Natal-ification

I never thought that I would say this… but I kind of miss snow!  Ok not really but it does not seem like Christmas time when it is 100 degrees out and rainy and not -10 and snowy.  So I’m not sure I really miss snow or if it is just that I love Christmas time and it sure doesn’t feel like the holiday season as much as my roommate and I try to make it.   Believe me we have tried very very hard to make it seem like the holiday season.  We have been listening to Christmas music since getting to site and watching all the standard Christmas movies (I’ve watched Love Actually only twice this year though… so maybe that’s part of my problem).  Since that wasn’t working we decided that we should decorate, but we don’t have any of the usual Christmas decorations (left my lights in the states and there aren’t many Christmas trees here in Cuamba).  So what were we supposed to do!   Well when dealing with limited resources, you do the best you can… so luckily Sam had chalk, and we decided to draw a Christmas tree on our wall with it!  And when doing something like drawing on the wall… the old adage stands… GO BIG OR GO HOME!  So we gave ourselves a pretty large Christmas tree for the year…. Now the only thing it is missing is lights, I considered attaching candles to it, but decided that was probably more of a fire hazard than lights on a tree. So I didn’t risk it. 

Every kids dream... drawing on walls!

The finished project... feels like christmas!

The next step to our Christmas-ification was cookies!  We made homemade sugar cookies but couldn’t find any powdered sugar so we didn’t have frosting but we found sprinkles at one of the stores in town so we decorated with those.  And of course neither of us had cookie cutters but that was easy to replace with just a knife, although some of our shapes need a little imagination to figure out exactly what they were, but we had your typical, mitten, stocking, santa hat, snowmen, and more.  I even cut out the words HO HO HO.  The cookies turned out pretty well.

Some of our beautiful cookies!

Our final step was cooking a Christmas dinner for our site mates, but only Rich could come and being in Mozambique makes it a little harder to make traditional Christmas dinner foods like ham, so we made our new tradition or Christmas Chicken fajitas, including homemade tortillas.  For desert we made homemade cinnamon rolls which also turned out well but also would have been better with a little powdered sugar frosting.  To make it more Christmas-y we made hot apple cider… which was delicious!  Some of you might know… I love apple things (taste and smell) so this was AMAZING, by far the best thing so far!  Between that and our cinnamon rolls our house smelled delicious and even though it was a weird combination of foods, it was delicious!  And we finished out the night watching Home Alone… such a classic Christmas movie.

Who knew I was such a baker....

Christmas Chicken Fajitas!

To top off the holiday cheer, today while we were at the market, we stopped to look at capulanas and look what I found... 

Now if this doesn't add to my christmas cheer, I don't know what will!  Now I have an awesome Christmas Capulana to wear and to remember my first Christmas in Cuamba! 


Feliz Natal (Merry Christmas) Everyone!

Home (for the next 2 years)

After taking my first in-country flight from Maputo to Nampula, we were taken to the most chique hotel that we’ve stayed in thus far for our supervisors conference.  Here our school sent a representative to get information about PC and to meet each other.  After a few days of this (including once again, a large quantity of great food) we were taken to our sites.  Most people where either driven by PC cars or PC rented out chapas to drive them and all of their stuff to their new homes…. But not us, we got to take the train from Nampula to Cuamba.  Now this wouldn’t have been a big deal in most circumstances but keep mind that each of us had the trunk that PC gave us, a box, our two year bag, and then about 3 other bags/suitcases each.  We also had bought a little toaster oven/stove thing in Nampula to take with us before we knew we were going by comboio (train).  So yes, if you did the math that is about 13 bags/boxes/suitcases that needed to be on the train with us.
In case you are wondering how we got all this on the train, well we took the trunks, boxes, and 2 year bags to the train the night before so they could be put on the next morning and then at 5am we left our hotel with our other 3 bags (each) and the stove and headed to the station with a PC staff member and our school representative.  The day before we had forgotten that we had the stove so there were some issues with this and we ended up having to leave it in Nampula and the PC sent it on the train a few days later.  But everything else worked out and we got on the train.  Now they have recently redone these comboios (trains) and we were put in the Executivo class by PC and this new car was climate controlled (ie air conditioned).  So for the next 11ish hours we were pretty comfortable.  The trip was beautiful but sitting in a train that makes a lot of stops for 11 hours is a very long time, but well worth it because we are now at site!
Finally we arrived in Cuamba, and like any other travel junction it was crazy.  Everyone getting off the train and making sure they get all their stuff ( don´t worry folks, I´m pretty sure we won the most stuff award).  Luckily we have some great site mates (a health volunteer and another education volunteer) and they met us at the train station with a IFP car to take all of our stuff to the IFP.  The IFP is a whopping 7k outside the actual city of cuamba, so once we made that trip (by car it was fine, since then Iºve had the joys of walking it several times) and unloaded our stuff into our new home... we headed across the yard to Rich´s house to enjoy the dinner they had gotten for us and the cake Colin had made!  That was great not to have to worry about food after traveling all day!  Then we headed back home to set up our trusty mosquito nets and unpack a little.
We´ve been at site now for about a week and a half, I´ve survived my first sickness here in cuamba... some sort of stomach bug, Ive learned to always have lots of TP, bread, and other necessities on stock so if both you and your roommate are sick for multiple days and have no energy to make the 7k trip into town you will have enough supplies, we came dangerously close to being out of several things.
Sam and I have made the trip to town about 12 times (there is 1 and back is 2...ect) and have gotten a balea (a ride) about half of those times... pretty good luck so far.  But today we finally bought bikes!  I have to say biking cuts a whole lot of time off the hour walk that it is but it also cuts the chances of us getting a ride.  I think it is worth it, plus it gives me an excuse to get some exercise (and by excuse I mean a reason to do it).   So far I really like it here, minus that it is really really hot!  I am in basically a constant state of sweat, accept for when it rains, which gives us a little break from the heat, but makes it that much harder to get to town.  Cuamba is surrounded by mountains, although I´m pretty sure they are to far away to get to to explore, but Iºm sure in the next 2 years Sam and I will check that fact out!  School doesnºt start for another few months so I have lots of time to plan and explore.  I think this is long enough, so until next time (which I will try to make it more often from now on)

End of Training

A lot happened in the last few weeks of training, we had more language, more tech, model school, the provincial elections, thanksgiving, our host family celebrations and then swearing in!  Lingua (language) and tech were pretty much the same as every other week so I’ll just tell you about escola modela (model school) and all the celebrations we had.
Model school was week 7/8 of training.  We were each assigned a grade and class to teach and then we planned lessons, each English teacher taught 4 or 5 lessons and there were 2 or 3 teachers per class, and then we had to write, administer, and grade a test at the end of all of it.  I was assigned to teach otava (8th grade) and so the other 8th grade teachers and I planned a unit about School subjects and daily routines.
Our students volunteered to come to school for a week during their summer vacation and all they got was a week of English, Math, Physics, and Biology lessons, a notebook, a pen, cookies every day, juice after the test, and a certificate saying that they participated. I’m not sure how many students in the US would give up some of their summer vacation for this… I probably wouldn’t have when I was 12.  Since our students were volunteers, we had a range of ages…  I’m pretty sure we had a legitimate 5 year old and her 6 year old sister in my class, along with about 20 other students ranging from 9-15 probably.  At the end of our class the majority of our students passed and did pretty well on our test.  Overall it was a good week of practice and it felt good to get back into teaching and it was good to see what worked with these students and what didn’t.  Although, I will be teaching a different age and hopefully my students will have a little more English than my students in model school, but at least I’m prepared now if they don’t.
During the week of model school, Mozambique had its provincial elections.  There has been lots of talk about these and about possible violence during them.  Luckily nothing happened near me and there really was not a whole lot throughout Mozambique during the day of the elections or after they announced the winners, but don’t worry my dear readers, Peace Corps took every precaution and had us basically on lockdown and we weren’t supposed to leave our houses and had a bag packed, just in case we had to leave quickly.  Luckily, none of that was really necessary.
After model school, it was time for Thanksgiving.  All of Moz 21 helped cook different dishes and then we had one big feast at the PC Office in Namaacha.  I was in the group that made green bean casserole, and let me just say, cooking in Mozambique takes a long long time.  As a standard, many of the different dishes including the 5 turkeys were about a half hour late.  But it was all delicious.  We had some of the best turkey I have ever had, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cheesy mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn bread, pecan and pumpkin pie, ice cream, and probably more, but that’s all I can remember now.  Let me just say that after eating Mozambican food for the last 8 weeks, it was good to have some American food and it made it feel a lot more like Thanksgiving.  We all stuffed ourselves in true American-Thanksgiving fashion (probably more so) and many people got a little sick after all the food.
Two days later we had our host family celebrations.  They Maes (host moms) really pulled out all the stops for this meal.  They started cooking super early in the morning and made a lot of great food!  I participated in some traditional dancing that I had been learning throughout training and we performed with some Mozambican women at the beginning of the ceremony.  Then all the families were recognized and received a certificate, and then we all ate lots of food.
Finally we packed up all of our stuff and sent it off to Maputo, and we followed it a day later to swear in as official Peace Corps Volunteers.  Every year the group gets capulanas (basically big things of fabric, used for everything here: carrying a baby, blankets, cleaning, a towel, decorations, and clothes) and has them made into clothes for the swear-in ceremony.  I had a dress made out of it, and we also got ties made for the ambassador as well as our country director.  The swear-in ceremony was held at the U.S. Ambassadors house and we had to take an oath, similar to the one that soldiers take, with a few exceptions.  After Swearing-in we were official Peace Corps Volunteers and would be heading out to different parts of the country the next day.  We were put up in a nice hotel in Maputo and had most of the day to eat good food!  Then the next morning those of us going up to the Northern provinces and the central ones were picked up to go to the airport and get our respective flights either to Nampula or Manica where we would be having a few days of conferences and then heading out to our sites for the next two years!

So that is what you missed in the last few weeks of my PST experience!  Now for the exciting stuff... VOLUNTEER LIFE!