Heading home!

Well, I'm headed home to Seattle today! Sorry for the sporatic contact, but internet access was unavailable from our hotel, and we didn't go to internet cafes often. I'm here now confirming my flight info and getting a train ticket to the airport. See you soon!

Lovely Sunday

So Carrie arrived this morning, and we have had such fun! We took the tube to Picadilly Circus and got theatre tickets to see Wicked on Tuesday night. Then we walked and walked. We went to Leciester Square and to Trafalgar Square and walked all around the National Portrait Gallery. Lots of monarchs there, as you can imagine, and it seems they all died by execution. Glad to live today, since I'm thinking being poor in the 1500s and 1600s would have meant being dirty and stinky and hungry, and being royal would've meant being executed. No good.

Carrie got only about 30 minutes of sleep on the plane, so she was dragging after the museum, as was I, since I had done my Rebecca-traveling thing last night, which is to wake up to pee at 3:30 a.m. and then lie awake until time to get up. Argh. I hate 3:30. So we came back here to the hotel for a nap. Carrie is sleeping, and I rested quietly a while. (Still no sleep, but I'll take a pill tonight and aim for a whole night through.) Anyway, I've set the alarm for 6 p.m., and we'll head out for dinner and drinks. I'm thinking Italian, since we had a delicious and surprisingly low cal lunch. We went to Pret a Manger, which is a chain with sandwiches, salads, and soups packaged to go. The food is made onsite and is very affordable (for London) and is high quality and delicious. I had gazpacho (yum!!!) and a "fun with falafel" salad with greens and a dollop of spicy yogurt instead of dressing. It was great! Okay, the alarm is about to go off, so I'll sign off and get ready to head out again.

Safely in London!

Here I am, safely in London and happy to be here! I got here around 6:30 this morning and with customs and baggage and lines and the train and all, arrived at the hotel around 8 a.m. They let me fill out the paperwork and leave my bags, but it was far too early to check in. No matter. I just wanted to dump the bags, wash my face (and reapply it) and brush my teeth. Then I was off!

The hotel is right by Paddington tube station, so I bought an all-day pass and went to Covent Garden, which I remembered from my last trip to London w/ Heidi. (Actually, everything here reminds me of Heidi and our last trip here, which makes the city especially sweet.)

I walked all around Covent Garden for hours and had a cappucino at a French pastry place in Covent Garden. I pulled a classic Rebecca and walked all around, checking out all the food before finally settling on a place, only to have it not be worth it. I sat and ordered a cappucino and then when it arrived ordered a croque monsuier, but they weren't serving food yet. Argh. Then I called for the check, and they brought the little credit card machine to the table...and you guessed it, it didn't go through. (Not because of anything w/ the card; I've used it other places today; it was just the machine or connection or something.) So then they say that I'll have to pay in cash. Nope. No British pounds. Just USD. No, they need pounds, of course. (That is the currency of this country and all.) So the waitress walks me to a money changer and walks me back. At this point, I'm a little out of sorts and want to be a jerk. Fortunately, I prayed, and she was a sweet, funny young woman from Brazil who misses the sun. We talked about my moving from Texas to Seattle and her moving from Brazil to London and what it's like to miss the sun. So it was fine; plus I got my money changed!

Then I walked all over the whole Covent Garden area, not just the market. It was fun, but I was looking for a bookstore because I wanted to take myself out to afternoon tea, but if I'm eating alone, I like to read (and I'm really tired of the school books on social action research that I brought.) So I never did find one, but I did find an amazing, gorgeous, expensive jacket. Which I bought. It was all of dad's b'day money and part of the Walton's. So thank you, dad and Bill and Judy and Hilary!!! How could you have guessed that I would want a bottle green velvet, knee-length jacket with a funky green print lining and big buttons?! You guys are good... You must have let Hilary choose. :-)

Then I took the tube Oxford Circus because I knew there should be a bookstore there, and sure enough, there was a big Borders. I took forever choosing a book so that it would be late enough to go to tea afterwards. When it was 3 p.m. and I knew that St. James restaurant would be serving afternoon tea, I left the store w/ a nice, simple mystery novel and took the tube to Picadilly Circus, where I walked the wrong way, walked back, consulted a map, and finally asked a police office which of the 29837329875 roads that cross there is Picadilly leading toward St. James park. Once on the right road, I found the place easily. It is in a huge, swanky department store that contains 3 restaurants. St. James is on the 4th floor and has a grand piano and aqua couches pulled up to tiny tables and waiters who are in ankle-length black aprons with black pants and white dress shirts. I was STARVED at this point, so I ate all of the afternoon tea: tiny cucumber sandwiches and egg sandwiches and pickle-and-veggie sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam and a tiny lemon sponge cake that was only 2 (ladylike) bites and a tiny tart topped with raspberries. Plus a glass of champange, bottle of sparkling water, and pot of earl grey. (I was thirsty!)

On the way back I stopped at St. James market and got something for Hilary's Christmas. (Wheeee, I'm so excited!) Plus, a pair of earrings for myself. The earrings are amber studs set in silver, but they are a lovely green. I hadn't realized that amber came in green, having only seen the brown and golden colors before. I was sorely tempted by yet another jacket (this one a white cotton Asian-inspired one) but came to my senses before purchasing it.

I'm back at the hotel and checked in now. My feet are swollen from another night on a plane and then walking all day, so I'll shower and sleep with them up. The hotel is...plain but safe and fine. It's a good sized room with a full bed and a twin bed, plus a very tiny table and 2 chairs and very very tiny vanity with stool. It has a private attached bath that is clean and sufficient though remarkably small. If you sit on the potty and swing your legs to the side, they are in the shower. If you swing your legs to the other side, you can't. That's the sink. And that's the whole bathroom. But, again, it's clean and private and has hot water. That's all I'm going for here. Okay, better sign off and start charging my camera. Big sightseeing day with Carrie tomorrow! She arrives tomorrow around breakfast time and says to be ready to hit the ground running. Yay!!!

Off to London Tomorrow!

Okay, tomorrow I fly to London, and boy, am I ready! I've tried to get all of the language stuff done here for work, and we had a very good meeting today with another Ministry of Health official. In fact, it was so exciting that we decided to go out for ice cream afterwards! :-) Maria took us to a little gelato shop that served us enormous sundaes. I only ate half, and that was still a whole lot. My sundae was chocolate gelato and mint gelato with chocolate syrup. Man, it was so yummy. Good thing I didn't know this place was here the last 2 weeks... Tonight we're going out to a Thai place for my birthday dinner! Yay! It's so fun to draw out b'day celebrations with so many diff people.

My flight leaves tomorrow around 4 p.m., so I'll catch the shuttle from the hotel a little before 2. Then Maputo to Johannesburg and Jo'burg to London. Hooray! I arrive in London at 6:50 a.m. on Saturday and have a whole day to kill. Carrie will join me Sunday morning, and we're planning to hit the ground running! I've done restaurant research, and she's done activities/sites research, so we're raring to go. I can hardly wait. Heck, it's been 10 years since I was last in London, and it feels odd to be old enough to say that. I'll blog during the week next week to let you know how it's going (unless the free wifi in the hotel room is not actually available, but let's be positive).

Still here in Moz

Don't know if anyone is still reading this after my hit-or-miss posting schedule... :) Internet has been up and down and the office and at the hotel, not just in my room but the whole hotel building. As of this morning, they said it was fixed, but my coworkers were still unable to get a reliable connection. Here at the office it's up again for everything but gmail. Argh.

Work itself is going well, though I'm a little worried about what I'll be able to have done and what will be left for future work after I'm gone. I am hoping that when I get back to the office in Seattle I will be able to do much more testing on installation procedures so that goes smoothly for Leah in the field. There are still some bugs, too, that we are finding. Would be nice to have those found and wrapped up, though bugs always seem to pop up no matter how much testing was done. I'm working on language issues while I'm here, getting people who speak Mozambiquan Portuguese to review the language of the program with me and allow me to note any changes for what I hope will be relatively quick changes when I return.

I've been working longer hours this trip and have not had internet access in the hotel since Saturday, so I haven't been blogging or even emailing much. I did get some good photos this last weekend, just of the local outdoor market and some shots of the streets here to give an idea of what it's like. If I can't post those on this trip, I'll post them retrospectivley when I'm home again. Okay, I'm signing off now and getting back to it...

Working hard, good results

Sorry I haven't posted in the last few days, but I get lazy when I'm back at the hotel room at night. The last couple of days have been very good, with encouraging meetings with our partner organization and with the officials who are our major audience. It's been really encouraging and great, though kind of exhausting. The night before the most important meeting, our developer and I worked all night long (for me; all day long and well into the evening for him) to get some bugs fixed. We got everything up and going about 40 minutes before I had to leave the hotel for the 8 a.m. meeting. Talk about high stress. But the application ran beautifully throughout the meeting, and the official was very impressed and pleased. He could clearly see the value of having this system and using it to run reports that he and his managers at lower levels could use to support vaccination services. It was great. I was so pleased.

Working has really taken almost all my waking time during this trip, so I don't have too many exciting things to report. I walk between the hotel and office now instead of getting a ride, and it feels good to have that independence and not feel like I'm burdening the local country director too much. Our office is on the 11th floor (and they count here like they do in England: 0, 1, 2, 3...; not 1, 2, 3 like in the U.S., so it's truly 11 flights of stairs), and I always take the stairs to get some good exercise. (I say this so casually here in my blog, but in reality if I take the stairs at a good clip all the way up, I'm winded for sure when I get to the office.)

There is a tiny cafe just a couple of doors down from our office building with delicious coffee, and our hotel serves instant coffee, so it's real treat to head downstairs for a coffee break or get to work early for a good cup before work. Occasionally, they have this one sweet that I really like called pastel de nata. It's a little pastry cup made out of something like phyllo dough and filled with egg custard. YUM. Fortunately for my figure, they run out of these early in the day, so a coffee visit is usually just coffee and not coffee+pastry.

I've eaten only one meal (besides breakfast, which is included with the price of the room) at the hotel during this trip. I'm trying to get out more and experience a little more of the city than I did last time (though I'm being very safe and careful, so no worries). Last evening, Maria (the country director) dropped me at a waterside restaurant after work, and I got a good table immediately overlooking the water. We were facing due south, but I leaned out the window held the cam facing west and got a few shots of the sunset over the water. It was peaceful and lovely. The meal I ordered was not too great, so I didn't eat that much of it, but the dessert was fantastic. Plain unsweetened Greek yogurt topped with local honey and toasted almonds. Man.

When I finished dinner it was full dark, so I asked the waiter if he could call me a taxi. He agreed and told me to stay at the table and he would call me when the taxi arrived. I was not to wait outside please. That made me feel so secure. And then when the taxi driver didn't know my hotel, the waiter walked outside and told him which hotel and how to get there. It was so incredibly nice. I have had great luck getting taxis, that is, getting perfect strangers to get me taxis. I am so grateful.

Ahhh, technology

Today was my first big meeting to show off the system. I didn't have time to practice installing it here at our offices before going to our partner org, so I didn't try to install there. Fortunately. A key part of the system isn't working. Well, technically, the feature itself works, but we can't get to it, so it seems like it's broken. Praise God that I didn't discover this in front of the people to whom I'm presenting. I've been careful to try things myself before showing them to people in case we get little surprises. Like this one. Anyway, it feels kind of stressful and concerning, but this is technology, so it's not like problems should shock anyone. Still, I'd like to have things as smooth as possible. Tomorrow is another big meeting at 8 a.m. and then another at 10 a.m. I'll try to be very prepared.

To continue the technology theme, my cell doesn't work either. Mozambiquan cell phone networks don't like Samsung. Only Motorola or Nokia. There's an extra Nokia here at the office that I can have tomorrow, so that will be good.

On the up side, I'm having lots of meetings with all the people that we were wanting to reach. Plus, I can successfully install the program, so even if the prob isn't fixed by tomorrow, when it is fixed, the program will automatically work like we want. No reinstall needed. So that's simple. Plus, everything looks like it's working right on my laptop, so I can show people the system. Other nice things include the weather: warm and sunny but not too hot. And I remember a lot of what I saw last time I was here, so I know how to walk to the office and get to the good chicken place and the good coffee place. Highlight of highlights is still probably internet access in the room though. After not having it last time, having it this time makes things especially sweet.

No pics yet, sorry. I'll try to take some soon. Am working a lot though (dawn til dark today, though it is winter, so it's not that bad), so not sure when I'll get some. This weekend I'll definitely take pics! Maria and I are planning to go to Swaziland and go to a wild animal reserve. Wheee!! Hope that works out, and if it does, I will certainly take lots of pics.

Safely arrived in Maputo

I'm here in Maputo, Mozambique, and the trip couldn't have gone better (unless I'd gotten more sleep, and then it would have been perfect). My flights were on time, and there were no problems with my ticket. I got a little sleep on each of the long flights (Seattle to London and London to Johannesburg), but the seat rows were very close together, and I couldn't lay my head on the fold-down tray b/c it was too close. I did do some good resting with my eyes closed though. The best thing about the trip was that I had a long layover at Heathrow and got food at an Irish pub and went to a pharmacy and got toothpaste and lotion. Since I'm only carrying on luggage for this trip, I had to prioritize liquids, and my hair products are top priority. Toothpaste you can get anywhere, but Jessicurl products have to be ordered specially off the Internet. I had planned to buy at the Johannesburg airport b/c I did that last time and knew that buying liquids for the last stop would make it much less likely that they'd get taken by security. But I went ahead and risked it, and I'm so glad I did. I was only in Johannesburg long enough to run for the gate. If I hadn't gotten stuff at that pharmacy, I'd be here in Maputo trying to figure out where to go for toothpaste and lotion when I'm really too jetlagged to do much. This whole story probably sounds like no big deal, but I have been praying thank you's all day b/c "happening" upon the pharmacy and risking buying additional liquids--oh! and a razor!--when I still had another country's worth of security to go through wasn't something I'd normally do. And b/c I did, I now have a razor and toothpaste, etc. Yay!

Another big, exciting thing is that I have internet access in my room!! Wheee! This means I can Skype you, family! And, Tony, you won't have to try to learn my room number in Portuguese and get hung up on if they don't understand you. :-)

So I'm here and have eaten and am going to veg until the little hotel store opens and I can get a SIM card for my work cell. My plan is to stay up and go to bed in the evening instead of napping and throwing off my clock further, but I will definitely go to bed early, and if that means I wake early, that's okay. Sorry I can't think of anything particularly interesting to say, but my mind is a blank. Hmm. The weather here is gorgeous. I walked to a chicken place where I ate the last time I was here, but lots of restaurants are closed on Monday, so I found a place that serves one meal every day. You go and order whatever they cooked that day. Today it was a kind of beef stew like pot roast and brown rice and salad for about $2. It was not amazing but not bad either, and it was very pleasant to eat outdoors. It was a little one-room kitchen with outdoor tables and a loud, very small TV set up outside. Most people were sitting at tables near the TV, but I stayed back a little and read and enjoyed the weather. Signing off now. More tomorrow...

Heading Home

Hey, all, we're beginning the trip home today! We leave the hotel here in Phuket in 2 hours, drive an hour to the airport, fly to Bankok, wait 3 hours, fly to Seoul, wait 12 hours, fly to Seattle, and see Heidi at the airport! Wheeeee! It will be so great to see her! The trip will be...probably not too great b/c it'll take so long, but Tony had the super bright idea to reserve a room in the transit hotel in Seoul. So during that 12-hour layover, we'll get a hotel room right there in the airport and sleep all stretched out with plenty of room in a real bed. Very smart.

Okay, well, he's in the shower, and I'm supposed to be packing... oops. I'll post a few pics to this blog and sign off.

Right on the beach, massage and mani/pedis

Tony sunning on the beach...

Bec posing in full beach costume

Hotel door handles...so cool

A strange fruit that I'd never seen before

Coke in Thailand

Our lovely table setting at the fancy hotel restaurant

Sunset at dinner

Us at dinner

Us at dinner on a diff night

Safari Tour

Yesterday I did a half-day safari tour that was so much fun. Elephants and monkeys are not Tony's thing, so he didn't come along, but I went and had the time of my life. Enjoy the photos below!

This man trains monkeys to pick coconuts. The little female monkey below can pick 50 coconuts in a day.

Here she's enjoying a milk box before showing us her coconut-picking talents.

She picks the coconuts by spinning them until the stem breaks. Monkeys are trained to do it low to the ground first, then higher up with coconuts tied to a clothesline-level rope, and finally on trees.

See her there, spinning the coconut?

Afterwards, the tour guide, Kung, told us about water buffalo, but we mostly watched the monkey b/c she was so cute.

Here she is, just sitting and resting. After the water buffalo talk, we were supposed to sit on the buffalo and then take a ride in an ox cart, but we all wanted to spend more time with the monkey first.

This is Alan, an incredibly nice man from Australia. He and his wife, Sue, were so friendly and kind to me the whole tour. We sat together and chatted and took pictures of and for each other. Alan was quite a hit with the monkey.
Here's another lady on our tour, patting the little monkey as the monkey pats her arm back.

Unfortunately, this is my best Kodac moment with the monkey. Earlier she had come up and sat by me and gnawed on my camera strap while I petted her, but once the camera was directed at us, she'd lost interest in me.

Finally, Kung got us directed back on track, and we took turns sitting on the buffalo. Sue was such a good sport. When no one on the tour would volunteer to try something, she'd volunteer to get the ball rolling. She was first on the buffalo.

Here are Sue, Alan, and I on the ox cart. (I don't know why it looks like I'm raising my fist... I wasn't.)

The next part of the tour was about how to open coconuts and make coconut milk and oil. Here a lady uses a metal spear sticking up out of the ground to peel open the husk surrounding the coconut.

After peeling away the husk and breaking open the coconut with a hammer, she shaved off the meat inside using a traditional tool that is like a flat metal disk with sharp little needle-looking spikes sticking off the edges. The disk is bolted on the end of a low wooden stool. She sat on the stool and scraped the inside of the coconut against the sharp disk, and the meat scraped off onto the tray, which she'd placed on the ground below the disk. Here Kung squeezes the coconut meat to show us the milk, which is running down her hand.

Next we learned how to make coconut oil. They add water to the coconut meat and cook it over a fire in a big skillet for about 8 hours. After that, oil rises to the surface and a delicious brown caramelized crumbly stuff sinks to the bottom. They skim off the oil and use the crumbly stuff on the top of cakes and sweets.

Next we learned how to make Thai curry. They showed us all the spices you use and had us smell them and guess what they were. As best I remember, you start with the following spices: garlic, salt, black peppercorns, red chilies, turmeric, lime leaves, shallots, basil, lemongrass, and some stuff that's a milder version of ginger.
You put it all in a mortar and crush it with a pestle for 20 minutes. It looks like a lot of work! After that you have your spice mix, which you mix with water and cook with meat and veggies and then add some coconut milk. Yum...

Finally, it was time for the elephants! We started with the baby elephants. Here I am getting a kiss from one! They cleaned her little nose with a towel and then stuck her trunk to my face and pulled it away: SMOOOCH! I'd never had the entire side of my face kissed at once before.
Here I am getting my pic taken w/ a baby elephant. She is just grinning up a storm. :-)

People who wanted to buy fruit could feed the elephants. Sue and Alan bought a basket of fruit and shared it with me so that I could feed the elephants, too. Here I'm feeding watermelon to a baby elephant. You have the snap that camera fast b/c the elephants snap up the fruit immediately as you get in reach.

Next we went on an elephant trek with the big elephants. Here's a lovely view from the trail.

This is my elephant. She was born in 1963, and her name is Namsai.

Here I am on Namsai.

Here are Alan and Sue on their elephant.

This is my elephant guide. He was a cool guy; I felt pretty lucky to have one of the best elephant guides. He took us apart from the others a little bit and also gave my camera to another elephant guide so he could take my pic on the elephant. He and that guide were the only ones who did that for their riders. It was really nice and saved me from buying the photo that the tour itself took of me on the elephant.

Here's my favorite pic of the day: me on an elephant. So fun!

New Suit

We bought Tony a new suit. Tailor shops are almost every other store here along the main road behind our hotel, and the guys who work there are always calling at you to come in, come in and let them make you a custom suit. Tony and I had talked about his getting a new suit, but then I realized exactly how old his only suit is: 12 years. I'm not kidding. It was time for a new one.

The place we ended up going had a big sign out front: "TEX." We had stopped to take a picture of the sign for our Texas friends and family when the owner came out and offered to make Tony a custom suit for $100. That got us inside. :-) We got to choose the fabric and then look through some fashion books to choose the cut. We went with a lightweight cashmere blend fabric in black and a slim-cut, single-breasted jacket with flat-front trousers, no cuffs. Tony got measured, and we left a $15 deposit. We came back the next two days for fittings, and--ta dah!--he has a really handsome custom-made suit. We're pleased.

Who has a new suit? THIS GUY!

Pants fit great at the first fitting and need only hemming

Jacket is handsome but a little snug at the first fitting

A reluctant, slightly embarrassed smile during the fitting

Modeling the lining

The finished product: Lookin' good!

And the back view...

Mmm, mmmm. So handsome.

The End (perhaps someone is tired of posing...)

Around Town

Here are some photos from our shopping day. The weather was grey and intermittently spitting rain, so it was a better shopping than beach day. It was warm out and a good day for walking around.

A street corner where we'd stopped for a coffee break

A bank and tour van at a busy intersection

The bank (in English and Thai)

Altar outside the bank

The place where we got Tony a tailor-made suit (We originally stopped just to take a pic of the sign b/c of the "tex" but got talked inside. Tony's old suit, his only one, is 12 years old!! Older than our marriage. Even with his wearing it an average of once a year, it was time for a new suit. We're going for the final fitting today, so we'll take pics.)

Me taking a coffee break
The following pics are of some goods in the nicer shops



At the end of the shopping trip, time for refueling: pizza!!!