Monday, October 27, 2008

Hi!! Thanks to everyone who has sent mail! I just mailed out a bunch of letters yesterday, so youÂșll be hearing back soon! Yesterday, our whole group went to Maputo and bought phones and ate pizza. It was amazing.

Training is going pretty well. I will be teaching chemistry to 8 - 11th graders. I feel pretty good about grades 8 and 9, as thats mostly basic chem that I enjoyed learning, but starting in 10th grade, they start learning organic chemistry. So if I end up teaching that, I will have a lot of relearning to do!! If anyone has any ideas for chem experiments using around the house reagents, please email them to me! We´ve started practicing teaching in Portuguese, and its pretty rough. This week, Im giving a lesson on balancing formulas. Super exciting! Im going to try to post pictures now, we´ll see how that goes...

its not going well. i will try later!! ha.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Hey to whoever is reading this! I have officially been in Nammacha living with my host family for a week. All is good! In my host family, there´s a mom and dad, 3 sisters (15, 12, and 4) and a brother (13). We live in a little cement house with a tin roof (with electricity!). It´s a beautiful city... I love my walk home every day! You would all be so impressed, I have yet to get lost in Namaacha, and its a pretty big town!

I feel kind of like a big baby here, because I have to relearn how to do everything! Even though I insisted I could figure out how to take a bucket bath, my sister insisted on showing me how-- como se diz ´awkward´em portugues? I´m learning how to cook with charcoal, wash my clothes, and next week, kill a chicken (sorry rachel!!). The portuguese lessons are going pretty well, but it´s frustrating because I wish I could communicate well right now. In liu of being able to speak much portuguese, I´ve been having lots of dance parties (send bad rap music please!) and playing lots of cards with my host siblings. Miss you all lots!