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!!!!!!!!!