The Mural

Last weekend we painted a mural on a blank wall outside the Peace Corps office.  It was so exciting to watch the wall gradually become more and more colorful.  It turned out beautifully!  The project was a collaboration between a current volunteer, Colleen, her Mozambican counterpart, Sam, and a trainee from our group, Tania. Sam designed all the images by hand and Tania, came up with the overall design.  The three of them worked incredibly hard to get the mural done in just over 2 days.  The rest of us came for two hours at a time, but they were there the entire weekend.  It is thanks to them that we now have such a beautiful memento of our training class that will be there for future classes to enjoy.

Getting there...

My biggest contribution was painting the blue skirt of the woman with the hoe.

The final product!

Presents from home

Last week a package arrived from Alaska with presents for my host family.  Thank you so much to my mom for putting together the package and sending it off! The box included T-shirts for my cousin and dad, slippers for my grandma, a photo printed out and framed for my cousin and mom, a scarf for my mom, and toy cars and ponies for Pai and Laiza.  They all loved the presents and immediately put on the T-shirts.  It was the happiest I've seen my host dad since I've been here.  He was helping my brother open the package of toy cars and then got up and started putting them on display in the china cabinet.  He said, "they look so nice here. Now you can enjoy them until you are 20 years old." My host brother looked very sad and Laiza said, but when he is 20 years old he won't want to play with them.  We all laughed and my host dad took two of the cars out so Pai could play with them.  The next day, all the cars were out of the case and Pai was playing with them all.

I only have a couple more days of living with my host family.  While I'm excited to live in my own place soon and have more independence, I'm definitely going to miss my host family.  It is a very special experience to live with a family for 10 weeks and I will never forget them.  I hope I can come back to visit them at least once before I am done with Peace Corps.

Anchorage t-shirts!

Mae Gloria and Vo-vo Gloria.  Mom and daughter in law have the same name...what are the chances?

My cousin showing off his T-shirt and photo.

Laiza, Pai, and visiting aunt.

Sunrise Hike

A few weeks ago I was crazy enough to agree to go on a sunrise hike to the three borders.  We left at 3:30 am in order to get to the top by sunrise.  We were a little late so we ended up running part of it, but we made it to the top for the sunrise.  I was completely exhausted the rest of the day, but it was definitely worth it.  I'd say it was one of the best things I've done in Mozambique so far.

Lauren, Caitlin, Nick and me

The rest of the crew: Joe, Tania, Emma, Sarah, Brian, Fei, Sam, and Justin

Butter and Rice

Last night I put butter on my rice and my host siblings Pai and Laiza looked at me in confusion and astonishment.  "Is that good?" they asked, their eyes wide.  "Yes, it's very good," I responded.  They continued to stare.  "Mom, she put butter on her rice!" they exclaimed to Mae Gloria when she came into the room.  "Yes, they do that sometimes," she said. "Do you want to try it?" I asked.  They did.  They got up to get the butter out of the fridge and proceeded to add it to their rice.  I said, "it's just like putting butter on bread, pretty much the same thing."  So then Laiza goes to the fridge and gets out the peanut butter.  I laughed.  "No, we don't put peanut butter on rice."  She put the peanut butter back in the fridge.  As they ate their butter and rice I thought to myself, I shouldn't have laughed at Laiza.  Putting butter on rice is probably just as weird an idea to her as putting peanut butter on rice is to me.  Pai and Laiza were willing to try the craziness of butter and rice.  Next time, maybe I'll try the peanut butter and rice.

The Bata

In Mozambique it is traditional for teachers to wear a "bata" while they teach.  A bata looks very much like a white lab coat (see below).  You might ask, isn't it hard to keep a white coat clean in Mozambique? The answer is yes.  When wearing a bata you must be very careful not to touch anything or you will inevitably get it dirty and have to wash it.  Also, don't get it wrinkled or you will have to iron it.  I like the bata because I think the students and other teachers respect me more when I am wearing one, but I predict trying to keep my bata clean and wrinkle-free will be a struggle for the next two years.  Such is life as teacher in Mozambique.

 Deej, Maria, and me in our batas and ready to teach.

Brian giving a math lesson about negative numbers.

Escola Modelo

This week is a big week. It is when we finally get to try out our teaching skills on real students. Since school isn't currently in session, Peace Corps organized a model school for students and community members interested in taking extra lessons in math, physics, chemistry, biology, and English.  There are three grades of classes offered: 8th, 9th, and 10th. During this model school I will teach four 45 minute lessons in Portuguese about basic organic chemistry.  For some reason, the entire 10th grade chemistry curriculum is organic chemistry. It seems a bit complex for high school because I didn't have organic chemistry until college, but we are starting with the basics and going from there.  I had my first class on Tuesday and I was definitely very nervous, but it actually went really well.  One down, three to go.  This week is a great opportunity to gain confidence in teaching and classroom management.  We also get to observe other volunteer's lessons in order to get ideas and give feedback.

Secondary school in Mozambique operates differently than high schools in the states.  Instead of the teacher staying in one room and the students changing classrooms throughout the day, the students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers move around to their various classes throughout the day. This means that the students have all their classes with the same group of students.  These groups of students are called "turmas." The turma I am teaching for model school is a group of about 15 students ages 14-16.  It's nice to be able to start teaching with a small class size since my turmas in Zobue will be about 55-60 students.

Teaching in the Peace Corps wasn't my first choice, but I'm actually really enjoying preparing lesson plans and giving lessons.  Doing it in Portuguese is an extra challenge that makes it even more interesting. I can't wait to get to site and start teaching!

Site Placement!

Yesterday was the big day.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a combination of nerves, excitement, anticipation, and anxiety.  Not when I went to college, not when I graduated from college, not when I found out I was going to Mozambique, not even when I left for Mozambique.  When we were about the get our placement envelopes I felt like I was either going to throw up or burst into tears.  But it’s over--now we know our site placements and can begin to prepare for what is next.  And good news, I’m so happy with my placement!  I’m sure it will have its challenges, but as of now I’m just excited to get there and begin to settle in.  Too bad we still have two weeks of training.  Hopefully December 7th will be here before I know it!

I will be teaching in the town of Zobue in the province of Tete.  The town is right on the border with Malawi and in the mountains (yay!). There is great hiking just outside our backdoor.  Sounds like the perfect site for me!

I'll be teaching 8th grade math and my roommate Emma will be teaching English.  The house is four bedrooms, complete with a fridge and reliable electricity.  We'll be replacing a married couple named Dan and Lisa Spencer.  As luck would have it, they happened to be the visiting volunteers this week so we got to meet them and talk to them in person about the site. Tonight they had us over for dinner and showed us pictures of the town, school, the house, and the people.  Lisa kept a great blog throughout their service so if you want to learn more about the town and see lots of great photos check it out:

http://lisajospencer.blogspot.com/

The town is right on the border with Malawi so we’ll be going there a lot for items you can't get in Zobue, like peanut butter. Apparently you can even get a PO Box there because it might be cheaper and more reliable than Mozambican mail. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Here is a map of where Zobue is:

If I am reading this map correctly, Zobue is located at about the 't' of Mt Namuli, right on the border of Malawi.