I’m officially a volunteer! And not a moment too soon; I’m so ready to be done with training. We had a ceremony thing at the ambassador’s house in Maputo this week where there were lots of speeches about the importance of community integration and cross cultural interactions, yada yada… Then we ate some delicious appetizers and went along our way to more important sessions about demining and cyclones.

It’s my last day in Namaacha and very bittersweet. It’s really hard to say goodbye to people that I won’t see for another year or so. The last few days have been really fun and I’ve spent a lot of time with my family. I gave them some presents today, and I have to say, I think the snap bracelets were the biggest hit. I also gave them a collage of pictures. Scrapbooking people would be horrified, it was constructed out of flip chart paper and duct tape. So now I will forever be prominently featured in my homestay family’s house.
We’re driving to our site tomorrow with a few of the other people going to the Inhanbane province. I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I think we’ll have to go out and buy a lot of the stuff for our house the first couple days. I know there are bed frames, a table, and a couple chairs. So we have a little furnishing and decorating to do! We will be at site for about a week and then we’re heading to the beach for Christmas with a few friends.

I hope everyone’s holiday season is going well and is not too stressful! Erin sent me a text saying she was drinking a peppermint mocha the other day. That made me really miss Christmas! It really doesn’t feel like Christmas here because it’s like 100 degrees out every day, I have yet to see a Christmas commercial on TV, and I have not heard any Christmas music. I’m sure Delilah is taking some amazing and heartwarming holiday requests this year! On the plus side, this is definitely the least stressful Christmas I’ve ever had! We’re doing a secret santa within my province and that’s the only gift I’m buying! Kind of a nice change. I expect lots of phone calls around Christmas!! Let me know if you need my number!

It´s been a while since I´ve writen. It has been super busy here the past few weeks! We´ve started model school, which is where we practice teaching full 45 minute lessons to a classroom full of students. It´s definitely been an interesting learning experience! The first day I was so nervous and self conscious about my portuguese that I pretty much just read off of my lesson plan, word for word. Since the first day, I´ve gotten much more comfortable. The students that show up to model school in my class are really well behaved and excited about organic chemistry (imagine that!). It seems really bizzare though to be teaching regras de Markovnikov to 16 year olds. It will be much different teaching to a class of 60 when most of the students don´t want to be there, but this has been good practice.

We had site announcements and a fake Thanksgiving last week! I could not be more excited about my placement. I will be moving to a small village just outside of Inhanbane. It´s about a 6 hour drive north of where I am now and right on the coast. I´ll be living with a bio teacher from my training group, and I think we´ll get along really well! We´ve been told our house has electricity and a water faucet outside, so pretty fancy for Africa! I´m pretty sure this is the only time in my live I´ll be living within a 15 min walk of a beach, so I am so excited! I´ll be teaching chemistry in a secondary school, but I´m not sure yet which grade. I can´t wait to get to site and meet neighbors and teachers and everything! If anyone needs a tropical beach vacation, please come visit! The Professionals go to Mozambique? Kurt, will you please get on that?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I was definitely missing family and friends. 1 week left of training! I will post my new address when I get it in a week or two. Thanks everyone for the mail! Sorry, I just realized that there are like 20 exclamation points in this post. Excessive.