Happiness

Nacucha has been crazy this last week so I’m sorry for how long it’s taken me to write another post. There were some sleepless nights this week after we got Watson, our puppy. After a few days of him whining literally all night long and Pepa, his mom, trying to break down our door to steal him back we decided it would be best for everyone if he spent more time with his mom and the other puppies. He’s back with the other puppies for now and when he gets a bit bigger we’ll readopt him and hopefully the nights won’t be so hard when he’s older.

Life has been busy and hectic but it’s finally starting to feel like I’m integrated and am making Nacucha my home away from home. When I walk to the market all the crianças that I’ve seen at the school scream Maggie instead of white person so that’s progress. :) Some of my students (and other students I’ve never met before) say hello teacher Maggie and ask to speak in English. I still need to work on finding Mozambican friends outside of the school but I’m working on it.

I love my English classes at the primary school. I only have around 10-20 students every class but they all are very motivated and well behaved. Since only 5 kids showed up yesterday I gave them all a grape scented sticker for speaking so well in English. They were amazed that the sticker really smelled good and kept yelling uva! uva!  :) I’m not sure when I’ll be able to teach at the primary school after this week because we’re starting new modules and getting a new schedule. Hopefully, with the new schedule I’ll have Fridays off and won’t be teaching 8^th grade informatica! I’m pretty excited for next week to start new classes.

We had our first official REDES meeting this Wednesday after classes and it went way better than we expected. We had 26 girls show up—which is awesome for a REDES group. We played a game to introduce everyone and discussed some rules and topic ideas for the meetings. I’m still not confident speaking Portuguese in front of a big group of people outside of class so Anna did most of the talking at the meeting, which was really nice. However, the girls wanted one of the rules to be that I need to speak more Portuguese and at the next meeting only I will talk. It won’t be too hard now to speak Portuguese at the meetings because they asked Anna and I not to speak English to each other during meetings because they wouldn’t be able to understand. I completely agree with that rule but it cane be difficult when I have literally no idea what someone just said. For example, when we were talking about ideas for what they want to do at meetings they said things like dance, cook, learn English, workout, etc. They already decided that at the next meeting I’m teaching them how to make capulana flowers. I’m pretty excited for that! As we were talking about topics to do one girl said “Maggie, você precisa diminuir e se parecem mais com Anna”…I swear I thought I heard her say amendoim so I was quite confused. Of course Anna couldn’t tell me that no she wasn’t talking about peanuts she was saying you need to diminish…as in lose weight and be skinner. So I stood there staring as she got up and used her hands to show me how I need to slim down. Oh Mozambique…honestly it wasn’t even surprising to hear it—one of the professors keeps telling me I need to run more so I can look more like Anna and not engordar or get fat. The students here don’t find any topic awkward or weird to talk about which is really different from what I’m used to. I’m finally getting used to telling people—yes I want to lose weight, no I don’t want to get fat, yes I will work out and thanks for telling me. (I feel like after reading this you probably think I've gained 50 lbs...that's not the case. However, I'll be the first to admit my diet in Nacucha is not well balanced. It's mostly bread, peanut butter, eggs and yogurt...Mozambique just gets on my case since Anna and I are clearly not the same size and they think we should be. After these care packages it might be a different story though.) :) If only they could see me doing a Jillian Michael workout video in my house—they would think I went crazy and laugh at me for doing weird things.

After that talk yesterday I had every intention of working out this afternoon after classes finished…but that didn’t happen. Padre Eugenio drove up to my house and he had remembered (without me asking) to get my packages at the Peace Corps office. I thought I only had 1 and was shocked when more were in the car. Instead of working out I unpacked and organized but I haven’t eaten any junk food yet so that’s a positive, right? I’m excited to start my English club and have students read the magazines and books in English that my dad sent. And of course I’m very excited to be able to bake chocolate chip muffins and pancakes thanks to my wonderful family for the care packages :) I’m sharing so hopefully I don’t engordar too much. 

Life is still full of surprises and lots of miscommunications but I feel like I’m finally making this my home. I’m doing projects outside of school that I enjoy and that is making me much happier. 90 days until I’ll be home!

Anna and I are off to Monapo this weekend to visit some other PCVs who live there (one of them, Leah, is from Nebraska too!) and get a dress made out of a capulana. I’m really excited to visit other PCVs and get out of site for the weekend. Plus we’ll be able to go shopping for fruit and veggies—I might buy a bagful of bananas since I haven’t had them in months! So excited :)

Watson

Welcome to our family, Watson! :) 

More blog posts to come this week....

Surprises in Nacucha

Life in Nacucha is always full of surprises. For example, I usually find out about meetings a few days after the fact. I’m sure the other professors must wonder why I don’t come to half the meetings…oops. I need to figure out how to be more in the loop with meetings and my school administration. I’m not sure how I’ll do that but I better figure it out soon.

I went over to the primary school again this week to talk with my friend Cristina, one of the 3^rd grade teachers. While I was waiting for her I found Irma Rita and was talking to her about the English classes. She asked if I would be interested in helping out—I of course said yes. So starting this week I’ll be teaching English to the 6^th and 7^th grade classes Mondays-Wednesday for an hour each day. I’m so excited to be teaching at a primary school again—and I don’t have to give any tests so it’ll be a fun hour of English classes each week :) I’m hoping the students understand my Portuguese and don’t speak just Makua. I guess we’ll see how it goes on Monday afternoon.

Friday we had no classes because the amendoim (peanuts) were ready to be picked out of the farms. Of course farming comes first at the agriculture school so even though we only have a week left to get grades down we didn’t have class on Friday. I think Irma Tassy wanted me to go to the farm with the students and pick peanuts. I ended up doing work and didn’t get out to the machamba. I did get a lot done on Friday though! I planned almost all my lessons for next week, organized my binders with all the students’ tests and worked on my application for the community library project. I still have a lot to do for the application that’s due Friday but I’ve made quite a bit of progress talking to people getting the information I need. And I think I made a nice Mozambican friend at site finally so I’m happy about that :)

 This week I’ll be busy doing my application, grading all the tests for the end of the semester, teaching at the primary school, having a REDES meeting and dreaming about being home in August! It’s almost in the single digits—so, so excited for my Kristina’s wedding and to see everyone!