Rest and Relaxation

I'm a creature of habit, as I think I've mentioned before. Part of that is we've got a pretty good set schedule at the orphanage and so I need to plan things out otherwise nothing gets done. There are normal things that just get pushed into the routine. Church is on Sundays, I do my shopping on Fridays, most days I'm teaching lessons in the afternoon, I've got my carpool, nightly bible study with the kids, Saturdays are yardwork and trashday. In the midst of all that I've got to try to find time for laundry and soccer, two things that are hard this time of year because of the frequent rain.

Things just happen. But in the middle of it all, I like to find time for a little R&R. Just something out-of-the-ordinary, unusual, surprising, refreshing is what I need to get a pick-me-up during the week. Most the time it ends up being a nap, which is neither extraordinary nor surprising, but amazingly effective. Other times it will be going into the markets to wander around and just shoot the breeze with people. Much of the time, its just going somewhere to relax and get a snack.

My new favorite spot for just getting a snack and chilling out is this place; The Hotel Milenio.

There's only like two really swanky places here in Nampula, and this has to be one of them. The newly remodeled hotel is the last place in Nampula that makes you feel like you're still in Mozambique. Let me show you.

Here's a coffe shop, cafe area where I tend to frequent every other week or so for some air-conditioning, a pop, and a choice between a good book, soccer, or cricket on the 50" flatscreen TVs.

Today was a cooking show. Ummm.... I choose BOOK!

The thing is this place is so weird and uniquely modern. I've heard it described as an up-scale cafeteria, a hospital, an up-scale hospital cafeteria, and, as Victor said, Dubai. I assume he meant the entire state. Just the whole Emirates feel, I guess.

Nothing says obscene oil-wealth like a four-storey piece of "art"...

...pictures of rocks on the wall...

 

...or whatever this is. Indoor plants inspired by "The Jetsons"?

The best thing about this place is not the overpriced food.

Watery coffee and the other half of my grilled-cheese sandwich are not what keep me coming back. The thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that they pipe in a combination of music that makes me absolutely homesick.

The first time I went was shorty after the hotel remodeled in last October. It was over a 100 degrees that day (or 38 degrees for the rest of the world) and I needed to find some AC to escape the humid torturous hell that the weather often is. After getting myself to the hotel I bumped in to Christina. (We live 15 feet apart and yet neither knew the other was going there. We have awesome communication.) The first thing I noticed and commented on was how great the music is. They were playing a shuffled mix of Dave Matthews Band.

The next time I came back, the musical awesomeness continued. The ambient music was just obviously hooked up to somebody's iPod and this day they had put U2's "The Joshua Tree" album on repeat. I listened to it two full times through. I had the almost Pavlovian response of every time it came back around to "Where the Streets Have No Name" I ordered another coke.

In subsequent trips, the music is always usually the same combination of an album or artist just repeating through. I've come back to Soundgarden, Oasis, and Pearl Jam, Radiohead, and Weezer. It's like whoever is picking the music was my musical soul-mate: from Seattle and stopped discovering new music after 1999.

When I finally asked who on earth is picking this music, they told me the manager does. The manager, as I know, is some middle-aged surly Portuguese lady that always gives me the stink eye because I only order cheap things like pops instead of paying $5 for coffee or $8 for an onion and carrot omelet.

Surly  manager or not, they have my business until they change out the playlist for something like Nickleback or American Idol Greatest Hits.