11th July

In Beira now. Amazing city. Yesterday was my last day of watch, I was so happy! I was expecting to sleep in today, and did. I woke up at 8am. Shocking.

So I got up, had breakfast, and then read for a bit, before some of the other STEPPERs asked if I wanted to go out to the town with them for the day, this being monday, and so the off day for most of the ship, including, thankfully, me.

So we got into the Doulos minivan, and drove out to the port gate. People are not allowed to go to and from the port entrance (about 9 minutes by minibus) by foot, and so ALL visitors to and from the Doulos, and all Douloids (strange word. better than people calling us doul-oy though. Silly ungreek pronunciation...) must be shuttled by the Doulos minivans. Amazing. Very tiring for the drivers though.

We walked about the city a bit, and after waiting about 45 mins for one of us to finish changing some money at the bank, we went to get lunch. We split 3 going to a cafe, and the rest of us to a "resturant". which turned out to be just a bar which sold food. Not very good. We had to wait almost 2 hours for the food to arrive, and even then it wasn't very nice. I had spagetti and tomato ketchup. Yum. We then met up with the others, who had spent the same as 2 of us for all three of them, and had had mountains of really nice food. Junk food (hamburgers, etc) but really nice, they said, anyway. And lots thereof.

So anyway. We went then to the cinima, and watch "The Pacifier" with Portuguese sub-titles, rubbish typical Holly-wood junk, but nice cinema, HUGE, but only about 15 people in it. Big stage, round concave screen, and so forth. Very old. Then we walked back, some people wanted to go to the supermarket, and so did, the rest of us got back in time for dinner on board. And now I'm here, reading email.

I want to go now, perhaps see if I can get some clarinet practice in. I played yesterday for the Doulos Sunday service, people keep on saying how much they liked it... they only normally get "usual" stuff: drums, guitar, piano, bass. The pianist is really cool, jazzman, music school trained, and keeps on sticking in weird jazz chords in the middle of songs. A bit disturbing at first, but once you get used to it (normal harmonys don't work! You have to use jazz ones :-) ) it sounds fantastic. He even wrote out some instrumental clarinet/piano solo intro and break stuff. Funky. We did "The Spirit of the Lord is within my heart" (I will dance as David danced) in a very cool latin jazz / samba type way.

PS - computer time is unlimited, providing that not all the computers are in use, and that no-one is waiting for yours.
PPS - Internet connection at 33k this port.