Francelino got into a teacher training institute. It is a year long program that prepares students to be teachers in primary or secondary schools up to the 10th grade level. He is in the English Teacher's program so he is being trained to be an English teacher here in Mozambique. The location where he took the entrance exams and interviews is only about 20 minutes from Chongoene, but once you are accepted to the program they can send you anywhere! They sent him to a school in Homoine, Inhambane which is about a 6-7 hour trip from here. It was exciting news to hear that he had gotten into school because higher education here is unattainable for most people, but it was sad that he was headed so far away! He lives at the school with all of the other students and I'll be heading up to visit him for the first time on Friday!
It was difficult at first to re-adjust to being all on my own again. I had gotten so used to always having someone around to talk to and to be with, and now he's gone! I still spend a lot of time with his family and his little brothers and sisters are fun to play with around the house. I try to keep myself busy with lesson planning and other activities in my town.
I got my flu shot yesterday Peace Corps style! They pulled up in a car in front of my school, I hopped in the car, got the shot, hopped out, and they were off! It was so convenient that they came through my area instead of me having to make the trip to the capital to get a shot!
I sometimes show movies to Francelino's little brothers and sisters on my computer in the afternoons. They get stuck on one movie for a while and eventually move onto the next one. The first movie that they loved was UP. Every day they would ask me in Portuguese, "Can we watch the movie with the balloons?". They catch onto the dialogue in movies pretty quickly too. Their most recent favorite film is The Sound of Music. They have been yodeling around the house and yelling Lieutenant! at each other which is pretty entertaining. I think they like it because of the songs.
We are almost through our first trimester of the school year. End of trimester exams start on Thursday and continue into next week. We will have a week off in April, and since we have no Peace Corps conferences, I have a free week where I haven't even decided what I'll do with it yet.
I frequently stay after school with my theater group and let them ask me questions about the United States. The kids in the group are between 16 and 21 years old and love hearing about airplanes, the food we eat, schools, universities, driving a car, and other things that they can only dream about here. Sometimes I wish I could just take them all back with me!
The second year of service is definitely tougher than the first. I can see a lot of the same problems at my school as we had last year, and although I spoke up and tried to present a solution last year, I can see that no change was made to try to resolve said problems. The thing you have to do as a volunteer is take one day at a time and know that you can't change everything!
