Guests: invited and otherwise.

Since Marcilio's original visit a few weeks ago he has been back twice. He was here three weekends ago and last weekend as well. We got a chance during his second visit to talk to Tober who was my first housemate in Peace Corps and a good friend of Marcilio as well. It was nice to be able to talk over Skype and catch up.


I also spoke to Tober who I last saw in early June while en route to Portland from Brattleboro. I saw Tober in Boulder and it was good to catch up with him then. It was great fun to have Marcilio here, especially this past weekend when he stayed for two nights. We stayed up till after midnight the first night and past two the second catching up, reliving good old memories and just enjoying each others company.

Doug can be a real softy and he certainly does his best to encourage troublemaking by his closest friends which include birds and fish. Here you see one of his pigeon buddies who found its way into our office. I was worried about it at first and opened as many doors and windows as possible to try and help coax it out of the office without hurting itself. I was happy to have helped and snapped some pics at the same time. It was happy to be outside and no longer needed to be inside searching for food. Doug encourages these little "beasts", j/k, by feeding them and forces me to feed them when he is out of town.

I was not entirely pleased when just a few minutes later the same bird returned through the back door still in search of food. I couldn't believe how brave it was walking only a few inches from my feet. This time I chased it off and you can see that it decided to finally move out of the office and since this day a few weeks ago hasn't chosen to return.

The wonders of the internet…

How do I spend my free time you ask? Well as I don’t have my own car so I sometimes ask for a ride to run errands but really going out on my own is tough even with an international driver’s license seeing as how South Africans drive on the wrong side (j/k) of the road you know the left side and I have to get used to driving on that side of the road. Well you say but Blake “You lived in Mozambique for over 2 ½ years and they like South African drive on the left side of the road so why can’t you?” To which I have to answer I was never the driver in Mozambique as Peace Corps didn’t allow it and even when I was there outside of Peace Corps the only thing I usually wanted to do was act like an ostrich while driving so as not to see the wild driving that often occurred by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers I road with, not Annie and Charles of course, or the other drivers on the road. It really is different not taking any public transport here and being driven around by Linzi, Douglas, Jared or Ben. I am doing my best to keep my eyes open while we are going around to learn where shops, offices and other places are located to hopefully get up the courage one day to be the driver. I think my using public transport in Mozambique the great majority of the time kept me from hearing drivers in their own cars from commenting on the terrible driving by the chapa/mini-bus/taxi drivers or maybe these drivers in Mozambique weren’t nearly as bad as the reputation that they have here.

Enough for now about drivers and driving and on to the title of this blog entry which you were probably beginning to think was written and then forgotten about. No worries I did want to tell you one more reason why I think the internet is amazing (I have a long list of reasons I think it or its use rather by certain individuals, organizations or governments is terrible). I spent about two hours this past weekend on Saturday or Sunday night fixated on Google’s satellite maps at http://maps.google.com/maps. I spent some time finding my parent’s home in Portland, the ETC offices/my room here in South Africa but the majority of my time was spent locating Chókwè, Lionde, Conhane, Xai-Xai, Macia, Maputo, Matola, Boane and other locations in Mozambique. It was fascinating getting a birds eye satellite view of the country where I spent 30 plus months living, working and traveling. I was amazed at how close I could get to my houses in Chókwè (one for Peace Corps and the other for The World Through My Eyes), Escóla Agrária (the agrarian school) where I taught, the home in Boane where I had my home stay during training and much more. I will not bore you with all the details although I am sure that Tober, Aimee, Nanosh, John, Orlando, Rebecca, Jimmy, Nimi and others can relate to finding a lot of enjoyment in something like this especially in a place where so much time, sweat and patience was expended.