MozamWeek

We are guests again. I enjoy our visits with our friends in Tete, but it is time to have a home. We have looked at some really BAD houses... impractical, small, junky, new, buggy, hot... this house-hunting is just what we thought it would be... and more! I'm glad we had an extra month to find a house! Because of an incredible amount of economic development in this off-the-beaten-track part of the world, there is a housing crisis in Tete! There are several mining companies coming to town... just outside Tete, there seems to be a large quantity of world-class coal. So, these companies are snapping up all available houses for prices that would have seemed rediculous 2 years ago- $1,000/month for places that aren't very nice OR very big. So, those of us who refuse to pay such prices are left scratching around for whatever is left over. I have heard that these companies knock on doors, offer $1000/month for people to move out of their family homes. Now imagine, a school-teacher who

The kids and I had a little home school project last week. We wrote letters to our friends in Sweden, on paper, with pictures, and put them in envelopes and stamped them and mailed them from the Tete post office! Now it is pretty exciting to get a real live letter in the mailbox in Sweden, but just think how exciting it would be for the kids to get a post card, Christmas card, or letter from YOU!!! All over the world you are reading this. Our mailbox usually has some boring statements and magazines for the 'other family' in our box. We are now sneaking peaks at the magazines addressed to *** Child. So, this week we have a paper-making experiment going. We are going to try to make hand made paper Christmas ornaments... using real Mozambican recycled paper. So far, we have let it all rot and strained it and dried it in the sun. Tomorrow we will pound it with a mortar and pestal. So, realtives all over the world, be on the lookout for your own ornament from Mozambique! I don't

So... after months of honing my internet communication skills and praying for a swift return to the land of our mission, Mozambique, I have now hit reality! My computer operates on Vista... my cell phone is brand-spankin' new and high tech... and they won't talk to each other. So that leaves me to write on Mikael's oldie... or to use dial-up at, I'm not kidding, 16 bps... NOT kbps, NOT mbps, but a whole whopping 16 bytes per second. So, to just access the website that has my blog, I have to wait approximately 5-10 minutes to just log on. Thanks for your patience! Just getting email around here is no easy task. And, surely with time, we will find ways around our problems. I'm still here with stories to tell, but I'm not telling most days! I do appreciate your notes... limit sending pictures for the obvious reasons. "Text only" is a good idea these days. When we are down in the big city, we will pick up the other stuff on the broadband or satelite connec