Tuesday, January 31, 2012

january

These past 31 days have been characterized by soaring temperatures, tons of work, sporadic deluging rainfalls, and little to write about it all. Therefore, I will let pictures express a few highlights of the month.


In the first few days of the month, my MCC teammates and I met in Beira for our quarterly meetings. We had decided that we would aim for a fun day at the beach beforehand. So we packed everyone’s family and friends into our caravans and travelled out to Rio Savane. We arrived around lunchtime hot and hungry, only to discover that the lodge had no food, save for a few random bags of potato chips. A few of the adventurous among us trekked out on the scorching beach to find a fishing village about 2k north. They returned bearing not only fish, but monstrously-sized fish weighing in around 8 kilos (or 17.5 pounds). The tuna was delicious.


We celebrated the New Year (regardless of which year it actually was)!


The rains came down and the floods came up. My unpaved road turned to a river of mush, and the rooftops were such lakes that it sounded like it was raining for three days after the storm.


A surprise package arrived a little late for Christmas festivities, but that didn’t stop me from putting up its paper snowflakes on my windows to commemorate January snowshowers at home and the tradition of snowflake making parties with my college friends.


I finally replaced both my International Drivers Permit and my Mozambican residency card after the originals were stolen in September. They also continue my tradition of looking like a livid serial killer in all important photo documents.