Nearly a month, and what have you missed?
A few flakes from the iceberg:
Cape Town was wonderful. Such a picturesque place. We climbed mountains, visited the Cap of Good Hope, and hired a 1960s vintage (and I mean VINTAGE) VW Beetle to drive down the coast a la Endless Summer. There will soon be pictures (though I unfortunately must long await the repair of my computer which contains my only copy of Macromedia Flash).
Maputo was "hectic." Hot and hectic. One of the poorest countries in the world, it came as quite a shock. A 40-degree shock. It went something like this: Wake up at the crack of dawn because it is too hot to sleep. Take a short shower before the water entirely runs out. Cover thyself with sunscreen because the anti-malarial you are taking makes you photo-sensitive. Sweat profusely. Find any available shade. Shower again at 4pm to remove sweat, sand, and sunscreen, and apply a liberal coating of super strong, deet-intensive bug spray to ward off malarial mosquitoes. Sit in front of mosquito coils and sweat profusely. Go to bed at 20.30 exhausted. Lay in bed and sweat profusely, unable to fall asleep because of heat and buzzing mosquitoes. Sleep a few hours, rinse, and repeat.
Back to Turban, lighting some belated Diwali fireworks and nearly blew off Scott's head. Keeping busy with things around campus and working on that base-tan. They kicked me out of my room on short notice, so I had to move across the way to another dorm. But, I finally made it into the post-graduate housing (shh, it's exactly the same as my last room, but the bed is even less comfortable). I've been making some changes to the website back-end, and keeping busy with some other administrative things around here. The last of my crew left yesterday, so now I am officially the last man standing. Moby Dick was good, the Da Vinci Code is a thriller, and Catch-22 is waiting in the wings. All-in-all, it's plenty of down-time.
That's it. Remember, these are just a few flakes. Full stories available upon request.
Flown by mariposa at 08:36 PM on December 02, 2004
Well, well, you're finally back. I missed you!
I want the FULL stories but can wait till you come home if you will allow me to be in the corner at your folks house to listen.
You're experiences will someday be a book, I hope. When that happens it will be even more interesting than the DaVinci Code (which I loved).
Thanks for breaking the silence. As always, I look forward to future postingings.
