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 8th
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 :)
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