I have realized why I hate school now and why I don't want to teach

anymore when I get back to the States. Teaching here has me realized

that I am a horrible teacher! And that may have something to do with

my interpersonal skills or the differences in the educational system,

but a lot of it also has to do with me being so tired of these

students! Ahhhh!I hate that I cannot be fair when I am grading because I constantly

doubt my ability to discern when a student is cheating or not. When

they're doing their homework, I would love to give praise to the

students who did a good job, but then I'll continue grading and BAM!

There goes another paper with the exact same shit written on it, and

all my excitement is gone. That's what it's like….I'm in constant

doubt that they're cheating, even the good students. They'd let their

friends cheat off of them. So when I know they're copying, I'm taking

off more points than I should to compensate for the fact that they're

cheating and I can't prove it. It's not a good feeling to have to do

that, ya' know.I hate that they make me feel like such a BITCH ALL the TIME!!!

They're so disrespectful to me during class. I know they hate me

because I fail them. I do feel bad about that, but I have these

expectations that I don't want to lower for them. It includes all the

values a young person ought to have entering the working world, which

is what they're about to embark upon: no cheating, ask for help, being

punctual, study hard at home. I don't know what they're doing but

they're definitely not studying as much as they should be, and how can

you succeed at anything in life if you don't work hard for it? I make

them stand during class if they're late to teach them punctuality. I

give them zeroes when they cheat to encourage them not do it. I vary

the tests so they don't copy but I also give them pretty good reviews

to encourage them to study, but they just don't care. They hate me

because I don't listen to them and make allowances for them where

their other teachers do it, but it just doesn't feel right to me.Sometimes, I doubt if I've ever been a good teacher. Maybe I just

don't care enough about the students, and that's why they feel that

animosity towards me. Honestly, these days, I don't care if they pass

or not. While teaching, I don't even try to get through all the lesson

because they make me reach my limit sometimes with their laughing and

being disrespectful. I would have never treated my teachers like this

in high school. Sometimes, I grade a kid that I know to be a bad kid

harder or I kick him out much quicker just because I realllllly don't

like him. Now is that right to you? Where are my morals? I feel like

that moral base on which I stand is fracturing and breaking down and I

can't tell if what I am doing is right or wrong anymore. I doubt

myself all the time because I know that I am a foreigner. I have no

idea how they were raised or what their situations are like outside of

school. Sometimes I feel like I should give them the allowances and

just let them pass, but then I would second guess myself because I

know that being a Peace Corps volunteer, I'm supposed to be changing

the way things are done, not succumbing to them. Ugh!! It's too

frustrating right now!The director of the school brought me in to lecture me about the

failing rate of my students the other day. He has never come to watch

any of my lessons. He has never once talked to me about how my

teaching is going, but yet he has the nerve to tell me that I must be

doing something wrong if so many students are failing. When I asked

him what I needed to do to better the situation, he couldn't give me a

straight answer. I am frustrated because if he could give me any

legitimate advice, I would have taken it. But I know he doesn't care

about whether the students learn or not. All he cares about is that it

doesn't show on the report. And I am so close to just giving in to

the corruption and passing everyone just to not deal with this. That

would make all of them happy and off my back….sighz. Maybe I am not a

good teacher. A good one would have tried harder. A good one would

have thought of a different way to handle things. Not me. 12th grade

English, you are the death of me – atleast the part of me that ever

wanted to be a teacher, anyway.

Wow…. I feel so proud of myself today. I'd planned an HIV/AIDS student

workshop for 43 people with 2 Mozambicans and it didn't fall to

pieces! It took me 2 weeks to plan, hours of typing, making copies,

budgeting, phone calls, but it was so worth it when we ended the

conference today, and I felt like the students actually learned

something from it. I actually felt the satisfaction that every

volunteer longs to feel, the satisfaction that you are doing something

worthwhile with your time here, and that deep down, a part of you did

join Peace Corps to help others. Did I had times where I just wanted

to wring their necks out and slap them all? Sure! There is no sense of

schedule or time here. Were there times when I'd felt like this was

pointless? Definitely! In the beginning, I was so frustrated when

things didn't go as planned, just as anyone would when they've put so

much work into planning something and just want it to go well. I had

to remind myself so many times to take deep breaths and that I

wouldn't have to deal with this way of living for much longer, but

when I finally let go and just admit that things are never going to go

as you planned here, no matter how well you planned, it went so much

better than I thought! The students had fun and learned something. I

had fun, as well. I don't know really want to go into too much

details, but I'm just so ecstatic to I have accomplished such a task.On another topic, I wrote earlier that I didn't have to live in these

conditions anymore. It means that I'm going to finish my service soon,

6 months! It did fly pretty quick, but as of this moment, I'm so

excited to go home. I haven't seen any of my family or friends for 20

months, and even though I've made new friends here, I really miss

everyone from home, as well. I miss all the food from back home….oh,

the food. Even in my dreams, I think about hot wings and pho and

sushi. What I wouldn't give for some McDonald's… Though I am preparing

to go home, I also have this nagging feeling, maybe fear, maybe

anxiety (I don't know, can't quite tell yet). It's very similar to the

feeling I had before I came, maybe it's a fear of the unknown. I don't

really know what America's like anymore, haven't kept up with the

news, the music, or the culture. And even though I miss everyone, how

do I know that the ones that I've missed are still the same people

that I've missed, ya know what I mean? People change, and I'm going to

have to rebuild all that up again. Guess that's kind of exciting, too,

cause you know, I'm kind of over this experience. It was really good,

and it will continue to be good until I finish, but the excitement is

all gone. I'm ready for something new. Can't wait to get home!

December 2, 2010Damn... Sorry I haven't updated for a while. I wonder if anyone still

follows this blog besides my really close buddies.... Well, better to jot

down some thoughts anyway.So, I finished a whole year in Mozambique in October, and I meant to write

then, but for some reason, I just kept finding that I could not sit down and

really reflect on my experience. Classes ended in October, so I did have

some time, but I just couldn't really focus and think about what this last

year has meant for me. And now, 2 months later, I still am having a hard

time reflecting, but I'm forcing myself to update anyway since I won't have

a chance to update for another month, and at that time, I'll be blogging

about the amazing trip that I'm about to go on (but more about that next

time).How do I feel now? First of all, I feel like I did accomplish goal 1 of

Peace Corps, which is to provide Mozambique with skilled men and women who

will fill the needs of the country. I think I did a fine, albeit not

wonderful, job of teaching English to my 8th graders. Considering they

didn't even know what a verb, noun, or adjective is in Portuguese when we

first started the year and now after I've made them conjugate over 50 verbs,

they know all the pronouns by heart. So I guess that's atleast a small

accomplishment. I think they possess the basic foundation to build the rest

of their English language, should they choose to pursue that course.With

other aspects of the Peace Corps goals, though, I don't think I did a very

good job. Goals 2 & 3 of Peace Corps involves integrating with the community

and exchanging American culture with Mozambican culture. Being an

Asian-American, I would have been especially good at and should have shared

with the Mozambicans the cultural diversity of America, but I don't think I

did that very well. Integration is still a slight problem for me. I wouldn't

say that my language skills are all that awful; I mean, I can communicate

basic needs and thoughts and feelings, but I lack the necessary vocabulary

to really build conversations with others, you know, the kind of

coversations that involve politics, religion, culture and other aspects of

life that cause people to laugh, cry, or want to fight you, the emotions

involving "deep" conversations. Yes, my friends, I can't have conversations

with people here, and it saddens me in an inexplicable way. It's not like I

have no friends because I do, and it's not that I NEVER have these types of

conversations, but it happens a lot less often than I would like , and it's

something from the States that I really miss, as well. On that note, I guess

1 out of 3 is not bad, and there's always next year to work on the other 2

goals.What I really want to talk about this entry, is this feeling of

non-accomplishment I'm beginning to feel as of late.December 12, 2010

Shit... So, I never get to finish writing these blog entries cause

they take forever to write, and I'm always on the fucking road and

paying for internet by the minute. For example, I've only got 10

minutes now to write a bit more and am going to end up saving this

entry to finish at a later date. Frustrating!But that also means that I'm traveling a lot. It's only been 10 days

since I last wrote, but I've already gone to Swaziland and Tanzania

and am currently in South AFrica. That's 3 countries in 10 days...

Unbelievable... Anyway, more update on that later. Now, back to the

reflection of 1 year.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------So, like I said, I had gotten this feeling of unaccomplishment. One of

the main reasons I wanted to do Peace Corps, other than for the

challenge of it, was to find out more about who I am and who I want to

be. I guess at this age, you should already have a firm grasp of the

kind of person you are and where you want to go in life, in addition

to what you want from life. You would think that the Peace Corps

experience, a life with no distractions, you'd have more time to think

about your life and make choices. Wrong!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------January 6, 2011Man, I am not good at keeping this blog updated. I had typed up the

above a month ago, and had intended to finish it, but things kept

coming up, and now, I've lost what I was going to say. I had a very

good reflection for my one- year, too. Oh well.I am not going to write in detail about my trip this time. Apparently,

I "write essays", and I wouldn't want to bored everyone with details

about traveling, since it's probably not that interesting unless you

plan on going to the same place. However, I will say that the more

traveling I do, the more everything begins to look the same. Beaches

are beaches. Mountains are mountains. There is beauty in every place,

but I got tired of experiencing the same things and feeling the same

feelings, so my conclusion is that in the end, what I take away most

from my travels is the time I spend with the people I travel with: the

laughter, the bonding, and the trying out of new things together. So,

if I look at it from that perspective, I've gained so much from my

travels this time, even though I spent all of my savings.So… what am I up to these days? Well, after over a month of not being

at site, I've returned home… to being robbed, once again. Isn't that

just my luck?! And I tried so hard this time to avoid it, too! I had someone I trusted watch over my house, even paid the kid. It's

too bad he didn't have enough sense to stay here and watch it the

entire time (left the keys with the neighbors for a weekend when he

went home for xmas) and had someone else stay over at our house with

him. I don't think he would rob me, but I do think his friend or one

of the neighbor's kids probably came in and took my external hard

drive, flashdrive, books, and some other small things. Why,

Mozambique, why? It's this kind of bullshit that makes me not want to

stay here, anymore. Anyway, I'm getting over it. (Sorry, Jenny, that I

lost your gift to me.) The material thing is not the thing that

bothers me so much, it's more of the broken trust that I'm pissed at.

Once again, I thought I could trust someone, and once again, I get

fooled. You know how I hate being made a fool of… There's also that

feeling of helplessness. Like, what am I supposed to do now? Who is

telling me the truth and who is lying? In a foreign country by myself

where I don't know the law or the people, what can I do?Well, can't really do anything, I guess. Just gotta take deep breaths.

I find that it really helps. When I was returning from Tanzania to

South Africa, I almost got denied entry because I didn't have my

Yellow Fever card with me, to show that I've had my shots. I told them

Peace Corps had it, but no one knew what the Peace Corps was that

worked at the airport, and I felt so frustrated because I kept having

to repeat my story and they kept repeating to me what they knew, but

we were getting no where. They wanted to deport me! On top of that, no

one knew anything, so they kept walking me around talking to different

departments and people, and I was getting so frustrated. Well, I took

deep breaths and stayed calm, and it all eventually worked out in the

end. I never really believed that until I joined Peace Corps, but man,

that shit works. Gotta do more of that!

These days are pretty laid back, and I've been getting a lot of more

time on my hands, which I don't know is a good thing or bad. I guess

now would be a good time to reflect on my experience, but I find

myself thinking more about my future and worrying about what I am

going to do once I get home. It's so surreal that I'm about to

complete my second year of service. I was riding my bike through the

streets the other day, and I realize how different I feel this year

compared to last about the beginning of classes. I have a much better

idea of the way things work now, what I am supposed to do, the way the

culture is; even my Portuguese is better. I've actually got friends at

site, now. Last year at this time, I was by myself a lot and now, I've

got people to spend time with and talk to. It's so much better. Oh, I

totally forgot to write that my ex-roommate, Vanessa, will not be

getting replaced by another volunteer, which means…. Yes, I'm at site

by myself this year! How interesting it's gonna be….Get ready 2011…. ***cracks knuckles**** It's time to get down to some

business! I want to get one project accomplished for my community

before I leave, set goals for and restructure all the student clubs to

make sure they're sustainable, and achieve my New Year's resolution of

running more. Hope everyone had a good New Years! Let's get shit

accomplished this year! (And also avoid being robbed…haha)

So... I posted this on facebook, but I'm going to try as many ways as I can to put forth a project developed by a friend of mine in Peace Corps Mozambique because I believe in it with all my heart. Basically, he's trying to raise money to improve an orphanage in his town. The orphanage already exists, as much as an orphanage can exist in this developing country, a 2-room building taking care of 65 children, ranging from ages of pre-school to middle school students, with the support of 2 or 3 staff. I've been there. I've seen it, and what I took away from it was how is this possible?! How can they teach kids and support all those children with so many different levels in such a small space with just THREE people? Anyway, although the school has sufficient funding to support the children during the day, at night, they all have to return to their relatives' homes or friends of family's homes because there is just no space for them to stay over night. Essentially, the orphanage exists as a day-care, and after hours, the children are let loose to whatever conditions they have at home, malnutrition, abuse, etc. My friend's project will help raise money to add a side building to the currently existing orphanage so that children with desperate conditions can overnight at the orphanage. I don't want to make this note too long, so just go to this website for more info: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Please-Help-Us-Build-A-House-of-Hope-in-Mozambique/164790806896273?ref=ts.   If you want to support, go to    https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=640-022   I know that there are lots of projects out there, and when you donate, you don't really know where your money is going to, but please believe me when I say that this project is going to directly help the children of this town. Knowing me... well, hopefully you know me if you're reading this note, would I support a nonsense project? I mean, come onnnnnnnn.... j/k. Also, please help to spread the word if you can. Thanks!

This entry is dedicated to all those who feel oppressed by those

around them, helpless to do anything about it, and hopeless to the

entire situation. I wish it was one of those stories where the ending

was a happy one, but it's not.Once upon a time, there was a boy like any other boy in the town of

Buzi. He comes from a poor family, where it is a necessity for his

mother to work in another country and had to leave him to live with

his aunt in a very rural town. This little boy grew up not thinking

anything of his future, only of his present life, what he needed to do

in order to survive the here and now. He had friends, but most of his

friends possessed the same mentality as he did. They knew of what

existed in their little town and their rural way of life. When this

boy was 14 or 15, he got a girlfriend, who he liked very much. One

day, the girlfriend came and told him that her teacher was going to

fail her in school if she didn't sleep with him, and asked the boy to

help her. The boy became very angry and began to plot ways of getting

even with the teacher. His young mind then decided to go find said

teacher, and this is what he told him."You better pass my girlfriend, or I will hide and wait for you on

this very road. I will have my machete with me, and when you least

expect it, I will jump out and kill you." He even went to the school

director and told him this.Now, the rest of this story is not important, only that he did not end

up killing this teacher. The most important thing to understand is

that this boy took justice into his own hands. What could have

possibly possessed him to do such a thing?Let's flash forward a little to when the boy turns 19 or 20. All this

time, he's been attending school, but just performing mediocre. He

does what all other teenage boys do in their little town: go to

school, help out their family a little in the fields, and drink. They

sit around and wait for opportunity to come to them, not ever thinking

that maybe they should get off their lazy asses and go find the

opportunity, all the while complaining that life is hard. Why should

they try harder and what can they do when everything is corrupted,

from the president of the country to the little director of their

school?One day, 2 foreigners arrived in this rural town. One was to teach

English and the other Biology at this boy's high school. Ofcourse, the

boy was still attending high school since he had never had the

motivation to graduate. The boy was curious about these foreigners and

why they were there, so he began to talk to them. The more he talked

to them, the more he liked them and wanted to spend more time with

them. These foreigners taught him about the world outside of his small

little town. In addition to helping him with his English and Biology,

they introduced him to a world where hard work does eventually pay

off. He began to see that things do not necessarily have to stay the

way they are, and that change was possible, and change had to begin

with him.This boy began to study harder, work harder, and spent all his time

practicing English with his new friends. The foreigners, in exchange,

were eager to help. Soon enough, the boy grew into a man, and the man

graduated, and looked for work outside of his small, rural town.

Although it took some time, he eventually found work and got accepted

into a university in an education program. His English is almost

flawless now, and he has found a way to make money translating

documents using his English knowledge. He was very busy, but he

remembered his small upbringing and tried to help his community as

much as he could. However, others misconstrued this kindness as his

way of showing off his success. Though they went to ask him for money,

his neighbors often comment on how he's so successful at such a young

age. Because the culture is so used to corruption, these people think

that the means of his success is based on something corrupt. They did

not believe that he'd earned all this from hard work and honesty. How

could they think otherwise when they themselves have experienced being

turned down from jobs only to be replaced by someone less qualified

yet wealthier than they were? Even the people in the man's hometown

said he was a show-off.One day, the man returned home to visit his aunt in the small rural

town. He went to visit his friends and left their house a little after

dark. He was walking home when he was approached by an old friend. He

talked to her a while, and suddenly, her boyfriend, very drunk and

inebriated, came out of nowhere and accused the man of making a pass

at his girlfriend. He claims that the man has come back to show off,

and he didn't like that, so he and his 3 friends surrounded this man

and beat him. The man, who was once the young boy that had wanted to

kill his teacher with a machete on the side of the road, decided that

he no longer wanted to follow that route. He refused to fight back,

believing that he was no longer that person that had to resort to

violence to solve his problems. He committed himself to the justice

system, and decided to go to the police the next day to report the

problem.Not only did the police do nothing about these drunk guys, but no one

would give him a straight answer. The police told him to find the

security chief of the neighborhood to catch the men and turn them in

to the police, but when the man went to the security chief, the chief

told him this:"I have no gun. I have no rope. I have nothing to capture these men.

And I'm afraid they will eventually kill me. I cannot help you."The man went back and forth between the police and the security chief,

and no one could help. Even his foreigner friends stepped up and

talked to the police, yet nothing prevailed. There was no justice in

this little rural town. Unless you have money, you have a significant

position in the community, or you know the right upper crust, your

voice would never be heard. This angered the man very much. Not only

did this crime occur in his hometown, where he grew up, but the police

were people that also knew him since he was young, yet they refused to

help him. Not only did he choose the right path and left it up to the

hands of justice instead of violence to delegate the consequences, he

tried everything he could to help justice. Finally, he decided that

there was no way to win. Those guys were going to get away with what

they did to him, unless he resorted to his own means of justice,

dealing with it himself.This is a true story, and it makes me sick to my stomach how the

justice system works in this country. It saddens me that one can feel

so helpless and that my friend has to resort to violence to solve his

situation. He actually chose to do the right thing, and the right

thing turned out to be the wrong thing. I just want his story to be

heard. Sometimes in life, there really is no way out.

Day 13 (Pemba to Maputo) This was just a traveling day cause I

basically flew from the northern tip of the country to the southern

tip. For dinner, we ate at this great South African pizza place called

Mimo's, and it really made me miss Italian food.Day 14 (Maputo) I started to feel better finally and walked around the

capital of Mozambique with my friends. We'd met up a bunch of other

people, had coffee and juice, went shopping, ate Indian food again

(this time it stayed down haha), and then bought wine and cheese back

to the hotel. Yea… I really didn't feel like I was in Africa at all.Day 15 (Maputo to Inhassoro) I had to go to a JOMA conference, so we

woke up early at 4 to catch a TCO bus to Inhassoro. Now, if you can't

fly in Mozambique, the next step up would be the TCO bus. It has AC,

comfortable seats, a bathroom, and even serve you snacks. This bus

also took 10 hours, but it was not nearly as awful as all the other 10

hour buses that I took. When we got there, they'd put us in this nice

resort where the rooms were fashioned like tents. It kind of made you

feel like you were camping, but not really cause there were bathrooms

with awesomely hot showers and everything. I was so happy cause that

bed must have been the best bed I've slept in since my arrival in

Mozambique. It felt like sleeping on clouds!Day 16 – 17 (Inhassoro) Okay, so I was basically here because we had a

conference but the work day ended around 3 so we had the rest of the

day to chill. The resort was right next to the beach, so that you

could just walk down a flight of stairs to hit the waves. I would rate

this beach higher than the Pemba beach because it was less secluded

and not as touristy, but not as nice as Chokas Beach in Ilha because

the water was not as calm and sand not as white, and the beach not as

isolated. I loved Chokas! Too bad it was so cold that I didn't want to

swim, but it was still nice being by a beach. We also got to see

Colin's site. Inhassoro is a pretty small town, but also full of

foreigners because of the nice beach. It's only maybe one hour from

the main highway, so that it's not difficult for him to travel. He

says he runs along the beach all the time, which is so awesome. I wish

I could run along the beach every morning and watch the sun rise. We

didn't get a chance to visit his school.Day 18 (Inhassoro to Vilankulos to Maputo to Beira) Damn. I was so

tired by this day. I just wanted to go home, but our flight from

Vilankulos to Maputo did not leave until 5 PM, so we had the morning

to chill at the Vilankulos Beach. This is not my first time at this

beach, but I would rate it my least favorite since I spent the least

amount of time exploring this beach. It's just as touristy as Pemba,

but I think I don't like it because Vilankulos the town is just too

crowded for my taste. I'm glad I don't have this as my sight because

with all those people and tourists, it would be a lot harder to

integrate. It made me love Buzi so much with its one river, sparse

cars, rice fields, vast empty grasslands. The day also sucked because

my flight was scheduled for that same night at 9:30 PM but everyone

else got to stay another night in the city, so it was sad having to

say good-bye. Finally got to Beira at 11:30 and had to have my awesome

friend Orlando come pick me up at the airport to stay at his house. I

haven't talked about Orlando yet but he's one of my favorite people in

Mozambique. He's so smart, speaks English so well, and is so kind and

appreciative. He's had many other volunteers as teachers and knows

what a big difference Peace Corps can make, and unlike most others, he

has plans to improve his country. He has goals and dreams to help his

community, and for this, I really respect him. It takes something for

a person who comes from such poor upbringing to grow up and not always

think about getting rich and making money. There are plenty of people

who are intelligent and have the skills to make money, but in order to

think about helping other people… damn. I'm impressed. He also gave me

his bed and slept on the floor! That's just the Mozambican way, and

that's another reason why I love him.Day 19 (Beira to Buzi) Finally, thank god! I'm home.

Didn't I say I had grand plans to travel? Boy, did I do that. So here

is a summary of my 2 week vacation. I basically traveled the entire

country, 7 different provinces, in 19 days. Here's what I did:Day 1: (Buzi to Sussundenga) Left the house at around 9 AM and

traveled all day by chapa to arrive at my destination at around 5:30

PM. Met my friends, cooked and ate dinner, and then off to bed.Day 2: (Sussudenga) This is the site of my friend Dov. He teaches

Chemistry to 9th graders, and today, he is having a science fair for

his students. This is a school level fair, where winners will be

chosen to attend the regional fair. I was very happy to have been

there. I had my fair a couple of weeks ago, but it was not nearly as

successful. I only had 6 participants, and their projects were not as

creative as some of Dov's students. He had 15 participants, with a

great panel of judges and a lot of participation from the audience. I

was very proud of him. The turn-out of the fair rests entirely on how

hard the Peace Corp volunteer works, and judging from the many people

that showed up, he worked very hard. It's always amazing to me how

these students can come up with these different experiments with

resources available in their towns. How can they think of these

different things when some of their teachers don't really know how to

teach, when their libraries have no books, and when they cannot go

online to do research? Shocking.After the fair, we ate with our country director, who also attended,

and then said good-bye to him. Then Dov and I climbed a little hill

and walked around Sussundenga. I LOVE visiting other volunteers'

sites. It makes you appreciate your site so much more, and it makes

you feel less alone. Sussundenga was a really beautiful site. The

drive into the town is full of endless land and mountains, and because

of the higher elevation, it was nice and cool. The town was large

enough for him to get a lot of what he needed in terms of food, but

was also small enough that you could walk all the way through in 1 to

2 hours. ( I should know. I got lost and did end up walking almost the

entire town). Suss was also only 45 minutes from the large city,

Chimoio, so he had no problem traveling. Though it was very beautiful,

it made me appreciate my site a lot, too. I was so happy that I have

an indoor bathroom, so that taking morning showers outside with the

cold breeze was not a problem. I'm also grateful to my neighbors, and

I'm also happy that many of the people in Buzi know who I am. They're

used to having a foreigner around, so they don't make fun of me as

much.Day 3: (Sussudenga to Chimoio) In the morning, we walked around Dov's

site some more so that I could look for clothes to buy. A lot of mine

are starting to have holes in them, but we were not successful in

finding good clothes. After lunch, we headed for Chimoio. We were

planning on taking the 4AM bus from here to the next site, Quelimane,

a 10 hour trip away. Well, when we got there, the tickets were already

sold out, so we had to stay at another volunteer's site, and find a

ride the next day. So, we called up Trineise, a health volunteer,

whose site was Chimoio. She had a very nice house to herself, but I'm

not sure about having Chimoio as a site. Although it's a very nice

city, my favorite by far, it's too large. Nobody knows your name.

People don't come to your house to visit. You can't really walk around

at night. Dov and I got lost and walked around for almost an hour

looking for our pizza restaurant. I much prefer the small town feel of

Buzi. She was very nice to put us up. It's awesome that we can just

crash at people's houses without having to pay for a hotel. With all

that money we saved, Dov and I decided to splurge on pizza for dinner,

and damn, it was sooooooo good.Day 4: (Chimoio to Quelimane) Since we missed the bus that would take

us directly to Quelimane, we had to get up at 5 to catch a chapa out

of Chimoio to another town where we could catch another bus to

Quelimane. Luckily, we made it to Inchope and by 7:30 AM, were on our

way on a bus. The bus ride was from 7:30 to 4:30. That was 9 hours!

The distance is not that far, but with the roads being bad, the bus

not being very fast, and us having stops every couple of hours for

people to pee in the bushes, it took us forever! Good thing we hadn't

slept that well the night before and I had a book to read. When we got

to Quelimane, we had 3 options: paying for a hotel, staying with a

volunteer, or sleeping on the bus. Staying with a volunteer meant that

we had to get a hold of her, and neither of us have yet to meet this

girl. Paying for a hotel meant spending money, so that we didn't want

to do. The other option was to sleep on the bus. We had to buy our

ticket to our next stop, Nampula, that night anyway, and in this

country, you can just sleep on the bus until it leaves early the next

morning. I didn't really like this option because sleeping on the bus

meant having to deal with mosquitoes buzzing in your ear the whole

night, not to mention having to sit up. We were so lucky to have

gotten in contact with the volunteer there, Sarah, who totally hooked

us up with a place to stay. Peace Corps volunteers are the best! Even

though we'd never met, she offered us a mattress, and her house had a

friggin' shower! I was so ridiculously happy after that 10 hour bus

ride.My thoughts on Quelimane as a site. Though Sarah had a bombass house,

I did not like her site. The city was a very large city, larger than

Chimoio; I think the 4th largest city in Mozambique. It was filthy in

some parts, and crowded. Walking to dinner that night, I was afraid of

getting mugged. Again, you don't get to know people and they don't

know you as well. Something about being in a city makes me lose that

feeling of comradery and tranquility that I have in my little town.Day 5: (Quelimane to Nampula) So, I went from Chimoio, central, to

Quelimane, a little more north, to Nampula, which is basically the

north. Dov and I had to wake up 4:30 AM that morning to catch the bus

to Nampula. Good thing we bought our ticket the night before. Though

the first bus ride was also long, this bus ride seemed worse for some

reason. I didn't like that they packed so many people into the bus.

All the seats were already sold and occupied, yet we kept making stops

along the way to pick up more and more people. There were tons of

people sitting in the bus isle and towards the front where the door

was. It made it way difficult to get out and pee, and it was so hot.

Dov and I got really bored, too, so we ended up playing 20 questions a

lot. We did not arrive in Nampula until 3 PM, the 3rd largest city in

Mozambique.This city houses our Peace Corps office for the northern regions, but

not sites for volunteers. Therefore, Dov and I had to walk around with

our Lonely Planet book looking for a place to stay. We finally found a

place that was cheap and gave a tiny discount to PC volunteers. When

we got to our room, it had an odor to it. The shower did not have hot

water, and though it advertised AC, there was none. I didn't care too

much because I was happy they had any kind of shower, period. We were

unpacking when Dov opened a drawer, and we saw something furry with a

tail. It was definitely some kind of animal, but he immediately shut

it. I don't know why, but he opened the drawer again, but the animal

had disappeared. But being Dov, he tried the drawer to the left of it,

and found nothing. I warned him not to open the one to the right, but

he did it anyway, and the damn rat leaped out the drawer and scurried

across the room under our bed. WTF! I was really freaked out, but what

could we have done? So we just went to dinner and then went to bed.

Stupid cheap hotel. Dinner was really good, though, cause I got to eat

Lebanese food and met up with 2 other volunteers on their way through

Nampula, as well. Yum! It's funny how there are volunteers everywhere.Day 6: (Nampula to Muecate) We got out of that rat-infested hotel

early and headed over to the Peace Corps office to meet up our friend

Diana, who we were going to travel with the rest of the way. After

that, the 3 of us walked around Nampula for a bit and then had lunch

with another volunteer from our group Margaret, a health volunteer

from the North. Lebanese food, and I got ice-cream. Damn man. You

don't appreciate ice-cream until you never get to have it, so that

even the soft-serve stuff like the kind from McDonalds would make you

orgasm in your pants. I LOVE ice-cream! Then we walked to the chapa

stop to travel to Diana's site, a small town about 1 hour outside of

Nampula.Diana and her roommate Rebekah, both from my year, had a wonderfully

huge house. It was so cute! But the girls did not get along with the

director of their school and the town was brown and dusty. I'm sure

there is real beauty to it, but it made me miss Buzi a little since

our site is so green and the buildings are somewhat colonial looking.

It was nice to catch up with them.Day 7: (Muecate to Ilha de Mozambique) We left around 5:30 AM by chapa

and arrived at Ilha around lunch time. Thank goodness that wasn't too

long a ride. Finally made it to the goal of my travels.Fucking Ilha… It was such a wonderful site! Did you know that it's a

World Heritage Center? Not in many places can you find this

combination of Indian, Chinese, African, and Portuguese culture. This

island was discovered by Vasco da Gama around the same time America

was supposedly discovered by Christopher Columbus. The Portuguese then

proceeded to transform it into this huge trading spot, and since the

Portuguese also had territorial claims in Macau and India, they

brought a lot of that influence over to Ilha, as well.Ilha is actually an island that's connected by a 3km bridge to the

main land. The town is actually divided into 2 parts: the stone town,

and the Mecula town. The stone town was the Portuguese part, where

houses were made mostly of stone. The Mecula town was the African

part, where houses were made of mud, reeds, or concrete, the normal

way. Most of the people lived in the Mecula part. The stone part is

where the tourist hotels and restaurants were, the hostpital, and the

school. My friend Meagan was lucky enough to be placed in Ilha, and

had a house in the stone part of town, so again, free lodging for us!When we got there, we ate lunch at a nice café owned by some Eurpeans.

As we walked through the town earlier, I'd already felt like we'd left

Africa from all the stone houses, but eating at this nice café made me

feel even more like I'd left the continent. In the afternoon, we went

to the beach. My first real beach in Mozambique! The water was clear,

the sand white, and only a few tourists around. What more could I have

asked for? We sunned and swam, and on chilled on the beach. Later in

the afternoon, more of the locals came around to swim, so it felt a

little more like Africa again, but a more beautiful and relaxing

Africa.On our way back to Meagan's house, we saw a guy carrying 2 giant

lobsters in his hand walking down the street, and we bought one for 6

bucks. It was about the size of lower arm, from fingers to elbow. WE

boiled that baby up and lemon-butter sauced it. Soooooo good. My mouth

is watering as I write this. YUM –EE. Nothing like fresh lobster. It

was so funny cause Diana had never had lobster before, and she loved

it. No one knew how to cook it, but leave it to the girl from Texas to

represent. Then we were still hungry to so went for beers and dinner

at the local restaurant. More fresh fish curry, Mozambican style. I'd

died and gone to seafood heaven.Day 8: (Ilha to Chokas) The next day, we'd wanted to leave Ilha for

another island beach off of Ilha called Chokas Beach, but it rained,

so we decided to do the museum tours of Ilha and look at the oldest

fort in Sub-Saharan Africa first. I took a tour of the old governor's

house. Before Mozambique got its independence 35 years ago, it was

controlled by the Portuguese, who decided that Ilha was the capitol of

Mozambique. They'd built this huge house for their governor, and I got

to tour it. They'd brought over a lot of furniture from China and

India, and I think these two cultures also had a very large influence

on the way the people lived and navigated the waters around

Mozambique. I also got to tour the church and saw how they designed

their stone houses to collect water. It was awesome! Then we went to

the fort. It was really pretty and well-laid out, but I was toured out

by this time, so I just took a whole lot of pretty pictures.Then we ordered egg sandwiches to-go and since the weather got so much

nicer, we headed off to Chokas Beach. Okay, so Chokas, hands down, is

the best beach I've been to. If you're the type to like beaches with

nice resorts, top-of-the notch hand and feet service, lined with bars

offering all types of good drinks and food, and hot men and women in

skimpy bikinis to look at, then Chokas is NOT the beach for you. But

if you're like me, and you like the white sand, the clear, calm water,

the breeze blowing through your hair as you sit bathing in the sun,

and the sound of the waves hitting the shores, then Chokas is the

beach of your dreams. It's exactly that. We'd found a shack to stay

in, with no electricity nor bathroom. I had to sneak into another

house to use their bathroom, but atleast it was cheap. The guard of

the shack was also our chef, since we just bought fish, octopus, and

clams fresh off the beach and let him cook it for us. We'd tried to

walk down a little ways to the only restaurant in sight to drink, but

it also didn't have energy for a long time. Good thing the beers were

cold.So if there was no electricity, and no "scene", why did I adore Chokas

so much? I guess because of the tranquility of it all. It was so

shocking to me that there still existed places undiscovered by man

that were so gorgeous. When we got there, there seriously was no one

on the beach except the four of us. The shacks and houses were up a

little ways, so you couldn't even see them, so it was almost like

being on a gorgeous beach on a deserted island. We swam, we read, and

we just laid there listening to the ocean. No music from some bar up.

No children screaming. Maybe because I'd been cooped up in my little

village for too long and was too ecstatic at the sight of a beach.

Maybe because I was awed by the fact that this dreamy beach has not

been polluted with human existence. Who knows. I was really happy.Day 9: (Chokas to Ilha to Carapira) That night it was really cold and

uncomfortable to sleep cause the house with no energy had no mattress

as well. I didn't bring a sleeping bag, and the breeze was very strong

at night, but that awfulness washed away with the waves as I watched

the sun come up. And then I took my IPOD and walked along the shores

for an hour before swimming in the morning ocean. Damn…. THAT's the

reason you ought to join Peace Corps! Not to help people, but for the

chance to visit places like this! Haha… just kidding. But seriously,

if I had not joined PC, I never could have imagined a beach like this.

Too bad we only had 1 day there, and had to head back to Ilha the next

morning to travel some more. We showered at Meagan's and ate lunch on

Ilha before heading off to visit another volunteer's site in Carapira,

Amanda's site.Carapira is a very, very small town, but it's located right along a

highway, so it's not difficult to travel from there. Amanda's school

is a technical school, which meant that it was for students who wanted

to become agricultural workers or carpenters. She only had 3 to four

turmas a day, with the class size ranging from 16 to 25 students. Can

you believe that?! I have 5 to 6 turmas a day ranging from 50 to 70

students. Her students pay around 2500 meticais a year to attend,

whereas my students pay 300 meticais a year. So ofcourse, the

facilities were a lot nicer. She was very well integrated into her

small town.See what I mean by each volunteer having a completely different site?

That's why you can't really enter into training and expect to come out

prepared cause there's no way the training staff can prepare you for

the range of sites available. I always wonder why people would quit

during training. All you need to do is stick it out a couple of months

and your life could completely change. Well, anyways, we walked around

with Amanda a little and had a great dinner.Day 10: (Carapira to Pemba) We left the next day around 7:30 AM and

caught a ride on an 18-wheeler to arrive at Pemba at around 5 PM.

Starting here, the lodging just gets better and better. So…. Pemba is

boasted to have one of the most beautiful beaches in Mozambique. We

arrived on a Sunday, and the beach was packed. You can imagine my

disappointment after being on Chokas, but people assured us that it

was only Sunday traffic. They're usually not that packed. Because of

the beautiful beaches, there is a lot of foreigners in Pemba, just

like in Ilha. That made it cleaner, more expensive, and safer to walk

around, mostly. Very touristy. Our lodging is called Russel's Place,

which is basically a camp for backpackers. I never knew what it felt

like to be a backpacker until I joined Peace Corps. I gotta say, it's

pretty awesome. You pick yourself a guidebook, pack some clothes, a

tent, and a sleeping bag and get on the road. Follow the directions in

the book and show yourself around. It's awesome. Sometimes, the tent

is not even necessary cause at Russel's, they provide you with a bed

and sheets, very much like a dorm situation. The bathroom is communal,

and it even had hot water, which felt so good. You can go eat at a

restaurant or you can just buy food, make yourself a campfire and

cook. When you have time, sit around the bar and drink and meet other

backpackers and hear their story. Unfortunately, we already had our

own group so we didn't do any mingling, but if I were to go by myself…

shit… I'd talk to other people. We were also so tired from traveling,

all we could do was eat and then we went to bed.Day 11: (Pemba) It rained this day, so all we did was find a

restaurant on the beach and vegged out. So relaxing to listen to your

ipod and read a book on the beach. Then the sun came out, and we went

tide pooling. You know me, I love science and biology, so it was so

fun for me to go into the tide pools to look for funky sea creatures.

I found some really cool sea urchins, starfishes, eels, snails, all

kinds of things. Then we met up with Sara, a health volunteer that

works in Pemba and went to her house. Remember how I said every

volunteer has a different experience? Well, Sara lives maybe 5 minutes

from the beach and walks along the beach everyday to get to her

workplace. There are tons of foreigners and ex-patriots in Pemba so

she has lots of foreigner friends. However, everything is also more

expensive in Pemba, so she can't really save money and doesn't travel

out of site that much, unlike me, who likes to get out every chance I

get. Things are also way cheaper in Buzi, and since it is so in the

middle of nowhere, no one ever comes to visit me. Sara, on the other

hand, has a visitor every month, which I wouldn't think is too great

cause then you'd have to play host on a low budget. Not too fun. Damn.

Okay so I'm just gonna post this now but I still have more days to

describe and one more beach to rate, but that'll have to be for next

time.

So… this is going to be one of those more introspective entries, since I've completed 6 months, more or less, at site. Looking back at my old journal entries, I feel like my perspective of the Peace Corps experience has changed a lot. For one thing, you can't possibly understand what it's like to be in the Peace Corps unless you do it. I mean, you can read about it; you can watch documentaries, and you can listen to others tell their stories, but until you've experienced it yourself, you really have no idea. The experience is just very different and unique for every individual, depending on your personality, your site, the people you meet, and the past experiences you bring to the table. I can sit here and try and try to explain it, and you can listen, but you would never know the significance it had in my life.  They say that Peace Corps changes who you are. Well, up to date, I would disagree with that. Peace Corps does not change who you are. All of my experiences here have just helped me discover who I am, made me confirm aspects of my personality that I knew already existed and made me realize all the things that I was capable of doing. I don't think that I have changed who I am. Let's demonstrate this with an example:  I used to be borderline obsessive compulsive before I came here. I hated clutter, and I wanted things to be clean all the time. However, can you really be that clean here in Mozambique? I've got spiders and termites all over my room (they're laying eggs in my closet); our house floor has not been washed since I've moved in (7 months!); I re-wear my clothes 3 or 4 times before I wash them (because they wear out so quickly when you wash them and I didn't bring that much with me). Don't get me wrong. Dirty dishes still bother me; too much shit being all over our dining room table still bugs me; and when I cook, I put everything I used back right away or that clutter would bother me (yea, this one is definitely OCD). However, I've learned to deal with a lot of other stuff. You just learn to not care as much. Hence, my point illustrated. I've always been and probably will always remain a neat-freak. This much about my personality I knew, but what I didn't know was – could I live a non-neat life? If everything around me was a mess, could I ignore it and continue on? If I couldn't take a bath for 3 days, could I do it? If I had to do #2 in the bush (unclean food and long chapa ride – enough said), can I do it? And yes (ha! Thank god!), I can! I can do all that! I've learned that I can survive and still be happy in non-neat environments, and that's made me very happy.  Well, that's just one example. There are other things that I've discovered but to describe them all would take too long, so I'll leave it at that for now.  Since the end of the second trimester is ending next week, I want to take this time to talk about one of my goals when I first entered into Peace Corps: to be able to teach science effectively in a resource-less environment using another language. Well, that goal is shot to hell since I don't teach science but English instead. Even though I ran science fair for our school this year, it was so difficult to explain the scientific method to students that I really just half-assed it. The whole thing just showed me one thing: I just didn't apply myself that much. Damn, well one of the things I said when I first decided I want to do this – meaning Peace Corps – was that I would work really hard and try my best for 2 years. I imagined that I would have no life, no time to travel, no friends, and no TV, so that all my life would involve is work. I'd figured I'd be really lonely and bored and miss home all the time, and the best way to combat that was to work.  How wrong was I? I've made friends, mostly other Peace Corps volunteers. My roommate and I watch TV on the laptop all the time. We leave site and go party once a month. I'm planning on traveling every break. I don't just have work here, and lately, I'm finding it very hard to focus on work. It sucks that you work so hard on your lessons, and you think your students understood what you taught, but then the end of the trimester comes, and they all fail their final exam. OR, even worse, they try to cheat. It makes you think…damn, what is the fucking point then? Why do I have to put in all this effort, when the result is the same, and I just feel even shittier because I tried so hard? Isn't it better not to try, not to care as much? My life would be easier without stressing over the students. And sometimes, that theory is true. I shouldn't stress too much over things I can't control because if that's the case, then every time I travel anywhere, I would have a panic attack. Anyway, why did I say all this? Just trying to explain why my original goal of working extremely hard for 2 years is shot to hell.  Being here for 6 months has also made me weary of the people. I mean, I never was a people person in the first place. It has always been difficult to read people, but it's especially hard here. People are always asking us for stuff. Can I borrow some money? Can I have 4 tomatoes? Can you help me translate something? Can I borrow your camera? Can you help me type this up? Can we use the journalism club's ink to print this out? Vanessa and I talk about it all the time. We just want people to STOP ASKING US FOR STUFF! I hate when my trust is displaced. If I lend you money, freakin' pay me back! Don't not pick up my calls and avoid me for 3 weeks. Don't make excuses. Don't borrow my bike and then break the pedal and say it's not your fault. Why would I lend out stuff anymore? But you know, then you feel bad cause it's really not that big a deal to lend out the stuff, IF the person can take care of it and returns it in the same condition. The problem is, I don't know people well enough to judge if this will happen. I hate that! I guess this learning who to trust is just something that takes longer than 6 months to learn.  However, unlike learning to read people, learning how to travel around the country is a much easier task to take on. I remember when I first got here, how scared I was. When the Peace Corps car dropped me off at site, I thought to myself, "I'm never leaving site." How could I just hitchhike? Remember those old entries of being fearful of being stuck in Tica? Well… been there… done that! Got into a chapa accident where the damn car flipped? Check! Slept in a stranger's home that same weekend? Check! Still want to travel? Hell yes! The country is actually not that difficult to navigate, once you've done it. I love that I can hitchhike with strangers in this country without fear of being kidnapped and killed. I love that I can travel from one city to another with just my backpack. Oh… and do I have grand plans… tell you more about it later!

So… I killed a chicken today. What an indescribable feeling. How can I

explain the emotions of taking a life? All I can say is… it's nothing

like I thought it was going to be. I was very excited at first, having

purchased the chicken yesterday for cheap since it was Children's Day

here in Mozambique. I've seen people do it a couple of times, carved

the neck, let it bleed out, and then pour hot water to pluck the

feathers. I've even seen them carve with very dull blades. Well, with

my very sharp Calphalon, I thought it was going to be a snap.I had to step on the legs and the wings and then hold the neck with

the left hand while cutting with the knife in the right hand. It takes

longer than you think, even with a very sharp knife, and while I was

shearing away at the tough neck skin, I could feel the chicken

struggling away for its life in my hand. At that time, I began to feel

a pang of sadness deep in my gut, and all I wanted to do was kill the

chicken faster. I didn't want it to suffer under the blade anymore,

and I became very serious with the knife. When the deed was done, and

the neck broken, I still had to hold down the body and the head to

bleed it out. That was a terrible feeling. You can just feel life

draining from the chicken with every wince under your hand. I don't

think I'd want to do it again. I'm sure I could probably get used to

killing chickens if it's the only thing I could do to eat it, but damn

it, why would I want to do that again if someone else could do it for

me? Does that make me a hypocrite if I like to eat meat but I don't

want to do the killing?But you know, there's also this strange feeling of conquest

afterwards, like yea… that's right… I KILLED A CHICKEN!Oh, and today was also Chama de Unidade (translated Torch of Unity),

where Mozambique has the tradition of carrying a torch from the

northernmost city to the southernmost city of the country. It's kind

of like the Olympics torch, except this one is supposed to represent

everyone joining hands in unity, every part of the country. Someone

told me that this tradition started after they got their independence

from the Portuguese and only occurs every 5 years. The torch would be

passed from people to people within city limits but would be held by

someone on a car going from town to town. Ofcourse, at night, they

stop to rest. So, this torch has been traveling for about 2 weeks now.Boy, am I lucky that I got to enjoy this and the election while I

completed service here since these things occur every like 5 years.

Anyway, it was such a special occasion to me because we don't have

anything like this in America. I mean, we have the 4th of July, but

not everyone in the city comes together like the Mozambicans do here.

Sure, we have get-togethers, but mostly with our friends and family.

Here, when I say get-together, I mean GET-TOGETHER! As in the entire

town cancels work and school to await the arrival of the torch and

everyone comes out to try to touch it. It was so crazy. The entire

town! Now THAT'S what I call unity.

Below, 1st three pictures are when we grilled for Woman's Day here with our friends. The next two pictures are of the neighbor kids playing naked in the rain. It's so awesome that whenever it rains here, the kids just take off all their clothes and go running naked in the street. There's also one of Jackie in her crazy dance moves. Next is a picture of my journalism students and I at our regional conference along with my counterpart. They did me so proud at that conference! They even put together masks and did a rendition of Thriller! Next picture is my cute and oh so gentle dog Itchy. Last one is of me and Vanessa dancing the pasada, a Mozambican dance, completely sober! 

Today was such a crappy day. One of my turmas, Turma G: the one that’s behind all the other turmas, had P.E. and a soccer game, so they came to class 15 minutes late. I didn’t know that they were going to come at all because they’ve skipped my class before. So, I decided to join the ones that did show up with another turma that has me the next period, just so I could leave early. I debated for awhile because I knew that if Turma G did end up showing up, there would not be enough room for all 2 turmas to fit into one room, but I did not want to waste time teaching only 7 people. Unfortunately, those guys did show up, and like I’d figured, there was not enough room. We were reviewing for a test, and I’d told them that even though they could not attend my class, they were still going to have a test the next class.

Man, I feel so awful about that now that I’ve gone home and think about it. How awful of a teacher am I, to give my students a test that they didn’t even get to review for knowing full well that more students will probably fail if they don’t get a review. How selfish am I, to give them the test just so that they wouldn’t even be more behind and I’d have to plan different lessons for them. Lately, though, I feel like I’m slacking a lot. Why, just on Monday, I skipped school because I was so hungover. Yea, can you believe it?! Being hungover in Mozambique! Well, the difference is, in America, when you’re hungover, you can call in sick. In Mozambique, you can just skip and nobody would give a rat’s ass. Teachers skip all the time because they just don’t care. Most of them don’t live in Buzi. They live in the city and just come to Buzi to teach on weekdays and return to their families on weekends. Many would either skip Friday or Monday because of traveling.

In any case, that doesn’t excuse my skipping. I should have been a good role model and represented American work ethic. Should not have gone drinking on a Sunday night! Although in my defense, it was a special occasion. I’d just met these Europeans last week, and they’re leaving town this weekend. I only wanted to make new friends, but before I knew it, I was drinking cheap whiskey and beer and barhopping. Thank god it was a Sunday night and no one was really out, but who knew my tolerance for liquor had decreased so tremendously?! Anyway, not that I was throwing up or anything like that the next day, but I just felt very stupid the next day. Ofcourse, I could have gone to teach, but you know, when nobody cares if you skip, it makes it all that much easier for you to just do it!

Anyway, had a little moment of reflection today and realize I just don’t try as hard anymore. I don’t spend as much time lesson planning as I did last trimester, and I don’t try to vary the activities so the students would have fun during class atleast. I’m so caught up in other things. Shit, last weekend was busy with a meeting and my friend from another city came to visit. The weekend before that was a neighbor’s birthday party. This weekend is going to be a student talent show. I always think I have Fridays off, but no, I have this to do and that to do… my journalism club… science fair starting up. Damn, where did my time management skills go? I gotta straighten myself up again.

Not that I don’t like being busy. I love it, but I just gotta straighten up my priorities again. Don’t worry. Stress here is so different than stress there. Hmm… how can I explain it? I guess, it’s because I know that this stress will end after 2 years. No matter how hard it gets, it ends eventually, and my life here isn’t permanent. I have something else to look forward to. Plus, I don’t have anything else to live for but work here, so it makes it a lot easier. When you don’t have a social life, no TV, no recreation, no accessible internet, you have plenty of time. Ofcourse, I’m starting to gain a social life and finding other recreation, so I’m finding myself without so much free time, but still, I’m not that stressed.

Oh, and I also like to take this time to talk about the new love of my life, my neighbor’s little daughter. Her name is Jackie, short for Jacqueline. Ahhh!! She is sooooo cute! I have some pictures of her that I just recently took, but I’m too lazy to upload it into my computer now, so I’ll just wait for next time. Plus, it takes way too long to upload. This little girl brightens up my day every time I am sad. When I’m frustrated from class, I just come home and look at her and talk to her. Ofcourse most of what she says makes no sense, but I love that abandonment about her. She just doesn’t care. She doesn’t care that I’m a different skin color, or that I’m not her family. I love that she never judges me. I love that she likes to hug me and cling to me. Sometimes, I secretly catch her just dancing and playing by herself and it’s hilarious! No worries. Pictures next time.

Also, I don't think I'm planning on going back to the states in december. My roommate is ending her service with a trip to South Africa, so I think I'm just going to go with her. Sooo.... if anyone is interested in meeting up in South Africa, holla!

isn't it funny that as soon as i posted the last entry, i got robbed? It was Easter saturday night and vanessa and i had gone to the catholic church in our town to watch the baptismal, which was really cool by the way and which i'll post pictures of later. We left at 9 and after the baptism, went to a discoteca until like 2 in the morning. We didn't even drink cause all our students were there and when we got home we found that they had entered our back door and stolen both our macs, my cell phone which i'd forgotten at home, and some other small things. We went to the police the next day and monday of the next week promptly got a call that they'd caught the thief but only 1 computer was recovered, vanessa's. Throughout the next week, they'd also recovered my computer and phone back, which is pretty great. I mean, i wasn't too devastated when it was taken but it's just so more convenient to have my computer back. The phone, though, with internet use and my only means of staying in touch with the US, I was really sad about. I also didn't like that it made me feel unsafe in my town and that any time we go anywhere we had to hide our stuff and make sure it's all locked up. I have to make sure to back up all my grades,too. Anyway, i'm just grateful to have my phone back.:-)

Damn i wish bluetooth can also connect of to the internet cause it really sucks to have to type on my phone.

Wow! Long time no write. Sorry, but school makes life pretty busy. Plus, there's been so many things going on. I've missed school for about a week now because we just had our 5 day reconnect conference. Peace Corps gets everyone together after 3 months in order to see how we're doing and for us to share our experiences. It was really great. They rented out a really nice hotel for us, and I mean NICE. Air conditioning the entire time; buffet breakfast, lunch, and dinner; nice hot and cold showers; a refrigerator in the room; a nice comfortable bed. I felt like I'd left Mozambique and gone back to America for 4days. It was good to see people I hadn't seen since training, traded movies, our teaching and integration experiences, and just catch up. Another really cool thing was that the city in which we had our conference had a Lebanese restaurant and a hooka bar! It was so exciting to eat Asian foods and smoke hooka because I hadn't done that in ages and didn't even think it was possible to do in mozambique.

Other than that, though, it was kind of a stressful time for me. 2 days before I had 2 leave site, I'd caught this really bad fever. It was awful! My head ached so much that I couldn't even sleep. i would wake up in the middle of the might dripping in sweat at one point and them wake up in chills at another point. The fever had gotten over 101, and all my wounds that I'd had on my skin from an infection before started to puss up and get infected. On top of that, I had to worry about traveling, and I was so stressed out. (the river Buzi flooded, so the road was washed away. Even though it was already bad before, it was still passable by car. Now, a part of the bridge ya washed away so you had to get on the back of a bike for 3 km, wade through water at the part where the bridge was, and wait for a car on the other ride, if one even comes along. i had to plan another route out, and good thing my roommate was really helpful, and we'd found a back way.) the day I had to leave, I still had a fever in the morning but thank god it went away by the afternoon. So yea, during the conference, I couldn't drink with everybody cause my leg was so infected that it hurt to walk and alcohol seemed to make it worse. After the conference, I had to fly to another city to see a dermatologist, who took a biopsy of my skin, so there's the picture of my stitch. Hope it heals ok. Wouldn't want another infection. Anyway, so they put me on antibiotics and the wounds have stopped pussing and are starting to scar. I'm so happy. Please god, let me heal completely...

Anyway, so what's my life like in Buzi now that school has started? Before my leg got infected, I had woken up at 5 to log 2x a week, and damn, sunrise in Buzi is so fucking beautiful. The sky is blanketed with all kinds of colors that stretch as far as your eyes can see. Buzi is so flat that the sky seems bigger to of somehow. No cars, on buildings, a few houses, but mostly just me and the neverending land.

Since I teach in the afternoon, in the morning, my time is busy sweeping or cleaning the house, fetching water for up from our neighbor's faucet when it's running, or going to the market to buy done for up, lesson planning, grading, and cooking. Best time for market is around 10 when it's all set up and food is fresh, and since our fridge is not that good to store food, I usually have to make a trip every 3 days. My roommate Vanessa, black girl below, teaches in the morning, so I usually end up making lunch for up, so a lot of my time is spent cooking. Damn, I'm surprised at how resourceful I am with our limited ingredients here, but then sometime I also get tired of having 2 cook so much. Sometimes, you just want some east food, but it's impossible here. We can go out but it takes forever and costs yay more.

I do teach one class in the morning every Tuesday - thurs. After lunch, I usually have 5 or 6 classes of 45 minutes back to back, and then I go home, take a bath, eat dinner or in have a drink with Vanessa( Cokes on good days and beer on shitty days when we just want to vent). Let me tell you, it's a real adrenaline push for of sometimes to in back to back with classes. Since it's the same lesson, I'd get on this high and if the lesson is good or I know how to improve it, it's awesome that I get to try and try again for 5 times ofcourse that can also backfire with crappy lessons. Thursday nights we have a 30 minute radio program where we teach our city to speak English. That's pretty fun since I get to DJ. No classes on Fridays! Woot! i usually get chores done or grading in the mornings, but Friday afternoons are taken up by journalism club. Friday nights we in to the local car or restaurant for beers or just watch a movie at good if we're too lazy. No excessive drinking tho cause everyone in our town knows us, so it looks really bad if people see up wasted. Gossip is huge here.

So that's weekdays. Weekends, Saturday mornings from 9 - 12 we have English Club, which is like an extra lesson for students to practice and get tutored. After, we eat lunch and them usually bum around or hang out. That seems kinda rare tho cause we usually have lesson planning or grading to do. If we didn't, we're probably in the city buying food or other necessities not available at site or partying with other central volunteers. When we go to the city, we definitely party harder cause no one there knows us, but I think I've only gotten that wasted like 3 times since I've been here. It's such a pain to travel.well it feels like i've written too much so i'll save it for later.

Yay! So, yesterday, Vanessa, my roommate, and I went to Beira to get me a new bike, which is going to be paid for by Peace Corps. Isn't it nice? Got a basket for groceries, backseat for passengers, and even a bell. Honestly, school is only a 15 minute walk from home, so I don't really need a bike, but it's so hot here that even 15 minutes in the sun is exhausting. Plus, I haven't rode a bike since who knows how long, and though it's only 1 speed, it's really so much fun :-)

Anyway, so school started last week. Even though I was trained to teach bio, I ended up having 4 English 8th grade classes in the afternoon and 1 8th grade class at night. The way school works here is that regular day school is from 7 to 6 at night. You either have morning classes, from 7 to 12:45, or afternoon classes, from 1 to 6.45. Night classes are for older students who have never passed, and since the majority of the population has not finished school, a lot of the students in my night class are adults. I taught afternoo classes, so I didn't have to be at school until 1 so I usually did planning in the morning. I liked that a lot, but that's all going to change next week.

So, apparently we don't have enough english teachers so I have to take over all the 8th grade English classes, which is 8 classes altogether, and that includes morning classes. Since I will be teaching morning and afternoon, I didn't think I would have enough time to plan, so I'd asked them to drop my night classes, which is a little disappointing cause I was looking forward to teaching the adults bio, but I guess that's one thing you learn in the Peace Corps, it's that you gotta be flexible. holy crap. i have no training in english. It can't possibly be that hard, right? We'll see how it goes..

So, my first day.. I was super prepared and had everything written out that I was going to say, and guess what happened?! I had like 10 of my students out of 50 showed up, and even worse in might class, 3 of the 50 ppl showed up! Apparently, it's common for ppl not to show up to school here the first day, not even teachers. Can you believe it?! So, whatever lesson I had planned was worth nothing cause I couldn't teach it to just a few students so I had to improvise. Damn. It's really not as easy teaching english as you might think. the students don't have books and so any vocabulary had to be written on the board and copied. They take a very long time to copy, especially when I have to wait on 50 students, and they're all at such different levels. No overheads so that means no visuals unless I draw it with chalk. Shit! I'm no artist, and then they're also no artist so they don't even know how to copy down my drawings. Last week, I taught about family, like how to say mom, dad, uncle, etc, but that was only to 4 classes. The ones that didn't have me had no English class, so they have not had English at all. It's unbelievable that we're still rearranging classes and schedules, not just of individual students but entire grades, and it's the 2nd week of school already. We had to dissolve 2 8th grade classes and split those students up into other classes because one of our teachers transferred and we don't have enough. Students don't know when they have classes and when they don't. It's all so sketchy. You would think it'd be more organized!

Anyway, so far, i don't feel like the kids are bad. They just don't understand. I ask and they don't know how to respond so it's very frustating for me, especially when the answer is so obvious. It's like teaching elementary school. I gotta remind myself that they just were never taught to think, only to memorize and regurgitate, so I have to be patient.

Damn but it's hard to be nice and patient when it's so rediculously hot and I have to wear a lab coat on top of my clothes to teach. Dude it's like atleast in the 90's everyday, and they fit a room with 60 ppl, no AC and only windows. i gotta keep a sweat rag in my lab coat pocket to wipe the neverending trickle on my face. I've got heat bumps all over my skin from all the sweating cause I just never stop. As soon as I put on clothes after a shower, I'm sweating again. It's so hot at night I can't even sleep sometime, even if I sleep naked. That's one sure way to make sure you get up early. Just be so hot.

Other than that though, I still love it. It just offer to rain or cool off. Then i'll be happy.

< border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5426559995791550578" />Look what I just discovered existed at my site for the price of 2

eggs?! Fresh from the river Buzi that divides my town in half, picture

3 from above.Yes, while I may not have the mountain view I'd longed for in the

beginning, there are some real benefits to being so close 2 the river!

Nothing is ever as it seems here.

Oh Shit! Let me tell you about my day yesterday. What a long day! And it all started with a stove.

So, my stove broke the night before yesterday, and they don't sell stoves in my town. I had to go to the provincial capital, which is Beira, in order to buy a new one, 1st picture above. Yes, I could have used the coal stove, 2nd picture above, which I did that night, but that thing is rediculously inefficient and slow that I decided to get a new stove.

So, yesterday morning, I woke up at 6 to take the 3 hr boat ride to Beira, didn't actually leave dock until 8 but was actually scheduled for 7, walked to the store from the dock, bought the stove, and walked back to the chapa station right away to take the chapa back to Buzi. That was about 1230, but the one going directly to Buzi had already left, and since the next one going directly to Buzi didn't come until the next day, my only alternative was to take a chapa to another town on the way, Tica, and take a chapa to Buzi from Tica.

Well, since i've already done this twice, having missed the direct chapa to Buzi twice and having to detour to Tica, I already knew that I was going to be spending some 2 or 3 hours in Tica waiting for that chapa to fill up. That's why I hate going to Beira. It's such a waste of my fucking time! Anyway, since I knew on one in Beira, I waited at the chapa station from 1230 to 3 for the chapa to Tica to fill up, and then got to Tica around 4.

There, I'd figured I only had to wait another hour or two since the Tica chapa to Buzi usually left around 5 or 6. Boy was I wrong. At around 530, i heard the chapa driver say that since there were so few passengers going to Buzi, we would all have to pay more to make up for his lost or he wouldn't take us. Holy crap! I started freaking out because it was already so late in the afternoon on a sunday. No one else was going to come. Everyone else looked like they weren't wanting to pay the extra cost, and there were no cars driving by that road in order for me to even hitchike. I didn't know anyone with a car nearby that could come pick me up. The others were thinking about going back to Beira, but they knew ppl and I did not know anyone there I could stay with either. I also wouldn't want to pay to go back to where I just came from and waste all that money, so if he refused to take us, I would probably sleep in Tica, the town with population 75!

I started looking around and Tica had no hotel or anything like that at all. It was maybe a collection of 20 houses, and the only thing my panic state of mind could think of was to sleep on someone's front porch until the next day when I could catch the chapa back to Buzi. WTF! I did not know what to do. See, this is the problem with being by yourself in a country you are not used to.

We waited around some more, but no one else came, and it was 630, getting dark. Other ppl were begging the driver to take us, but the Mf kept refusing saying he wouldn't make any money taking us. In the end, a couple of us ended up paying double the normal price to cover others who didn't have enough and we were on our way when it was dark. i was just so happy because i didn't have to sleep on someone's porch, but the ride has got to be one of the worst ride i've had. It was 2 hours on the back of a truck bed on an unpaved road. Imagine someone bouncing you on their knees every 10 minutes, except instead of falling back down on a cushioned knee, you land on a hard truck bed. Since it was so bumpy, i was afraid my new stove would break, which would have defeated my entire trip, so I had to cradle it in my arm like a baby, cushioning it with my legs and dissipating the 'knee bounces' with my body. It's really hard to do when the driver didn't give a crap about us in the back and was speeding and braking like a madman and me trying not to slosh around all over the truck bed. I was just so happy I finally made it back around 9. Damn, if it was America and I needed to get something quick from the store, the furthest I would have to go is maybe across town and I could call on ppl if anything went wrong. It was really scary to think that I had no one to call. Sure I could call Peace Corps, but what can they do? They live in another province. The best they could have done was give me verbal advice..

Well, that was my long ass quest to get a new stove. Picture 3 is of my kitchen. 4 is my mini fridge and the big green thing in the back is what I store water in. 5 is my living room. 6 is my bathroom with the tub that i use for showering. Toilet is flushed with water in the green bucket next to it. 7 is my closet with the missing door. Next time, I'll post pictures of the town.

These 2 pictures are taken with my phone of the 'Face of the Old Man'

mountain in a town called Chimoio, where I visited after xmas. The

first one is at the bottom and the second is of the view after we'd

hiked up his nose.Anyway, topic of conversation today is racism. As I walked around town

today, to the parts where I've never been, along with the usual

staring by everyone I pass, I got called several things that reminded

me of an experience I had in Namaacha that I forgot to write about.

When I say stare, I really mean stare. Everyone I walk pass would dog

me out, and they don't even care if I stare back. And it's not a

smiling stare either. It's straight up mean mugging. It's very weird.

Well, besides that today, there was also a lot of name calling. Like

they'd call me chinesa, chinese, japonesa, japanese, or korean. I

think I must be the first Vietnamese person here cause nobody knows

where it is. On top of that, the damn little kids went up to me and

was like 'ching chang chong chang chong' in a mocking voice to me. Oh

I was so pissed. are you freaking kidding me!? I have not been made

fun of like that since Elementary school, and to be mocked by

children! Well, i guess i shouldn't have been so mad but it was just

so shocking to be made fun of. Most of the time ppl don't even believe

i'm american. You know how when ppl in the states would ask what are

you, i would always respond with vietnamese. Well here, i have to

respond with i'm american, which i totally forgot about the first few

weeks, and ppl here would be like, no really what are you. It's so

hard to fathom that i'm american and i would have to speak english to

prove myself. Well, that's my identity crisis of the day. Just wanted

you to be aware that stereotyping exists here too. There's no escaping

it.

So today was my first day at site. Btw, i'm located right in the middle of mozambique, in the Buzi district of the Sofala province. The river Buzi actually divides our town in half, but i live on the larger and more central part. Many of my students will come from the other side and have to take a raft across. I haven't yet explored too much of the town because it's been raining, but i've had quite a few visitors, and everytime they like to chat right outside my door for like 15 to 30 minutes. Mozambicans are very welcoming. I've had former students, other teachers, and neighbors come by, and they all seem very nice. The town itself is located in the middle of nowhere but is a good size town with a decent market. When peace corps dropped me off with my luggage, we had to get off the main road and drive on this dirt path for like 40 minutes. Nothing but farmland and grass. So much like the texas country, but still beautiful. It was so rediculously hot last night that it was quite difficult for me to sleep, even with the fan blowing on me all night. Thank goodness it started raining and cooled off a bunch today. It felt great to go to the market and buy and cook my own food. Since we're by the river, there are lots of fish, but from what i've seen, the're all small and bony. I'm not adventurous enough to cook it yet, but i also know they sell frozen chicken here. Kind of a bummer since i wanted to kill my own chicken but i'm sure that will come with time. Today i made sauteed vegetables and omelette. Also am glad they sell bananas, apple, and mangos here but i wish there were other fruits. Ok. More later when i've explored more, but so far so good. I'm excited to get started.

November 28, 2009~

So, we got our site placement last week right before Thanksgiving dinner. It was all very exciting because Peace Corps actually let us have a Thanksgiving “dinner”, with turkey and everything! I say “dinner” but since it was Peace Corps, it was actually the day before Thanksgiving and “dinner” was really at 2 PM. We didn’t care though. We were just so happy that it happened at all. I was very impressed by all the different dishes people were able to cook here, even though there are so little to work with. We had all kinds of mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, gravy, all kinds of cookies and cakes, fried pies, and even a key lime pie. For my part, I made chocolate cake from scratch, and it was edible. Yay me! We had classes in the morning, and since we all knew that they would announce our site placement sometime that day, I don’t think anybody’s mind was on the lesson. It was a good thing they announced it right before we ate.

They gave us all envelopes and told us we had to open it all at the same time, and it was like Christmas day when all the kids opened their presents at once. Some kids were ecstatic about what they got, others were disappointed. It was the same for us. Some people were crazy about where they got placed and others not so much. I was pretty happy with my placement, which is in the central region of Mozambique, in the Sofala province, in the district of Buzi. I had really wanted a northern region since I knew that’s where the mountains were, so I was disappointed at first that Buzi is just a flat plain, just like Texas, and just as hot, too, I heard. However, there is a river that runs through the town, and it’s fairly small, which is great because then I can integrate into the community better. It’s fairly interesting to see how our group divides after we’ve learned out site placement. Northern people hung out with each other more, central with central, and south with south. Another good thing about being located central is that all the central people are pretty cool people. Haha… look at me, already taking sides.

Well, so I wrote the first 2 paragraphs a couple of weeks ago, and it is now December 9, 2009. We just had our swearing in ceremony yesterday in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo, and I´m still here waiting on a flight to a supervisor´s conference, where I meet the heads of the school where I´m going to work at, tomorrow, and then off to site we go. I don´t think it´s really hit me, yet, that I´m actually a volunteer now, no longer a trainee. I don´t feel any different. The swearing in ceremony was actually pretty nice since it was held at one of the ambassador’s house, and all types of important people came to give us speeches. Half were in Portuguese, which I didn´t quite appreciate as much since I was so sleepy and kept on zoning out due to lack of mastery of the language, but it was nice nonetheless. The entire ceremony only took about an hour and a half. People made speeches, 2 of our own made thank-you speeches, they called our names, and then we swore to serve the Peace Corps. It was difficult to think that we´d worked so hard for the past 2 months just to have the opportunity to say those words, yet those words only took a couple of seconds to say. I can´t quite put my finger on it, but I felt kind of robbed. Damn. My English is starting to falter now that the Portuguese is kicking in that I can´t even think of the right words to express how I felt. It´s probably not that important, anyway. It was pretty sad to have to say good-bye to everyone afterwards, though, because it felt like this was going to be the last time I see a lot of them for awhile. Like I said, the first 3 months at site, I´m restricted to my hometown except for Christmas or New Years, I have to pick one in order to go visit others. When I said good-bye to my host family, it wasn’t as sad, because I was very excited to be on my own. I did have a long talk with my host mom before leaving though, so I did feel good about that.

It´s strange how they grew on me so much, especially my host mom. Not everything is as meets the eyes as you may think with these Mozambicans. Since my Portuguese improved a lot more since I´ve been here, I´ve been able to have more meaningful conversations with her, and I´ve learned a lot about her family. I truly felt that they cared for me a lot, and it made me happy when I was able to do nice things for them. For instance, I made them cake, which they loved. It´s nice to think that this time next year, if I’m not headed for America, I might go back and visit them.

So, something cool happened to us. One of the U.S. ambassadors came to see us the other day before we swore in. Oh my gosh, I felt so privileged! I mean, this dude had a say in how much money the US put into Mozambique every year and has control of billions of dollars. He meets with the President of Mozambique on a regular basis, and he is basically the State´s main means of communications with this country. During our session, he got a call from the General Manager of some big company that invested billions of dollars into Mozambique, and he declined it for us! I couldn´t help but feel special. He talked about how the US pours billions of dollars into this country every year. Yes, this was exactly what I had been wondering for a long time now, too! I mean, with our huge national deficit, all of our economic problems, and the insufficiencies in states´ budgets, ahem California, I couldn´t understand why we invest about 5 billion (don´t quote me on this but I think that´s what he said) every year in another country. That includes economic investments, not just purely selfless giving away of money, but we do devote millions of dollars into PEPFAR, which is the emergency aids funds that backs tons of anti-AIDS campaigns here. Couldn´t we use this money to help stimulate our own economy and fix our own budget problems? Well, the way the ambassador put it, we are actually being proactive. Poor countries tended to become war-torn countries, which is a breeding ground for terrorism, and it would cost way more to send countermeasures in later than it costs to help the country build its infrastructure now. In addition, he also said that there are quite a few untapped resources in Mozambique and if we could help them develop economically, it would strengthen our economy, as well. Besides, Mozambique is the first African nation to have survived a civil war and is a prime example for other African nations that democracy does work, so it´s in our best interest to promote this nation, to encourage the principles of freedom and liberty to other African nations. Anyway, that´s probably pretty boring to read, so I won´t go on any more about that, but I only wanted to express my feelings at that time. As I was sitting there listening to him speak, I felt validated somehow, like I´m part of this movement to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. What I´m doing is important, and I´m important enough for this man that works for the White House to come and speak to me about my work. He has tons of things to do all day long and important people to meet, yet he took out time from his work to speak to us, to me! Score! That was such a winning moment! Not to mention that guy was an awesome speaker and was so delightfully entertaining.

Now for pictures! I uploaded wrong and the more recent one is at the top and the one from long ago is at the bottom. sorry!

After hiking over 10 miles to the top of the Limpopo Mountain only to be turned back by 2 armed guards with AK´s 20 feet from the top. Grrh!

All the people teaching biology from our group at the Halloween party.

The only asians in this year´s group of 67.

My mae, host mom, and pai, host dad.

All of us fitting into the chapa!

People in my language group and our favorite professor, Candido Macaringue!

Me and my host mom. She´s so cute!

So.. This past weekend our group finally got to leave nam, the town we're training in, to go on site visits, which is when you get to visit a current volunteer at his or her site and see what your future after training is like. This year, peace corps got a lot of funding from Pepfar, an aids foundation, so a lot of the health volunteers got to fly to northern provinces. (I may not have mentioned this before but of the 70 or so volunteers training with me here, half are health workers and half are education, but you don't have to be an education or health major to do either. Many people have humanities background or some bullshit like that so anyone can join as long as you're serious about it.) anyway, the northern area is where you want to go cause it's supposed to be really mountainous and fun..basically anywhere really far from nam in the south is really fun.. But ofcourse with my luck, where did i get placed? Friggin one hour away from nam in the south! Ok.. So i was pretty envious of all the others but i decided to make light of the situation and hoped for the best.. After all, the site was very close to the capital so atleast we got to stop there. I was partnered with another girl and since we were so close, we didn't have to wake our asses up at 4 in the morning to catch a flight. We got to leave at 730 instead. Score!

Anyway, so let me share the good news first.. For those who don't know, people get around their own town mostly by walking. I haven't seen that many bicycles or mopeds but they do exist. Now, how do people get around outside of their town, like from one part of the country to another? Why, in a magical contraption they call a chapa. Remember this word cause i'm going to be describing it once here but mentioning it a lot more throughout my stay in moz since i don't have a car and will be riding chapas for the next 2 years. A chapa is a big van, like one of those white vans that shuttles you to and from the airport, except here they don't include AC and go up to maybe 60 mph? I'm guessing, but don't quote me no that. I just know it's slow. They cram as many ppl as can fit into a seat, and they usually pick passengers up along the way or wait until the car fills up. We didn't have to wait long for ours to fill so i was shoulders to shoulders with the ppl next to me and thank god the dude was wearing some kind of musk or aftershave. Otherwise, can you just imagine the BO if i sat next to someone who didn't wear deodorant? Anyway, the ride wasn't too bad because it wasn't hot and the scenery was awesome. I swear, everytime i get out me our little training town, i get that awed feeling again. Like shit, i'm in friggin mozambique! I'm in africa! It's so gorgeous here and i'm so lucky. Being stuck in training makes me forget that sometime cause i'm just so wrapped up in classes and lessons and stupid stuff like that.. Anyway, we arrived at the capital and net up with our volunteer and i find out that a girl from our group has decided not to finish training and is going home. How sad for her. She must be so miserable to have reached that decision cause when i'd talked to her before training she was so excited about this. How sucky to have to say goodbye to everyone and then return to say you couldn't do it. She's very brave to do that. Anyway, we get to eat burgers for the first time in a month, ofcourse nothin like the states burger but definitely close, and i was enjoying every bit of ground patty as possible. Then we got ice cream and no joke, that ice cream must have been inhaled based on how quickly i finished it. I even got greedy and bought a custard cake for the ride. There was my mistake, as you will find out later, but i should not have been so greedy.

So then we took another chapa to site. This ride was quite interesting. So, apparently, it's very common for ppl to drink on chapas, as long as they're not the driver. This guy in the front seat was drinking a beer, pretty sure not his first by the way he was talking loudly, and my friend and i were sitting in the seat behind him. Next thing we know, some guy jumps off the back of a pick up in front of us as we slowed in traffic and walks towards our chapa with a cattle whip in his hand yelling at the guy in the front seat of my car. This guy yells something back, but i didn't understand, so i thought they knew each other. i was thinking to myself.. how random, ppl here can just jump off a truck in the middle of traffic to say hi to each other.. Well, then another guy from the back of the pick up jumps off, this time with a shovel in his hand, and yet another dude jumped off, this guy with a broken bottle in his hand, all charging at the drunk guy in my chapa. There was a lot of yelling going on and threatening with the farm tools of destruction, but i couldn't decide if this was a joke or if there was seriously going to be a throw down in the middle of the road. Thankfully, traffic picked up and we started moving again and the driver shooed those guys away. I learned later that the drunk guy in my chapa had called those other guys cattle since they were riding in the back of the truck and that's highly insulting. Note to self.. Don't call ppl in the back of pick ups cattle and don't be drunk on the chapa! So back to the good news, we got to eat whatever food we wanted at the site and i got to see the bio exams they gave at her school. We got to watch dvds since she had a tv at her site and we didn't have to ride 9 hours on the chapa like some me the others.

And now.. The bad news. Remember how i was greedy and bought that custard thing? Well, i didn't get a chance to eat it until night time and it must have gone bad or something go my purse cause i got oh so sick that night. I'd made it through a month without diarrhea, but i had to get it during site visit, when i didn't have my medicine with me, when i was staying at someone else's house, when this person was the most uptight person about keeping her house clean, especially her bathroom, and when the bathroom of the site was an indoor bathroom with lousy ventilation and plumbing. Oh my god it was so embarrassing to have to go to her to tell her i had clogged her toilet and was even more embarrassing for her to see my mess. (Plz don't be grossed out. I'm just tryin to keep it real.) Anyway, so the girl showed me the plunger and where to get water to flush the toilet. Yes, my friends, toilets here are just the toilet seat. Most of them don't flush so you have to get the bucket of water to throw into it, but then you also lose the suctioning of the water. Hence, the plunger. That's why i much prefer the latrine since it doesn't require you to flush and it's usually located outdoors where the fresh air ventilates a lot. Back to the volunteer's bathroom at hand.The pipes were so bad there that you have to plunge everytime you poop, and i mean everytime. Guess how many times i had to wake up in the middle of the night to plunge and carry water to flush?! My poor friend.. So, she and i got mattresses and slept in the living room. Too bad she chose the spot right next to the bathroom door.. I bet she got woken up everytime my stomach turned. On top of that, it was rediculously hot there and the guy who was supposed to bring our mosquito nets forgot to, so we used our sheets to cover ourselves up as nets. But then, it got so hot under the damn sheets that we had to open them up to breathe and then the mosquitoes would race to eat us. Man was i miserable.. What with trying to hold it it in but then failing to and the running to the bathroom every couple of hours, the stomach aches, the mosquitoes attacking and me covering myself and then uncoverin myself with the sheet, and the heat.. I think it was my first time thinking to myself.. What have i gotten myself into? Yea. I was so miserable that night. Fortunately, we got nets the next night and i got on the peace corps diarrhea diet the next day so the next night did not require several trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night with the bucket and plunger. It was still hot and i have like 30 mosquito bites all over, but we made it back in tact and i am happy again. That momentary lapse into misery has since subsided, and i don't think the visit was so awful. Ofcourse i'm jealous out of my mind that other ppl's volunteers took them to a resort, the beach, drinking, etc, but ours wasn't too bad. Even though she was just a bit uptight, she was very nice and tried to be as accommodating s possible. After i told her i was sick she was very concerned. She also let me cook some stir fry in her kitchen and i was super happy to be able to cook my own food again, using soy sauce too! Can't wait to get to site and start cooking. Anyway, so that was my weekend.

So.. Funny thing. In the capital, they have very weird names for the streets. All the streets are named after dictators, and not just the mozambican dictators! I walked down rua Mao Ze Dong today and they also have karl marx and john lenin street. Weird huh? Why would africans honor mao ze dong with a street. How do they even know who he is? Food for thought. Until next time!

Ok, so how have I been? What have I been doing with my time? What’s it’s like in Mozambique? Well, we’re entering into the rainy season now, so last week, it rained everyday. I had to walk 20 minutes everyday in the freezing, yes it’s cold, rain to class. When I say freezing, I mean like 60’s (cold for Moz), and when I say rain, I mean that annoying light constant drizzle and not the rain that pours like rope from the roofs, though they say that that kind of rain will come later. I don’t mind the cold. Better cold and rainy than hot and rainy. Less mosquitoes that way. I just don’t like picking up all this mud. Yuck! There are not really paved roads here, so it’s muddy all the time, and my shoes get muddy and yucky so often it’s annoying. I also have to do laundry more often because mud gets on my clothes, but there’s no sun cause it’s always raining, so it’s such a bitch.

My daily life is pretty busy. I get home from school only in time to do homework and eat dinner and then I have to go to bed. The sessions are pretty interesting. This week, we learned about Permaculture in class, which is a technique of farming food in your own backyard. It’s all about maximizing water use on your land and composting to increase efficiency of the soil. I know, it’s so dorky, but a Mozambiquan family can learn this technique and feed themselves without having to go to the store at all. I’m really excited to test this out on my own backyard when I get to site, and I’m even more excited to take it on as a side project to teach it to Mozambiquans. I was talking to my host-mom, who teaches elementary school here, and she says that it’s very difficult to teach her students sometime because they come to class hungry often. Their parents work in the fields, so often times, they leave before the kids get up, which means the kids go to school without breakfast. People are very poor, too, so they just don’t have food. Then they go to school for 5 hours without food! Can you imagine that? The kids at home get breakfast, and then snacks, and then lunch in elementary school while the kids here go without food for hours! It’s no wonder they can’t learn! If a school could just learn this technique, then potentially, they could maybe feed some of the children, and if the families learn this technique, maybe the parents don’t have to go to the fields to work but can farm near their own house! I really hope I don’t lose my zest or memory of how this works, so I really can complete this project later.

Hmmm…. What else? O yea, so Mozambique only has an election every 5 years here, and how lucky is it that I get to be here when they have it? There are 2 parties, Frelimo, and Renamo, but there’s an overwhelming favor for Frelimo, so they’re definitely gonna win. It’s so funny how they vote over here. People still use written ballots, and there are no machines to count, so all the counting is done by people! Yes, that’s right people. And so the results aren’t even known until 15 days later! Oh, and there’s not record of people on the computers. I’m guessing they don’t have ID’s here, so in order for them to know that you’ve voted, they put this permanent ink on your finger that doesn’t wash off for like 2 days. So all these Mozambiquans are walking around with black fingers so that they can’t vote twice. It’s so funny. Over there, we get stickers. Everyone was so excited about the elections, my host family, especially. These people have only had their independence for maybe 20 years, and everyone really wants to take advantage of the fact that they can vote, and a lot of partying goes on afterwards. No one takes it for granted.

It´s so funny. The word that means ´robber here is ninja. So when people yell ninjas here, theyºre talking about robbers. Somebody´s mom was like don´t sit out there because the ninjas can see you, and she meant robber, but it was so funny. Haha… maybe you just had to be there.

Things I miss from home:

My bed.

Soft clothes… when they dry by sunlight, they´re definitely not soft.

Well, I have some homework to do later, so I’m really pressed for time. Maybe a longer update later.

So... first day in my Peace Corps adventures... please excuse the way I write for I have a pretty good buzz going on right now. Some of my fellow PC members and I went down for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and I drank some Heinekens. I have a feeling that our 3 month training is going to be filled with many more drunken nights together. Last night, I got a total of 3 hours of sleep because I had to keep re-packing my bags and weighing them so that I meet the 50 lbs limit, and tonight, I will also get about the same amount of sleep because it's already 10 PM and we're supposed to be out of our hotel by 2:30 AM. I usually wouldn't mind sleeping on the plane, but I hate not having enough sleep because I'd be too tired to talk or communicate the next day, and tomorrow is going to be pretty exciting! We're leaving for Africa! Staging in Philadelphia is such a tease because all we did was talk to other volunteers and get all excited for our adventure, but then we'd have to sit there and endure 5 hours of orientation that doesn't go into enough detail to really teach us anything. I mean, I was so happy and excited to meet and talk to other volunteers, but I didn't like sitting there listening to some guy just introduce us to what's going to happen. The real adventure awaits in Mozambique when we go through our 3 month training. Anyway, our group this year has 66 volunteers, which is a massive amount of people. Hopefully, we'll be able to communicate with each other after training, so that we can still get together even when our service begins. I mean, you think you know the type of pple you're going to meet in the Peace Corps, but when you're actually here and do meet people, it's so different. I love our group and I'm just so excited to begin this new adventure! This is probably going to be my last post for awhile, so wish me luck!