Wow. Well alright. A lot has happened since you last heard from me, and I think the best place to start is with dessert, because one never knows with the electricity will go out.

Last Friday I decided to impress my host-family with my exquisite culinary skills. In preparation, I bought expensive peanut butter (All peanut butter is expensive, but this stuff was unneccessarily so because I bought it at the gas station and I should have bought it at the cheap bar. Yes. Peanut Butter with your whiskey?), vanilla extract, margarine (I've seen butter three times, twice of which were plane rides and the last was in the hotel we were put up in), and what some people would call brown sugar, but I would call unrefined sugar. It's from Swaziland, not fine, but I figure it was the best thing I had and it was at least a little brown. Anyway, with these in hand I warmed my margarine and creamed it, added the eggs and peanut butter and did my baker thing. First half dozen? Burned. The trick to an electric oven is to switch the electric current from the top to the bottom of the oven halfway through. Last two dozen? Perfect. Moist, sweet and peanuty. Impressive? Not even a little. My host-family, as it turns out, doesn't like very sweet cookies. Which is probably why they make cookies that are a lot more like biscuits than my idea of a cookie. But don't worry. I brought the cookies with me and my travel companion Emily said they were perfect and our host PCV thought they were very nice too.

Which brings me to my travels! I'm excited to say that I have now been out of the southern region of Mozambique and in fact have enjoyed the luxury of in-country flight to the north. What a nice break. I do want to thank all of my American family, friends, et. al. for your generous contribution to my trip. Taxes were never spent so well. The beaches were either shockingly pristine, or excruciatingly dirty (think latrine usage). The views were always amazing, and the play between old Portuguese architecture, war-torn crumbled buildings, and current housing and businesses is amazing. Also, I found a cafe that sold Diet Coke. Truly a luxury. The PCV I visited was fantastic, and gave some great inspiration for those of us health volunteers that will end up at site with no actual job to do. Not to mention 1) mangoes are better 2) coconut is young and better and 3) there is no mud. It was a wonderful cross between a tropical vacation and a hardcore Peace Corps experience.

The PC experience came in when we trekked across the low-tide marshlands of the Indian Ocean for two hours midday before wading with our full packs across the ocean for about a half mile in order to find the fishing boat we hired to take us back to site. Let's just say that sometimes sea urchins aren't delicious; they just hurt.

So now we've made it back to training and are even more anxious to get to site. Not to say that i'm not glad to be back with my host-family that won't ever fail to give me my mid-morning and late-afternoon snacks, because nothing can replace the love you feel when you know you'll be getting those lanchees. But really, starting my life at site won't come too soon, because then I can have all the rice and beans I can stand (up north they make rice with coconut, and I feel I will be doing the same thing for the next two years). And I'll be able to cut my hair without being giggled at quite as much. Don't worry, it was just a trim.

I leave you with this question: what is good with Orange Fanta, Coke, Jolly Jus (almost like Crystal Light), and tastes like Bazooka bubblegum?
Agua de Papa (translation: Dad's Water)