It’s been a while since I’ve written. We’ve been done with school for a while now, and have had about a month of ‘wrapping up.’ National exams, correcting of exams, grades, etc. Lots of long days that would have been so much shorter if we would embrace the magic that is excel. We have computers and people that know how to use them here at our school, but everything is done by hand instead and checked over like 5 times before its finally recorded. I was at school 12 hours straight yesterday just reading off grades. That’s about 8 hours longer than my normal work day. And I have become very accustom to my half work days. The real world is going to be rough after this.

In other news… We had a couple girls from the new group of volunteers come visit our site for a few days. It was really fun to meet some new people, and it gave a lot of perspective on how I’ve changed over the past year. I have become way more lax about stuff like bleaching my veggies and boiling and filtering water. And pretty disillusioned and negative with a lot of things happening with the school system and different NGOs here. On the plus side, I am really proud of Portuguese progress and the fact that I can reject marriage proposals in 3 languages.

At the end of the month, I leave for Kenya! I am so freaking excited for this trip! David’s picking me up from the airport, and we’re going to spend about a week at the reserve he works in. I have been promised champagne hot air balloon safaris and a christmahanakwanaka party. It really doesn’t matter what we do, I just need a break from Mozambique and need some quality hang out time with David. Then we’re going to take the bus to Uganda and go white water rafting and go see some more animals. When I get back from my trip in mid Dec, I’m meeting up with my aunt, Terry in Mozambique. We’re going to do some traveling around and have a fabulous Christmas. It is going to be a wonderful month.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and takes some time to think about all we should be thankful for. And eat some pumpkin pie for me!

I am commemorating my 1st year in Mozambique by stealing Brenna’s list idea:
A Year in Numbers:
-12 Months in Mozambique
- 25 books read
- 6 beaches visited
- 12 packages received (thank you, they’ve been wonderful!)
- 8 pulgas found in my feet (8 too many)
- 3,618 tests corrected (and that is not an exaggeration)
- 10 days arrived at school NOT sweaty and disgusting
- 50 lessons given in Portuguese
- 4 times kitchen has been broken into
- 1 time peed over the side of a sail boat (not an easy task)
- Countless over the top texts received professing strangers’ love.

We finished with final exams this week. Here are some highlights of my favorite cheating methods:
-Notes on the hand
-Notes under a skirt or capulana
-Passing around scratch paper with answers
-The whole class waiting until the last second to turn in tests so that everyone can talk and copy when everyone turns them in at once
-Holding up the test in front of the face, to look over answers, allowing everyone behind to copy, like cheating dominos.
-Aaaand…my all time favorite… the fake snake scare. One kid yelled and jumped up and cried ‘snake,’ everyone freaked out and had a good 2 minutes of laughing and sharing answers before things got back to normal.

Last weekend, hoards of people descended upon the beautiful town of Quissico to enjoy a timbila music festival. Timbila is an instrument that is a lot like a xylophone. They have them in all different sizes and it is accompanied with rhythmic colorful dancing. I would fail a creative writing course. How about you just look at the pictures. Anyways, it was an awesome weekend, but it would have been even more enjoyable had I not tried to sleep in dry contacts, thus scratching my cornea, forgotten my glasses at home and been blind all weekend.

It is almost the end of the school year already!! It’s flying by, but it can’t come fast enough. My Portuguese is getting better, but the students are getting more and more crazy. I have come to the conclusion that the only way to be an effective teacher here is by being a bitch. If you try to be nice and smile or joke around, they just completely take advantage and everyone starts talking and once 70 kids start talking, you’ve lost and they’ve won. So lately, my classroom has not been very much fun. I can’t believe some of the things that come out of my mouth (“Are you here to play or are you here to learn?” “I am not your mother, I do not care if someone stole your cassava”…etc), but, they are paying a little bit more attention and I am not going insane. I am nice to the students when they talk to me outside of class!

Becky had a friend that was going to come visit, so we planned a Swaziland trip. She was unable to make it, but now we’re all excited about Swazi, so we’re going to go anyway. It will be a quick little trip, but we’re staying in a wildlife sanctuary, so I’m going to see some real animals! And we are going shopping at the Shoprite!! Never would I have thought I could be so excited about shopping in a place that resembles a Walmart, but I am so pumped!

Finally, free time! I haven’t written for a while, so I’ll try to write about everything that’s been happening.
- Ferrias:
During our school trimester break from school, I got together with some friends I haven’t seen since training, and we spent some time relaxing and catching up. I won’t bore you all with tales of the amazing tropical beaches (sleeping in hammocks, amazing seafood, canoeing through mangroves, blah blah..) Also, people seem to get mad if I talk too much about these things. I’m in Peace Corps and supposed to be having a rough life all the time?

- Science Fair:
This has been sucking up all of my time and energy the last few weeks. Becky and I were the organizers of the Southern Regional Science Fair this year. It was certainly a lesson in patience and flexibility. Planning big events here is quite different than event planning in the U.S. First, when you set up meetings, this does not mean anything. More often than not, the other person doesn’t show, or shows up an hour late. Also, when planning a big educational event, all the right people have to be invited in the right order, as not to offend anyone. Figuring out the hierarchy of the local government was challenging, and I am so grateful for another volunteer in the area for helping to invite everyone and tell them about the event. I was so paranoid about messing up and using the wrong nonformal verb tense or something and pissing them off so they wouldn’t come to the fair. Another thing I learned was that just because a person agrees to do something does not mean they will follow through. I had so many last minute cancellations or people who just didn’t show up. So this was all the pre-fair drama.

For the actual event, we had 41 students from 14 different high schools participate. All of the students did projects using the scientific method and made expositions. Each school also did an HIV/AIDS poster, since all of our funding comes from PEPFAR. There were also a few different health organizations that set up booths and a group doing HIV testing. We had a great theater group who did a presentation about discrimination of HIV positive people. Not all of our judges showed up like they were supposed to, but some peace corps volunteers stepped up and helped us out. There were some really interesting and creative projects, I was very impressed. The girl from our school won 2nd place! All in all, I think all of the kids had a great time. They especially liked their certificates (this country is certificate CRAZY - ha apparently Honduras is too, Brenna). One of my favorite parts was the cake cutting ceremony. Not just because it included cake. We had 3 giant cakes. I was at one of the cakes along with 2 of the winners. First, everyone has to take lots of pictures of the cakes with their cell phones, and then, wedding cake cutting style, on the count of three, you all cut the cake and everyone cheers. I just think its so funny and the students all took it so seriously. So! Science fair is all done and it is the best feeling ever and I am very proud of all the work Becky and I and the other volunteers did to make it all happen.

Science Fair!
We held our school science fair a couple weeks ago and I was really happy with how it went. Becky and I have been meeting with the students for about a month, developing their projects or experiments using the scientific method. Buuut of course, the bulk of the work was done in the days before fair. We had a couple projects on electricity, a couple on plants, one on chickens. They came up with some pretty cool projects for really not having much to work with. On the day of the fair, we had 6 students present projects. We had a good number of parents, other students, teachers, and the director of the school that all showed up. While I don’t think it quite lived up to the director’s high expeectations, (what? No sound system, cultural dances and ministry officials present??) the kids all had a good time and I think we’ll have a lot more people participating next year. This was a really rewarding project to be part of. The kids were genuinely interested in science (which is a refreshing change from the blank stares I get every day in the classroom) and the kids were all proud of their final products. Next up, we’re bringing two of our students with us to the regional science fair in August. Becky and I are also planning this, which is a much more daunting task than the school fair. Now I just need to find where they sell crepe paper and funfetti cake in Mozambique and we will be set!

2nd tri is over! And I am so happy for that. I need a break. Teaching is not getting any easier. You know when you were a kid and someone is pushing really really fast on a merry-go-round and your feet fly out behind you and you’re holding on for dear life? That’s kind of what it’s felt like the past few weeks every time I go into the classroom. And so, I’m going to the beach. Be back in a few weeks and hopefully it’ll get better!

The kitchen thief has struck again! Here’s the back story on the kitchen thief:

A few months ago, we woke up one morning, the find someone had climbed through an opening in our reed kitchen and stolen a bunch of random things (see earlier blog). Please keep in mind that one of the items was chicken stock. So our landlord who is so helpful and I love him is out there the next day nailing another board on to block off that hole and he put some mesh fencing stuff up as well. So I’m thinking our kitchen is pretty secure now, plus we got Rama the dog to guard the house now.

A month later… woken up in the middle of the night with Rama going crazy barking. Becky and I wake up, look outside, and see someone standing on the wall that fences in our yard, reaching into the kitchen and grabbing things from a 6 inch gap in the kitchen. So this guy has the dog barking at him…nothing. Then Becky and I start yelling at him to go away…nothing. We didn’t want to go out there, because it’s the middle of the night and we’re huge wimps, so instead we wake up our land lord and he comes over and the kitchen thief runs away. This time, the stolen goods are: cinnamon, yeast, curry powder, and cumin. Next day, landlord is out adding the fencing material to the other side of the kitchen to block off this gap as well. I am now convinced our kitchen is secure.

Last night…woken up in the middle of the night with Rama barking. I get up, look out the window, don’t see anything. He keeps barking , so Becky and I go outside to investigate. We don’t see anything and I’m convinced that people were just passing by and Rama was barking at them. So we both go back inside and eventually Rama stops barking. Wake up the next morning only to find a HOLE cut into our reed kitchen right at the level of our shelf with the spices! What is missing you ask? A Tupperware of delicious spices from home, garlic powder, red pepper flakes and more curry. I am so mad!

So what do we know about the kitchen thief? Assuming all 3 incidences are the same person, and I believe they are, I have amassed the following information: Young male (the one time when we saw him it was definitely a male and he had to be sort of small to fit through the first hole), not intimidated by dogs, or a couple of girls yelling from inside the house, really into spices, obviously. I have a clear footprint. All day today, I’ve been obsessed with examining the footprints of everyone that passes, I keep thinking he’s just going to walk by! I’m starting to think this is just a personal attack on Becky and me. This person is going through a lot of effort just to steal our spices, which are like our favorite thing. No one even uses spices in their food here besides chicken stock! So I really want to catch this person. Any ideas? Tonight, with the hole still in the side of the kitchen, I left a very harsh note for the kitchen thief. And a half a packet of chicken stock.

We also had our science fair this weekend and it went really well, but I am just way too worked up about our spices, so that will have to wait for a different post.

I promised a few people I would keep them updated on any nasty creepy crawlies that I acquire here. So far it’s been pleasantly uneventful. But here’s a little anecdote.

I noticed a few days ago that one of my toes was a little bit sore. I check it out, and there’s a little bit of a what looks like a blood blister near the nail, so I assume that I stubbed it, and thought nothing more of it. The next day, it was still hurting, and the pain was a little worse, which led me to believe it was not a mere stubbed toe I was dealing with. So our cleaning lady/friend Regina is over doing her thing, and I’m like ‘Regina, what’s going on with my toe?’ She takes one look at it, starts cracking up, and says ‘E uma pulga! E grande esta pulga!’

Everyone has warned me about pulgas, apparently, when the cold arrives, all 70 degrees F of it, so do these little bugs. They’re about the size of a grain of sand and when you walk in the sand, they can get into your toenails. Apparently everyone gets them, our neighbor boy loooves to tell us stories of how the volunteer before us got pulgas and thought he had to go the hospital and everyone laughed at him.
So back to Regina. She’s still going on about how this pulga is huuuge and why did I not come to her earlier and it is eating good in my foot, on and on… And I’m like ‘just get it out! That’s disgusting!’ So she goes away , still laughing, and comes back with a crab claw and tells me to sit down. She takes my foot and begins to tear away all the skin in like a half cm range of the tiny blood blister thing.

R:Oooh yeah, it’s a big one, it’s sucking the blood, yes it is
S: Oooww
R: HAHAHA she’s going to cry (then speaking to her 4 year old daughter) just like you, when I pulled out your pulga!
S: I am not going to cry but is it really necessary to remove a chunk of my skin?
R:Oooh, here come the children!
S (look down to see white puss stuff coming out of my toe, can’t even explain how gross it was)
R: There it is! Yes, that’s a big one, it was eating good!

And she pulled this white slug type thing out of my toe, leaving a huge bloody cavity at the top of my toe that is going to take forever to heal. So that is my first gross Africa bug living inside me story. But have many more pulgas to look forward to in my time here, apparently! Still not as gross as Brenna’s Giardia. Sick.

I’ve been in a list making mood lately, so here’s some of what’s been on my mind.
Stuff I miss from home:
-Peanut M&Ms
-Delivery pizza
-Starbucks
-Reality Television
-Resources! I miss the library so much.
-Dressing up to go out
-Happy hour
-Wireless internet
-Haircuts
-Going to a gym. Or not having people stare at you when you’re working out.
-Celebrating holidays and birthdays
-Oh yeah, and I guess I miss my family and friends…just a little bit..

Why I love it here:
-People wear shirts with ridiculously inappropriate English words/sayings (old lady in the market “too hot to handle”, kid at school trying to look all gangster complete with bling wearing a girls shirt declaring ‘sporty chick’)
-Helpful people, if my students see me carrying anything, they always offer to help
-Beautiful trees, perfect beaches
-Heated arguments that end in the exclamation ‘pa!’
-Awkward conversations that end in “estamos juntos”
-Kids can make toys out of ANYTHING
-Everyone can dance so well! I think they come dancing out of the womb…
-People shouting bad English “I am FINE and YOOOU.” And just laughing if you respond.
-10 second phone conversations are perfectly acceptable, even desirable! When you’re using prepaid phone credit, you say what you need to say and you get off the phone. I like this.
-Everyone holds hands. Not at all weird to see two guys holding hands and walking to school. It makes me smile.

Changes, for better or for worse…
-I will be the cheapest person ever when I get home. Living on a Peace Corps budget is definitely taking its toll.
-I’ve become such a litterbug. There are no garbage cans here or waste disposal system. I now just throw things on the ground and don’t even flinch about it anymore. Probably not a good habit to bring home.
-I love cooking, it is amazing how happy food makes me here. And I have a whole new appreciation for in season fruits and veggies.
-I think every guy that I meet to is hitting on me. But to be fair, they usually are. I think I’m going to be really full of myself when I go home. And then it’ll all be crushed when no one is offering to marry me on a daily basis.

It is finally starting to cool down here! By cool down, I mean pleasant at night and 75-80 during the day. According to everyone here, ‘the cold has arrived’ and people are wearing fleeces with snowflakes and full on winter jackets. Worse than Arizonians, I swear.

School is going alright. This tri I started to teach balancing equations, which is really hard to teach to such a big group. If they aren’t paying attention, which at any point in time, about half the class isn’t, they have no clue how to do it, and it’s hard to get around to 70 different kids and check if they’re getting it. So if anyone has any great ideas for teaching balancing eqns, send them my way! I also taught about moles this week. 6.02 x 10^23! So all in all, an exciting few weeks in my classroom! We’ve had a couple meetings for science fair which have mostly just been frustrating. I have a bunch of students and a couple teachers that say they’re interested or want to help, but then like 2 people show up to the meetings. I’m thinking about bribing them with baked goods. Which brings me to my next point…

We got on oven! Totally changed my life! Just knowing that I can make cake whenever I want is such a great feeling. So needless to say, there has been a lot of baking going on. Other than that, really not a whole lot happening. I’ve been reading some good books - Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and The Sister were recent enjoyable reads. I have a lot of pictures posted on my facebook account because it’s easier to post them there, let me know if you want the link! Thanks for all the letters and packages, I love getting mail!

Once again, so much happening, not enough transition words. Back to my favorite format for this blog.

- My Birthday Party:
Thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes, cards and packages! I am currently sipping coffee out of my new French press; life is good! So when Mozambicans usually have parties, they go all out. We attended our neighbor’s anniversary party the night before my birthday party, and they had 4 kinds of meat, 2 kinds of cake, juice, sodas, and beer. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated. And too poor for that kind of party. So I threw an American bday party instead. Becky and I made a million tortillas, tons of guacamole, and hummus and borrowed an oven to make some delicious bday cake. We blew up some balloons, put on some Michael Jackson, and the kids started rolling in. I think my party was about 90% neighborhood kids, but that’s a pretty accurate representation of my friend base here. We played little kid party games like relay races and musical chairs. A couple of my teacher friends from school eventually showed up so that was really nice. And no one complained that I didn’t slaughter a pig for the occasion! It was definitely different not being around family and friends from home, but thanks to my roommate and my friends here, I had a great day!

- DIVING:
During the break from school, I got scuba certified with a couple other volunteers. It was awesome! A lot of the other volunteers had been telling us how great the diving was here in Mozambique, and I figured if I was going to live an hour away from it, I’d regret it later if I didn’t take advantage of it. So 4 days in the pool and 2 DVDs of great instructional training videos later, I am officially open water certified! We did 4 ocean dives during that time, and saw sooo many cool fish, shrimp, and coral. During one dive, we saw a huge manta ray, and he just swam around us for like 5 minutes!

- REDES Conference
Raparigas Em Desenvolvemento, Educacao, e Saude (Girls in Development, Education, and Health) is a Peace Corps Mozambique project that has been going on for many years. A group was started at my school by a previous volunteer about 5 years ago, so I get to work with them while I’m here. It’s really nice having a group already started, because I have a very capable counterpart who knows a lot more about what the group does that I do! So we had a week long conference at Barra Beach where 3 of the girls from our school got to go and learn about all sorts of fun stuff from menstrual cycles to how to continue to higher education to HIV/AIDS. It kind of reminded me of leadership retreats I went to in middle school, except all of these girls were waay more into it than I was. So even though I thought the ‘say no to sexual abuse’ cheer was annoying, all of the girls loved it. The conference culminated with a guest appearance by someone who deserves her very own bullet point.

- My New Best Celebrity Friend, Dama do Bling
She’s sort of like the Beyonce slash Lil’ Kim of Mozambique. Everyone knows who she is and is obsessed with her. I had heard her music, but didn’t really know that much about her, but obviously, when they needed a volunteer to pick her up from the airport, my friend Emma (a diehard fan) and myself gladly offered our services. So we pick her and her husband up from the airport and people instantly recognize her, thanks to the big blonde hair. This one little kid is peering in the window and exclaims “Dama do Bling is in da hood!’ When they came outside, there was literally a flock of children just following and staring. Bling (that’s what she wants people to call her; I found this hard to do without laughing) and her husband were so nice to everybody and really down to earth. When she arrived at the conference, the girls FREAKED out, it was soo funny to watch. They broke into a ‘Hoya hoya, dama do bling’ welcome song and started dancing with her. Then she gave her little motivational talk (did you know she has a law degree?) and signed autographs and took pictures with everyone. At night, she gave a private concert for the girls. There were these two girls who knew like all of the backup dancer moves, so they became her little backup dancers. I had about 10 girls trying to teach me how to ‘mexer’ or move my torso/hips like white girls are not made to do. So much fun. So everyone should youtube my new celebrity friend.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAUREN!!!!!!!!!

I have officially been in Mozambique for 6 months! It really does not seem like that long. The first trimester is already over! How did my students fare? Not so well. After some extra credit, and a small ‘chalk it up to the teacher who doesn’t speak Portuguese well’ curve, between 60-85% of the students have passing grades in each of my classes. Everyone said the first trimester would be rough, and it definitely was. But I definitely learned a lot and have many things I plan on changing next trimester.

Hmm I feel like a lot of stuff has been happening here lately, so for lack of a better way to organize, I’m going to bullet point:

- Becky and I got a dog. His name is Rama. He may look cute, but don’t be fooled. I am not a dog person. But then we had the kitchen robbery incident and a creepy person looking in our window, so we decided it’d be a good idea to scare people off. So our colleague had a 6 month old puppy he was looking to get rid of, we just had to get a car over there to pick him up. So our friend graciously agrees to take us in the car he’s borrowing from his boss. We pick up the dog and Becky’s in the backseat trying to keep it calm (She is more of a comforter than I am!). About 5 mins into the trip, we hear “&@*# (that’s censored for you, mom!), it’s peeing all over me!” Pee can be cleaned up, so not that big of a deal, our friend tells us. 5 mins later… “$@*&” I look back. All over Becky, the seat, my backpack…intestinal throw up. I don’t know what he ate that morning but oooh my goodness it was the grossest thing I have ever seen slash smelled. I of course, burst out laughing, the completely wrong reaction to this situation. I was just thinking to myself, this couldn’t possibly be going any worse. When we finally arrive home, I find out yes it can, the dog also pooped in the car. Needless to say, Becky and I felt horrible and I don’t think the smell will ever completely come out of the car. Since our horribly first day, Rama has ran away multiple times, chased chickens and made small children cry. This dog is making our old dog Max look good!
- Got evacuated for a cyclone. Peace Corps told us there was a cyclone that was going to hit our coast, so we had to travel about 4 hours south to Xai-Xai to get out of the path. We got this text Friday afternoon, but it was already close to dark, so they said we should leave Saturday morning. So Saturday morning, skeptical of the sunny day we were having, we pack up, make arrangements for Rama, and get a ride heading south. About 30 mins into our trip, we get another text, saying ‘never mind, not going to hit, you don’t have to leave.’ At this point, I was all mentally prepared for a fun excursion, so we decided to just go to Xai-Xai and make it a beach day. So Becky and I spent a few hours at the beach, met up with some other volunteers who were also spending their cyclone evacuation at the beach, and got invited to stay the night at their house. All in all it was a fun weekend, got to see other PCV’s houses and city, and returned the next day. I felt really bad for the people who had left at 2 in the morning to avoid the slight rain and breeze that was definitely not a cyclone.
- My favorite brown-nosing student. So I spent a day a few weeks ago doing a brainstorming session with my students about things I can do better as a teacher and they can do better as students to improve things. This came right after a particularly bad test. So we’re talking about what I can do better (very little discussion here, I think they’re all scared of me), but one kid is like ‘Speak better Portuguese.’ And I’m like ‘OK, good, are you guys having trouble understanding my Portuguese? I am going to study hard to try to improve it.’ And then my favorite suck up pipes up and says ‘No, teacher, we understand you just fine.’ Riiiight. Any more suggestions for what the teacher can do? Same kid: ‘Give more homework!’ Now the other kids start throwing him dirty looks. We’re now onto what students can do to improve things. This kid is now on a roll. ‘Study more!’ ‘Don’t be disruptive in the classroom’ ‘Respect the teacher!’ Every time, he’s like straining reaching his hand in the air and he jumps up and yells the next thing before anyone else can talk. My favorite of his suggestions: ‘Have good hygiene and tuck in your shirt. Then we will learn better.’

am i still in mozambique?

I'm at "In Service Training" this week and kind of in shock. I'm used to my cold showers, same kind of food all the time, and just living with Becky. We're spending the week in a beautiful resort with HOT showers, wonderful buffet (which I used to be against, but now I see the wonder of the buffet as I go back for 4 different desserts) and everyone from the Southern region is here. The first day was great, because we got together with everyone from education to talk about how the first trimester is going. It was really interesting to here how people are dealing with different challenges, and I am renewed to go back to school and be way more strict! I usually let people come in late because I feel bad, but they never try that with Mozambican teachers, so I am ready to be mean! Today we started project development stuff. We were supposed to do this with a Mozambican counterpart from our school. Our person had some trouble getting down here (not exactly sure still why it took 2 full days to get here), so she missed everything we did today. Becky and I are thinking about working with the girls group at the school, and I am also really interested in starting a science fair.

I visited my host family in Namaacha this weekend. It was really fun to see the kids! It kind of felt like I had never left. As soon as I get there, it's like 'oh wow, your backpack is dirty!' and 'are you sure you washed your whole body and not just your face and feet?' So one full day there was plenty!! Oh man, it's goign to be hard to go back to site after this week!

So many little cheaters in my classes!! I gave my first test this Thursday and Friday. The whole thing was just stressful! We don’t have the resources to print off tests to hand out, so I wrote my test on big paper and just posted it on the blackboard for everyone to copy. I made everyone put all their stuff at the front of the room and clearly explained that cheating would not be tolerated. Ok? ‘Sim, teacha!’ Ummm….no. I marked at least 20 people’s tests for cheating. And I only marked the superly obviously cheating tests. Staring at their neighbors page while I’m looking straight at them for like 5 seconds, cheat sheet falls out when they’re handing in the test, etc. When I stood at the front of the room, like a third of the class is just staring at me, waiting for me to look a different direction. My favorite was when I stood in the back of the room, and people would turn around to see where I was. I gave so many death stares my eyes hurt. Not only do you have the classroom of students to worry about, then there are always the sneaky little buggers from other classes who look in from outside and just stand there copying down the test. Not the ideal set up! So many times the past two days when I just wanted to start laughing, because they think they’re sooo sneaky, but they are soooo obvious!
So I get to grade 400 tests this weekend! I started yesterday and it’s pretty depressing. I’m hoping most of the people that did really bad just didn’t come to class and it wasn’t that they didn’t learn anything. A rock is a gas, soda is a solid and sand is a liquid?? Really? What is chemistry? The study of living things. No, that is the other white girl’s biology class. Like 3o people wrote that for the definition of chemistry! I really think they just can’t keep Becky and me straight. I’m trying to tell myself that the few people who did well on the test did well because they came and paid attention to my fascinating chemistry lessons. Ughh..

Also, someone broke into our outdoor kitchen last night. The door was locked, so they didn't break in, I think they climbed in where there's an opening where the ceiling meets the roof. They took the following: our crappy plastic shelving that keeps on falling over, a hammer, a bucket, a can of tuna, and some chicken stock. What?? I kind of feel like they deserve that stuff because that must have been quite the feat to climb up that and get all the stuff out. But chicken stock? Hmm...

Happy Valentine’s Day! Valentine’s Day is alive and well here, in Mozambique. It’s called ‘Dia de Namorados’ and everyone is really concerned that I can’t be with my fake namorado today. (He’s so far away, you need someone here, too!) Becky and I are celebrating tonight with a Beer Pong party because we found ping pong balls randomly in a store. Our friend Molly is visiting, and we are going to teach our other Mozambican friend the wonders of this American tradition.

School is going pretty well, all things considered. We just have 18 classes a week, which is nice, in 6 different classes. The kids get excited about the tiniest experiments (ie, paper inside a cup doesn’t get wet when you plunge it into a bucket of water because air takes up space and is matter!), so that’s really fun to see. I don’t know if they’re learning much or able to understand me, but we’ll see next week because we have our first test already! That will be interesting. Considering we still haven’t ever taken attendance or have an official list of who is in what class.

I know a lot of people were concerned that I was just having way too much fun over here and doing nothing, but rest assured, all that has changed. School has started. Classes officially began on Monday. I spent the weekend before writing up my ‘apresentacao’ to introduce myself to the class and writing my overly strict rules for the classroom and being reeeally nervous about Monday. Becky and I showed up like an hour early for our afternoon classes. We get there, and all the teachers are just lounging around and students are just hanging out. I was told, ‘Maybe we’ll start Wednesday.’ There was a holiday, Hero’s Day, on Tuesday, so I guess no one felt like teaching on Monday. So! I got nervous all over again on Tuesday night, showed up Wednesday, and finally did introductions. I don’t want to be dramatic, but I kept having those moments where the voice in your head is like ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now, stop talking to yourself and focus on what you’re supposed to be doing!’ Since it was the first week, only about half the students showed up, which is a scary thought, because even with half a classroom, it was hard to get them to pay attention. I had a couple students correct my Portuguese (I need to get a tutor soooon to look over my lesson plans, that’s going to get old fast). During my second day of lessons, I shut the door because it was loud outside, and when I tried to open it at the end of class, it was locked. That’s right, some students locked the door from the outside and we couldn’t get out. This, the class found to be hilarious. After a few minutes of yelling, someone came and unlocked it and let us out. All in all, I am mentally exhausted from my 3 day week. I am really proud of myself for getting through my first few days without anything really horrible happening. I did not have an emotional breakdown in class, hit any students or faint. For me, this is a success. Next week: substances and mixtures; it’s going to be awesome.

Not a whole lot happening lately. Work technically started. It’s been a lot of waiting around for someone to tell us what to do. Supposedly all of the classes are going to get put together, teachers are going to have schedules, and we’re going to do trimester long planning all next week! Tal vez…
Becky and I went to visit Molly in Quissico last weekend. She’s just less than 2 hours south of us. She lives on the most beautiful lagoons I’ve ever seen. Actually I don’t think I’ve seen too many lagoons, so that’s not difficult, but it was amazing. Turquoise water that looks like glass surrounded by palm trees. We spent a good couple hours just floating. I’m getting all my traveling out of my system. Gearing up for classes to start where I’ll actually have to work! Xi!

Ok, so I don’t feel like I’ve been doing that great of a job really talking about what life is like here. To improve on this, I think I’m going to start with a few topics that have been very important in my life lately: Food and Chapas.

FOOD:
So much better since leaving our host families! Becky and I do most of our shopping in our local market, where there are a bunch of stands where people are selling what they grow in their machambas. Most people here have a field where they grow a few things. At the market, you have your basics- there’s always tomatoes, onions, rice, cassava leaves, beans, oil and bread. Depending on what’s in season, there’s also fruit. Mango season is on its way out (SO SAD), but there have been more pineapples lately, and I’m told nectarines are coming. And there’s always bananas. So good. So if we want any variety of vegetables or spices or anything, we go to Maxixe, which is about a 10 minute chapa ride away. They have a huge outdoor market where you can buy pepper, cucumber, sometimes lettuce, cabbage, oranges, papaya, and lots of other stuff. We also planted a little machamba in our yard. The cucumber, zucchini, green beans, and cantaloupe have all sprouted. If my zucchini grows, I am going to buy an oven purely for the purpose of baking chocolate zucchini bread!

Becky and I have been having so much fun cooking. We were given this great cookbook entitled ‘You Can Make It in Mozambique!’ We made a lot of really good stuff lately. Highlights include: spicy curry cabbage over rice, homemade tortillas with spicy beans and rice, and split pea veggie mush with cous cous (a rare find in the South African store!) Everything is spicy, because they have this amazing piri-piri pepper that we use in all of our cooking. Can be dangerously spicy, you have to be careful how much you add.

We went to go visit friends in Inhassoro last weekend, and it was the best food weekend ever. Sara had found dried seaweed, so we made sushi (which inspired me to buy some seaweed, which cost the equivalent of what I’m supposed to spend on food for 4 days). We also made fruit crepes, quesadillas (cheese is so hard to come by here!), and sweet potato gnoki with tomato mango sauce. Ha, oh yeah, and one night when we went to the beach for dinner, I had my first seafood with the head on where I wasn’t grossed out at all! It was a huge ‘pedro’ fish and some fried squid that was really good! I think that’s about it on food. Really good and we have too much time on our hands to cook since school hasn’t started yet. I’m sure it’ll be rice and beans every night when things pick up!

CHAPAS:

Oooooh, public transportation in Mozambique. Always an experience. So I am just going to describe yesterdays chapa adventure coming back from Inhasorro. Just for reference, the trip there took 6 hours, and was relatively uneventful. We are at the chapa stop at 8 am, ready to leave. Chapas are the main form of public transportation here; they look like really large vans. There are 4 rows of ‘seats’ plus the front. They fit 4 people in each row where 3 would comfortably fit. The whole chapa could comfortably fit 18 people, but chapa drivers don’t like to leave unless there’s at least like 23 people shoved in there. So we’re at the chapa stop. And there’s maybe 10 people waiting around, so it’s obvious we’re not leaving for a while until more people show up. About an hour later, there are about 18 people, so we start to load up in the first chapa. I manage to get one of the prized front row seats, where your knees are not like squished up against your chest, so I’m feeling pretty good about this chapa ride. Then we all wait in the chapa for another 30 mins, while they try to cram more people in. And it’s like 100 degrees out. After the seats are filled, then people start standing, hunched over, wherever there’s a little space. So then the driver starts the chapa, and it won’t start. There’s a lot of smoke and it sounds like the engine might start, but not quite. No one seems concerned. The driver yells for some guys to help push. So 3 guys are pushing, we get out on the road, and then it starts (woo!). We’re putting along for a couple hundred feet, and it dies again. At this point, I’m like this chapa is not going to make it to our transfer spot. So Becky and I get off, despite the motorist insisting that nothing is wrong. We go back to the stop, get in another chapa, with a more unfortunate seat, and an hour later, we are on the road again! About 30 mins into the trip, we pass our first chapa, which is still on the side of the road, and most of the passengers on that chapa pile into this one. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s wearing a trucker hat that says “Sex is a misdemeanor. Da more I miss, de meaner I get.” He was a really nice guy! So this chapa was functioning a lot better, but stopped like every 5 mins to let people off, or pick more people up, or sometimes the driver just wanted to talk to some friends along the side of the road. We made it to our transfer, waited for a new chapa to take us home for another 2 hours, and then were on the road again. We made so many unnecessary stops! Any time anyone needs to pee, they make the announcement, and we have to pull over, while they go in the bush. I am terrified of the moment I have to ‘fazer xi-xi’ while on a chapa. It’s way easier for guys to do that, plus if the white girl needed to go pee, I’m sure everyone would be watching and talking about it. I’m sure in 2 years, it’ll happen. On the second leg of the trip, I was seated next to a couple chickens and like 3 babies that kept getting passed around, depending where there was a tiny bit of space. We got home finally at 7 pm, almost 11 hours later. So that’s that chapa trip. Every time, different adventure. I have a friend who swears she was bitten on her heal by a goat that was shoved under a seat.

I found a place with real coffee and wireless internet! Kind of crazy! I'm doing great at my site, but it's been raining a lot lately. Usually when it rains it rains hard all day, so it makes it difficult to do stuff. We did make a garden the other day and attempted to plant a bunch of vegetables. After we finished, the neighbor boy came by and was telling us we did it all wrong, and proceeded to rake through the garden and put leaves on top. I don't know anything about gardening, could be right. We'll see! I planted some flowers around the house too. I hope stuff grows! Otherwise I've just been reading a lot. I read "Water for Elephants," which was really good, on the Elizabeth White (Is it a 5 star system?), I'd give it a 4 stars. Then I just finished "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun," which was a sort of depressing memoir of Zimbabwe, which gets 3 stars. I have my new address! Send stuff to:
Irma Stephanie Goettl
C.P. 31
Maxixe
Inhmambane
Mozambique

If you write me a letter, I promise you'll get one back! Hope everyone had a great New Year! Oh yeah! We went to two New Years parties and oh man, Mozambicans love to dance! And really enthusiastically. I think we're going to be known as the white girls who don't like to dance. I tried at one party to dance, and this guy says in English, "Oooh, you dance so well!" (lies) "It pleases me so much that you try to dance!" It was hilarious. You will all be so impressed with my dance skills when I get back.

Blog 12/21
Happy first day of winter everyone! It’s another 100 degree day here in Mozambique. I’m trying to imagine what it’d be like to be cold right now, and I just can’t picture it. I’m dripping sweat all the time here, so gross.
So Becky and I moved into our new house! It is great! I’ll try to describe it. So you walk into the main living room area, it’s a pretty good sized room. When we got here, there was a dining room table and 4 chairs and a gas tank and a stove. And two boxes of science fiction books, generously gifted by a previous volunteer, so I’m pretty much set on reading material for the next few years. Then on both sides of the living room are doors to bed rooms. There were already beds and mattresses when we got here, which was awesome. In my room I’ve crafted a nail and rope clothesline/closet and turned my moving boxes into bedside tables covered with some beautiful capulanas. Maybe someday when I’m feeling especially handy I’ll try to make some bookshelves or something. So then outside of the house, there’s a little reed hut thing that will eventually be our kitchen once we get a table made for it. A little ways away from the house is a cement casa de banho with (get this) a working shower and flushing toilet! So that’s our house! I love it. We’ve been making lots of trips into town to buy stuff the last few days, but I think we’re pretty set now.
We visited the school a few times this week and met some of the other teachers. They all seem pretty nice. It’s exhausting trying to not screw up the Portuguese too bad and always speak really formally when I’m meeting new people. Becky and I were introduced to everyone at a teacher’s meeting, and the only question someone asked was if we were single. Awkward. So I made the announcement: “Ja temos homens” and everyone started hooting and hollering. Ha, should be a fun group to work with! We’re headed to Tofo beach for Christmas with a couple other volunteers. Merry Christmas!!!