The World Cup saved us. Kind of. It suddenly came in and
gave us something to do. It put something on TV in which we were marginally
interested. (Uruguay vs. Costa Rica anybody? Who knew how important that game
would end up being…) And it made it socially acceptable to just sit in a bar
all day and drink.
However, games didn’t start until 7pm local time in
Mozambique. Which meant that second games were are 10pm…and third games were at
1am. We could, of course, watch the entire match again in a bar the next day
(and we usually did), but it was way more fun to watch them live. Especially
when the US was playing Ghana!!!
Cory and I decided that we needed to do something to really
celebrate this. So, in classic American tradition, we decided to make some
Mexican food: guacamole and salsa! The market had everything we needed and we
even asked our little samosa boy if he could make us samosa with no filling (he
asked: “you mean chips?” umm yeah…chips was exactly what we wanted). We
borrowed bowls and utensils from the kitchen at Casa Barry and chopped and
mixed away on our porch. It was amazing. It tasted so good. We were so excited to
show it off at the 1am game. Everybody knew we had made something for the US
game but they didn’t know what. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but
everybody was very confused when we excitedly revealed our chips, salsa and
quac. Nobody wanted any. It was so sad. Not even the other Americans! (And PS –
Every non-American was cheering for Ghana.) So we sat there from 1 to 3am and regrettably
ate all of our own salsa and guac. Sad face.
OTHER STORY FROM THE DAY
We made a new chill surfer friend at Casa Barry. He was
there for breakfast and invited us out on his adventure to the lighthouse. We
had been wanting to go to the lighthouse since our first walk on the beach when
we realized just how misleadingly far it was! And our new friend had a car and
used to live in Mozambique and spoke Portuguese fluently! So we hopped in and
headed there. Had a fun adventuring afternoon and learned tons from our new
friend about the history of Mozambique. He stopped by the bar later that night
while Cory was back in our room so he just gave me a little care package of
things that might “save Cory”. It had band aids (true – Cory probably needed
those) and some Christian reading materials with a link to our new friend’s
blog which was all about how he used to be a sweet surfer dude doing mountains
of coke in LA until he found Jesus. I didn’t know what to think about the fact
that he didn’t seem to want to save me, but I just handed the packet in its
entirety over to Cory when he returned. The people you meet on beaches in
Mozambique.
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| Accidentally artsy pic of the lighthouse. Didn't realize my camera mode was on black and white because it was SO BRIGHT out I had no chance of actually seeing what the picture I had taken looked like. |
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| Cory and I have VERY FEW pictures of the two of us together on this trip. But at least I have a few quality creeper shots of him! |
[To be clear: I watched every single World Cup match up
until June 21. Every single one. When I landed in Boston, we were tied in the
second half of the Portugal game – this is when we still kinda thought Portugal
was a contender even after the 4-0 loss to Germany – and I was going crazy in
the customs line. I got yelled at and was told to put my phone away. When I got
through the line we were WINNING and I booked it into the first bar I could
find. It had the match on, but absolutely nobody was paying attention to it. I
was going crazy, loving having my phone back and being able to text everybody
and watching every second of the match right up until the Portugal goal to tie
it with seconds left. I was devastated, and nobody else in the stupid US bar
where they don’t watch soccer seemed to care.]
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