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.