Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hi everybody! This is an English version of my blog, so my family from The States can follow my experiences as well :-) I will try to sum up on some of the things and experiences I've had in the first month of my stay in Maputo, Mozambique.. As most of you might know, I'm staying with my dad and his girlfriend, Christina, in the capital of Mozambique. They have a big apartment in the middle of the city on the 8th floor (with an elevator, of course). I arrived on the 30th of September. A couple of days after I got here, we were having two of my dad's friends from Denmark visiting. So my dad, the two friends from DK and I drove to South Africa to go to Kruger National Park (which is a huge safari park in South Africa) and Blyde River Canyon (the third largest canyon in the world). We were gone for 4-5 days and we had a great time! It is a beautiful trip (see pictures on facebook) and of course we also saw all the wild animals in Kruger Park! Lions, elefants, hippos, buffalo(butts!), crocodiles, rhinos, zebras, giraffes, many beautiful birds and a lot more!
I have also been attending Portuguese lessons. Two of my friends from my gymnasium (which I just graduated from this summer) are also living here in Maputo at the same time. One of them, Tobias, his aunt is married to the Danish Ambassador, so they are staying at their house. Tobias and his girlfriend, Irene. Anyway, we went to the Nova Escola de Línguas together where we had 4 hours a day for 2 weeks. It was really fun and exciting to learn a new language. I had three years of Spanish in the gymnasium, so that has been a big help to me because it is so close to Portuguese. It's not like we're fluent in the language, but we can manage it and we try to work on it when we talk to people and a out :-)
Other than that, we have been on a whale-watching boattrip with mostly Danish people. Unfortunately there had been a misunderstanding between the guy who arranged the trip and the captain of the boat, so they didn't bring enough fuel to get out to where the whales actually were! But we went to a nice deserted island with a beautiful beach and water where we bathed and spent the day instead.. But believe it or not, we had a little group of dolphins jumping around our boat!! So if we had been in the water at that particular time, we could actually swim with the dolphins.
I've also been hanging out with some young volunteer workers from Christinas work. There is a Danish girl and a two Swedish boys, all of them 19 and 20 years old. They work at the Scandinavian School here in Maputo. Christina also works at a Music School one day a week, and there is also a young Belgian guy. So this weekend all seven of us had pizzas and some beer and then went out to a big disco, which is called Coconuts. It was a great night and we had so much fun! We also met three guys from Cape Town, who were on vacation here in Mozambique.
I think that shortly sums up pretty much of what I've been doing up until now :-) I hope to find some volunteer work as well, and I've already got a lot of contacts, so I have to get that started soon. But first of all, one of my best friend is coming here tomorrow and she's staying for 2 weeks! We're picking her up at the airport tomorrow and on Wednesday I'm taking her on the same trip as the others who were here.. Kruger Park and Blyde Canyon :-) We will be gone until Saturday. The week after that we are going to a little island called Inhaca for a couple of days. I really look forward to seeing her and spending time with her here :-)
I hope you are all doing good. You can comment, or write to me if there's anything you wanna know or are curious about.. Boa noite e até a proxima (goodnight and until next time)!
Love Chanel.
- comments
Steve Paich (cousin) Photos if you get a chance.
tony that sounds pretty cool.
Chanel I will try with the photos. But otherwise they are on Facebook until then.