Sunday, and I mean SUNday

Did you miss me on Sunday?  I know you did. 

I was having internet problems on Sunday.  But not really internet problems, more like homeostatis problems.  It was like this.

Sunday morning I woke up around 9, because that's how I roll these days.  That's about when it gets too hot to sleep anymore.  I moseyed into my living room and decided to make myself a pot of Real Coffee using the last of my stash from the US.  It was too much coffee for one pot but not enough to make two, so I decided to make one pot of Really Strong Coffee.  It was Too Strong, but I drank it anyway.  The whole pot.  I sat at my table, ate a piece of bread with a slice of processed gouda flavored Parmalat cheese (which might be my favorite thing in the world right now) and recorded my feelings in my FeelingsBook, I do this every morning.  Around 10:00 my 11th grader best friends, Vito, and his sister Avo, came over.  We all played cards until about 1:00 when I kicked them all out and headed to the market.  I was only going to buy movitel credit so I could get on the internet in the evening.

So there I was in the mercado, buying 50Mts of Movicredit, and I realized that I was actually standing on the road that goes to the river.  Last week on my walking adventure I was not going towards the river. But this week, this Sunday I was.  And I was on my bike for the first time.

Kim had said that the river was close so I decided to give it a shot.  Off I pedaled. 

Have I told you about my new bike?  It's a beaut, it is.  It's a "Novo Moz Bike" model.  It has pedals and some gears and a chain.  It still needs some--like, the back breaks don't exactly work right now and I still need to adjust the front derailer so I can actually use ALL the gears.  But anyway, it's a bike and it works.

I pedaled. and Pedaled and Pedaled.

Eventually I reached the river, but I couldn't find any beautiful shade to sit in.  No trees to lounge under, just corn fields and muddy ruts.  I also didn't dare go exploring for any better places to sit because we have a landmine problem in Moz and river banks are constantly shifting and therefore extra dangerous.  So, I pulled my bike off the road a bit and down a little path and sort of fell over, sort of dismounted and sat there panting for a few minutes.  I decided then that I was definitely about to die.  Too much coffee, not enough food, too much sun, not enough shade.

I sweated for a few minutes and a kid came up the path.  "what are you doing in my corn field" 
"Uh, you know, descansaring?" 
"You have to come down to the river and say hi" 
So I got up and wobbled down the hill to the river.  There was a clearing in the reeds where the water was slow and shallow and very muddy.  A girl and a little boy were there washing their clothes.  My brain was way too fried to speak Portuguese but I managed a little.

"Nice day, beautiful river" I said.
"It's hot and the river is very muddy"
"Yeah, I guess it is, but there are birds at least"  I was trying to see the silver lining of being on the verge of heat-stroke, but really I hadn't seen any birds.  Disaster.
"I'm hungry, goodbye"  and I found my bike and rode back to the market.  I decided that I really needed some sugar in my body so I stopped to drink a coke.  But I couldn't even get that down and didn't feel like puking in the middle of the Mercado.  Please, I'm already strange looking enough--wearing a bike helmet and being white and all.  I don't need to be the weird white guy wearing a bike helmet and puking all over the Mercado.  So I went home, laid on my concrete floor for about an hour, drank 2 quarts of gatorade and retired to my bed for the rest of the day and part of the next.

Oh, and the movi-rede wasn't even working so I didn't even NEED to go to the Mercado for credit in the first place.  Oh well.

So that's my adventures in heat-exhaustion. 

I'm in the PC office in the Big City right now, so no pics. 

Here's a quick recap of last week though:

Um, I taught some lessons.  I hung out with my 11th grade friends.  They changed the school schedule again so now I only have afternoon classes on Wed, Thurs and Friday! YESSSS.  I'm still waiting for a new night school schedule and if all goes well I'll have 4 day weekends EVERY WEEK. Have I mentioned how much I love Mozambique (It's too hot to live, but I love it)

I went to the Big City on Saturday with my friend Faruk (he's kind of like our Host dad in Mboa-city) and he helped me buy a bike.  We also visited two of his sisters and a large Chinese-owned warehouse full of purses.  That was...weird.

Next weekend I'm headed back to our Training City to visit my Host Family there and eat corn.

I'll try to put up some pictures next weekend, so stay tuned.  I'm off to eat a hamburger now.  yesssssssss