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.’