Destination: Nacuxa, Nampula

Found out my site placement for the rest of my 2 years of service…I will be heading up north to the province of Nampula. My site is in Nacuxa (pronounced Na-cush-a) and is pretty close to some beautiful beaches! I’m opening up this new education site but thankfully there is already a Moz 18 health volunteer, Anna, there that I will be living with. We will be living on the school grounds in a cement house that has an indoor bathroom and running water occasionally. The secondary school is run by a Priest and a few nuns that also live there—it will be nice to not have to walk very far to go to church on Sundays since I’ll be living right across from the chapel!

I will be teaching English and ITC (a computer/technology class)—I’m glad I have some practice helping my grandma "sittee" with her computer  I’m really excited and anxious to be teaching at a secondary school…I think it will be really good experience but I’m used to 3^{rd graders so there will definitely be some things I need to adjust. The school I will be teaching at is an agricultural/technical school and only has about 300 students. Since it’s a smaller school I think the class sizes will be smaller—hopefully not more than 50! I am nervous for teaching ITC because that will all be in Portuguese! I don’t yet feel confident in my Portuguese knowledge to teach a class about computers…I’m going to try and learn a lot of the computer/technology vocab before I leave PST! (I’m also really hoping my school has computers…it would be very difficult to teach an ITC class without computers to look at and practice on but it is very possible that could happen). Hopefully by the time school starts in late January I’ll be able to talk about computers in Portuguese!}

From what I have heard about the site it is really beautiful and also rural. Anna, the volunteer already living there, did give me a heads up and told me that you cannot buy toilet paper anywhere in our town. I’m definitely going to stock up before I leave for site on that! There is a bigger city about 45 minutes away from Nacuxa that has real supermarkets where you can buy toilet paper and all the other fruits and vegetables you can’t get at site. It will definitely be nice to be so close to a bigger city where I can buy some staple items for my house and for meals. I did find out that our school has a giant mango tree in the middle of the grounds—I’m so excited to be able to go outside and pick a mango to eat for breakfast!

Next week we are celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday with all the volunteers, PC staff and LCFS (language teachers). We were even able to get 10 turkeys for all of us and are making tons of other good American comfort foods! I’m really excited to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving here with all the other volunteers before we leave for sites.

This week we have model school at the secondary school in the mornings. I’m teaching a 9th grade English class, thankfully it won’t be bad since I can talk all in English!Sunday I went to Mass in the morning then walked to the waterfalls with some friends. The waterfalls were beautiful—I took lots of pictures and once I find my camera cord I will definitely upload them!

"We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something." ~Mother Teresa

My friend Anna, another PCV, let me borrow an interesting book on Mozambique and this quote was on one of the pages. I loved it and wanted to share it with you all-- Enjoy this week!

Updates:
-New address for when I move to site in December:
Corpo da Paz (Peace Corps)
Rua Dar-Es Salam No. 14,
P.O. Box 526
Nampula, Mozambique

-I love to eat chicken…even after I have killed it but I just cannot get down with eating the chicken’s foot…there’s just something about it that I can’t make myself eat it. My host mom got a good laugh at that when I was trying to explain why I hadn’t eaten the foot for lunch!

-Voluntarily took a bath in the middle of the day with cold water just so I would stop sweating and cool down for a few minutes. I’m worried about going to site because right now I’m in the mountains where it is much cooler…Nacuxa is VERY hot! I think my first purchase when I get to site will be a fan (and toilet paper)!

-Love running in the mornings here! Usually not too many people are awake/out yet…and therefore do not get stared at or called malungu ("white person") by everyone. Somehow I could never wake up early in the United States to work out but here I get up everyday without an alarm clock at 5am or earlier…I guess it could have something to do with me going to bed at 9pm all the time!

-Have had to sneak bananas into my house too many times to count since I’ve been at my new home stay. The first time I bought some my sister made us hide them at the back door and then walk through the front door and sneakily get them through the other door later. I still can’t figure out why I’m hiding the bananas I just know that I can’t show them to my host mom or throw the trash away at my house. (Yes I know how weird it sounds to say I’m hiding my bananas and taking my trash to a friend’s house…)

-During language class this week a woman selling ice cream walked past our class and our amazing LCF let us take a break and go buy an ice cream cone for 10mets (which isn’t even 50 cents in America—pretty dang cheap ice cream!)

-Only 2 weeks left in Namaacha then I’ll be flying north to Nacuxa! Time has flown by so far…