has some pictures if you are interested its http://andreainfreakinafrica.blogspot.com/