Pictures of our house part 1

So we live in a 3 bedroom apartment with 2 full baths and a kitchen and study. I took some pictures of our living room and dining area. The rest of the house is still in a state of disarray, although they did come and build some shelves so that I can put some things away. We are getting closer to having a home. I have a feeling by the time we get finished though it will be time to move on.

We are completely spoiled with 3 huge balconies and a sea view. Not a particularly spectacular sea view, but we can still see the Indian Ocean, which is nice.

I will take some pictures of the rest of the house after it gets cleaned up this week.

PS. This is not our furniture. It is USGov issued.

Trying

I have decided to give this gardening thing a try. I have never been very successful with plants but we live in such a concrete jungle that I had to do something! Plants here cost about $1-3 a piece. The most I have spent on a plant is $4. I spent about $45 on seeds prior to coming here.

I have been afraid to start them though.

Jason went to the wood market and bought these boxes. We are trying to start some container gardens for vegetables.

Below is a banana tree that I bought Jason.

These flowers are pretty but all I know about them is that they need full sun (or at least that is what I think the person I bought the plant from explained to me).

I have become very interested in succulents. They have nice symmetry and their leaves look cool and refreshing.

Here is my "Bird Spa". I have tried to create a little oasis for our feathered friends.

Here is our makeshift trellis for my sweet peas. I have never started seeds from water and a papertowel before. A friend/neighbor shared some of his sweet pea seeds with me since I need some plants that will be vertical. They grew very fast and so I have attached them to little wooden skewers in hopes of training them to climb the trellis.

More vertical plants and a really cool plant that has a lovely deep purple side of a leaf.

Ok, here is one of my fails... or fixer-upper. I bought these flowering vine plants but they had been sitting on the ground so long that when the person I bought them from pulled them up, they sustained some root damage. They look sad. I repotted them and am hoping that they are just focusing on drinking lots of water in the root system and then will return. They are a lovely flowering plant and many people have them around their homes because they also have thorns (natural protection).
What would a garden be without little whimsical creatures?? Balcony bunny!!

Ponta do Ouro

Jason and Jody on the beach with beers.

Xai-Xai

I am always joking that the sad thing about distance education is that you miss out on Spring Break.


This past weekend we went 3 hours north to play on a lovely beach in the area of Xai-Xai. We gladly exchanged our AC for the soothing sounds of waves crashing and sea breezes, and kicked off our shoes for walking barefoot in the sand.


We had almost as many dogs as people!


The beaches in Mozambique are beautiful, however the water is a bit rough. This beach is unique as it has what seems to be a sand-stone coral bed natural barrier. One one side of the barrier is the raging ocean, on the other, a relaxed pool. As the tide comes in, the water enters the tide pool by separating itself into little waterfalls. As you know, I am a sucker for a waterfall.


One of our party delighted us with oxtail-stew or "potjie", a traditional South African dish cooked in an iron cauldron over a fire, with the primary ingredient being the tail of an ox. It was stunning and even impressed our South Africans!

Comfort Food

Today I attended an interesting session hosted by the regional psychiatrist and medical unit here at post discussing the frustrations of our chosen path of life and an adaptation cycle that we all generally expect to go through. The familiar topics of "Third Culture Kid", homesickness, where is home?, depression, reverse-culture shock, improving post moral and other challenges came up.

I was going through the handout and decided that for someone who has just gone through a very stressful time, I found that I had not wandered far from the steps listed on the "resilience checklist".

I was telling a colleague the other day about my experience in Guyana with the Peace Corps. It was, as the slogan goes, "the toughest job you will ever love." What was strange about this week and past month, were how many nice comments of support I received from some of my Guyanese friends in Guyana. I never really thought that I made much of a difference in their lives, but their messages made me feel the opposite. It does mean a lot to hear from them after so much time has passed.

Last summer when I participated in a study about TCK, it dawned on me that I actually don't know much about American cooking. We had a colleague of Jason's over for dinner, he was from the Ukraine. I wanted to make something "American", so I made cheeseburgers and fries, failing miserably on the fries. Most of my cooking is with a Guyanese flair... I can't make a meat loaf but I can make a mean egg ball with mango sour, and that is my comfort food.

You can take the girl out of Guyana, but you can't take the Guyana out of the girl.

With a Seaview

And I'm Back...

...but do I have any idea what I am doing? No. Not. Really.



I just got to Maputo, Mozambique a few days ago. Jason gave me his tour of the city that involved the "Wood Market", which is a weekend craft market complete with people practicing "Capoeira", the central market full of fruits and vegetables, the botanical gardens with it's bats, a walk along the coast for a beer, the central train station that has a lovely bar that combines art travel and history with live music, and a rick-shaw ride. Sunday was spent in the fish market eating red grouper and huge prawns.

In between my "musts" which are practicing Portuguese and working on an online course, I will be posting somethings that seem very out of order. As long as internet is working, God willing.