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...