In the morning, I heard back from my Italian friends, and the remaining pieces of the month in Italy came together. We had been somewhat iffy on the Ideag conference for some time now, because we didn’t know if Emanuele would be able to go or not. Although the conference would have been fun, I really didn’t see the need to drag Jeremy along if we wouldn’t be able to spend the time with Emanuele. Further, when I mentioned that we would be able to go to Sicily and climb an active volcano, Jeremy (pardon the pun) erupted at the suggestion. (And, to be totally honest, he didn’t really “erupt.” But he did show a bit more enthusiasm than he has historically shown. Gosh darn it, I know that he is busy, but it sure is tough planning this portion of the trip alone. Happily, Jeremy promised that he would look over the Italy trip in Mozambique. On the positive side, we now have the general outline of the trip finished. Instead of visiting Turin, we are going to travel from Pisa to Sicily. We purchased tickets from Ryan Air for about $70/person. Because luggage is incredibly expensive to take with us, we were happy that Massimiliano agreed to let us store our luggage at his house in Pisa! This will save each of us about $50.
After taking care of this business, we took a trip up to the Taxi Ring to look for Lesotho T-Shirts. Although they didn’t have the quintessential “I heart Lesotho” shirts that would have been an incredibly funny inside joke (ask me when I return home), I did pick up a nice enough shirt with the Lesotho hat on it. The most interesting thing about the Taxi Ring experience was the number of people who were so very willing to try to help us find different shirts. We spoke to one guy and he led us around the market stalls for a good 45 minutes trying to find a print on demand shop. We did finally find it, but the shirts were not of a very high quality. We ended up going right back to the start to the first vendor with the shirts.
After that, we went to Jeremy’s dental appointment. This was not incredibly exciting, though I was able to read the “Public Eye”, Lesotho’s newspaper. This doesn’t sound very interesting, does it? A newspaper…yawn. But, you would be more excited if you were able to see the headlines that are posted all over the city. For example, “Bloodbath in Maseru.” Or, what about, “Wife Rapes Husband!” Finally, there is the “Judge Makes Unexpected U-Turn.” Jeremy also told me about a recent DJ party in the city. In order to empower women, the theme of the party was mini-skirts. To add to the empowerment, the women with the shortest skirt would win a prize. It seems that the woman’s rights movement has come a long way here in Lesotho.
For lunch, Jeremy and I went to Nando’s Chicken, a popular fast food chain. They serve Portuguese/Brazilian chicken (Peri-Peri). It was delicious and the price was definitely right. I was sort of worried about high grease content in the chicken, since KFC is the chicken of choice here, but it was great.
After lunch, we simply took care of more of Jeremy’s Peace Corps obligations before heading to the Pick N Pay to buy dinner and the next day’s lunch. We ended up purchasing some hamburger meat, rolls, and mixed veggies for dinner. For lunch, we bought some of the luscious hot dog rolls that we had the other night with our cheese steaks. We watched Juno with our dinner and then went to bed. However, halfway through the meal, Jeremy and the rest of the COS volunteers were given a surprise cake!
Then it was off to bed.
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