Photo update!

Some of the kids in my "turma" after cooking at my house at the school anniversary party.
Some of the 11th grade students in my turma outside my house.
The participants in the fashion show modeling their traditional capulana wear.
More capulana wear during the fashion show.


A student strutting her stuff during the "uniform wear" section of our fashion show.

Two students performing a little theater act.
Two students reading poems that they wrote. (They were really good!)


Me and the other judges during the fashion show at my school.

The directors of the school and other teachers.

My introduction to school parties in mozambique

So like i said earlier, last wednesday was my schools 26th anniversary so there were no classes and instead we had a big party. The week before the teachers each had to contribute a bit of money and each of the classes were organizing food for themselves too. First of all, kids here have every class with the same group of their peers and the students all have one assigned classroom and the teachers rotate around. Each class has a teacher assigned to them who is responsible for the kids in that class(kind me like a homeroom teacher). That teacher is called the director de turma or dt. So i am the dt for a class of wild 11th graders and each week i have to meet with them and give announcements or talk to them about important issues concerning the school. However, the info that i have to give them is super vague to me like..."talk to them about the party, uniforms, the hymn, and saturday, ok go". So sometimes ill ask a teacher to explain things to me in more detail, but i also told my class that schools in the us work very differently and that they need to explain some things to me too. I actually have a couple of students who are up to that task and it helps me out immensely. Ok, now back to the party. I basically let my class plan stuff for the party themselves since i had no idea what was going on. Now, in the US when a class has a party one kid brings in cupcakes, another chips, another soda, etc etc. In mozambique the kids in all out. They brought in pots and pans, wood, charcoal, rice, chickens, a sack of potatoes, pasta, salad, and more. Each class basically camped out in a shady spot around the school and spent the entire morning cooking. It was super impressive. The drinking age here also means nothing and the school doesnt care so classes brought beer, homemade alcohols, and hard cider to school to drink with their meal. Mozambicans also LOVE to dance so kids brought in big speakers and music blasted throughout the school all day. The students also had a little talent show which included singing, rapping, dancing, poetry readings, and a beauty pageant. It was so cool to see them all perform and they made me be one of the three judges for the beauty pageant(pictures to come) which was fun but also a lot of pressure because im not a huge fan of talking to huge groups of people and they made me announce the winners of the beauty pageant to the whole crowd. All in all it was a really fun day although i was forced to eat so much food! I really liked hanging out with the other teachers and the students in a more casual environment.

Things continue to roll along smoothly at my school in Chongoene. I came to the realization this week that I really feel comfortable and am much more integrated into the community. I came to this conclusion in the following way. When I first got to site and would walk around my village to cure some of my boredom, most people just gawked at me and didn't really talk to me. After a couple of weeks people started to greet me in the street, but without much recognition or extended conversation. Now, I am greeted with warm smiles, and "Bom dia senhora professora". People invite me to sit down with them for tea or a meal; they want to talk with me and teach me their local language; and I am greeted with waves and smiles of recognition because now everyone knows who I am. It's a really good feeling. This weekend I had to turn down invitations to hang out with people TWICE because I already had plans, that's a first.
On Thursday afternoons three of my 12th grade girls have started to come to my house while they wait a few hours for gym class to start. The first week we just chatted and they shared their lunch food with me. The second week I also made food for them, we painted our nails, and I showed them my American magazines which they lovedddd. It's a fun exchange of cultures and I hope they continue to come to hang out.
The onlyyyy tricky thing is that people are also comfortable with me so they invite themselves over to my house for meals. Since it's just me at home I don't eat the most lavish meals. I usually stick to a banana or pineapple at breakfast (or oatmeal if I have it), for lunch or dinner I'll make a little soup, maybe some rice or pasta or beans, but it's always very simple. Having guests at my house means I have to really cook! Now I try to stay on my game at all times and keep different food in the house to whip up in case I have an unexpected visitor!
I always get asked here if I am married or have a boyfriend and people are literally SHOCKED to hear that I am not. Then of course they ask why? (What's wrong with you?) Haha, and then we inevitably get into a long discussion about how they think I should really get a Mozambican boyfriend and then take him back to the US with me when I leave. I think people are surprised that I'm single also because people here think that I'm a lot older than I am, which is probably because my level of education is really high for my age (compared to people here). I've had three students or friends ask me how old I am in the last week and when I let them guess their guesses were 28, 28, and 30. Yikes!
Anyway, on Valentine's day yesterday, I received three flowers from students and some cookies so that was exciting. In my time here I've also had several students or men in my village come to my house and literally beg me to be their girlfriend, which is always an awkward situation, but I think I'm getting pretty good at turning them down.
Tomorrow there are no classes at the school because it is the anniversary of the school's opening so we just have a party all day! Apparently it starts with a big soccer game and then the students perform dances, music, theatre, and we have lots of food and alcohol. Sounds like it should be a good time. I heard some professors talking about having some of the students stay this afternoon after school to help prepare the alcohol(they make it themselves out of a certain fruit here) and kill and pluck the chickens. The school really holds the students responsible for taking care of their school. The kids have to sweep their classrooms out every morning and are often ordered to come to the school on Saturdays with their hoes and machetes to cut the grass and keep the school grounds looking nice.
The first week of school a student interrupted my class to make an announcement that went something like this, "The gym teacher would like you all to report to the soccer field tomorrow at 2:00 with your hoes." I really got a kick out of that. The first week of school instead of having gym class the kids had to hoe the field and cut the grass, rough.
The school wants me to start to teach computer technology classes soon which should be fun, except that they want me to follow the curriculum, which just isn't going to happen. We are starting with 12th grade. Some of these kids have barely any experience with computers and the 12th grade curriculum teaches Microsoft Access, databases, and programming languages....yeah, like that's going to happen.
The dog is still healthy, as am I. Time to do some errands and then get back to my school for a meeting this evening.

Video of my house!

To grandmother's house we go...

Last Thursday was a holiday so my school did not hold classes. I decided to take advantage of my 4 day weekend (I don't have classes on Fridays), and travel to visit some friends! I traveled about 2 hours south to visit my friend Mark at his school in Macia. In Macia he has a family there that he's close with and has meals with a couple times a week so he wanted me to meet them. The grandparents of this family live about an hour north of me in a town called Manjacaze and so the family invited Mark and I up to their grandparents house for the weekend, so we went!
On Friday morning we met the family on the main road and got on a mini-bus to go up to Xai-Xai. Apparently there is one open backed truck that leaves Xai-Xai once a day to go to the part of Manjacaze that we needed to go to so after finding the truck I went off with Mark's host mom, Graciette, to do some shopping! We bought lots of food and drinks to bring up to the house: a 25 kilo bag of rice, 10 kilos of potatoes, lots of soda, wine, bread, etc. Although we arrived in Xai-Xai at 9am, the truck wasn't leaving until noon so we had a while to hang out. Graciette also bought me a headband and a piece of cake as a present and held my hand the whole time we walked around the city. [Note: holding hands here in Mozambique is way more common in the US for everyone. Men hold hands all the time and it's not weird. If I'm walking somewhere with a colleague of mine, male or female, it's not uncommon to hold hands while walking.] Anyway, I knew right away that I was going to like this woman.
Graciette talked to the truck driver and arranged for a spot for me in the passenger's seat so I didnt have to ride in the back of the truck with everyone. I would have ridden in the back, but I never turn down a comfortable seat, especially when it prevents me from getting sunburned. Once we finally got going, a man handed me his baby to hold in the front seat while he rode in the back with his wife. The baby was so happy and so cute and I gladly would have taken care of it for the ride, but his wife squeezed into the front seat with me afterwards so she took the baby back.
We left Xai-Xai and after riding along the main road for a while turned off onto a dirt road. From there the road became smaller and smaller until it was basically a path and the truck just kept bushwacking its way through the jungle. We were really heading out into the middle of nowhere. We had to stop a couple of times because of trees or branches in the road and little kids either jumped out to clear the branches or the men in the truck got out with their machetes and cleared the way. Finally after about 2 hours of traveling we stopped in a clearing where there were a few houses and got out. We unpacked our things from the truck and got ready to head off to the grandmother's house. It was a lot of stuff and I thought to myself that we were each going to have to carry a lot, but of course Graciette pulls out her capulana, lays it on the ground, takes about 30 kilos worth of stuff and ties it up in a bundle to balance it on her head....no big deal...
The way the women here carry heavy loads on their head is unbelievable!
We walked about 20 minutes on a little path and finally reached the family's compound. The grandmother and grandfather greeted us and we promptly sat down for tea and lunch (rice and beans, yum!).
The property was amazing. They are really far out into the bush so they have no electricity and it's difficult to get into town to buy food and supplies, but it seems like they don't need it! The property had papaya trees, mango trees, cashew trees, coconut trees, lemon trees, sugar cane, pineapple plants, and so much more! And that's just the stuff that was on their property nearby! The grandmother took us to her machamba (crop fields) the next day and showed us all of her corn and sweet potato plants which are growing now. She also harvests peanuts and other foods at different times during the year. Anyway, it was amazing to me how self-sufficient this family was. The first day the family said that they would be killing a goat that weekend for all of us and brought us out to where they tie up the goats. There were two fully grown goats and the grandmother asked me to choose which one we should have for dinner, so I picked one (the meatier one I guess?) and she gave me it's rope to lead it back to the house.
We sat outside and hung out for the afternoon. I saw the goat killing (not as bad as the pig), and chatted with the family. I even got to help with dinner by peeling garlic cloves. Graciette then roasted some of the goat pieces on a stick over the fire and the grandmother cooked the rest of the goat in the kitchen hut. It was delicious!
The stars here in Mozambique are so cool and so bright, and since we were in an area far away from any electricity, the stars out there that night were SO beautiful and bright! I didn't go to bed until 11:30 and was very tired from all the traveling, but it was a great day. The next day we got to see the machamba and basically got our own nature tour of the area. We passed many many trees with fruit on it that Graciette picked for us and that we got to taste. We had massala and maracuja (passion fruit!) which was delicious, and then maybe 5 other fruits that don't even have names in English because they probably only exist in tropical areas. It was really cool to be so far away from civilization and to see how this family lived.
Mark and I left around noon, and the family was staying one more day, but one of the uncles and his family was heading out so they showed us where to go. We had to leave a different way from where we came in because we had to get to a busier road where we could hitchhike or find a chapa. We hiked for an hour and a half! Finally we arrived at a "main road", which was still a dirt road. Luckily, we only had to wait about 15 minutes until a pick-up truck passed and let us ride in the back. We rode on the truck for about 10 minutes until they decided that they wanted to buy some wood and kicked us out and sent us to get into a chapa that had come along.
The trip home was less eventful, but it was an awesome weekend and hopefully they'll have me back again sometime soon :)