Life in a Lappa

The Sounds of Life

2011-02-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

One thing that I have really learned to appreciate about Liberia are the simple sounds that make life so interesting. Our neighbors have a generator ( Liberia has no power source, so all energy in the country is produced from generators)and unfortunately it is very loud, but for the last week it has not been running, and i have had the chance to listen to everything around me. Starting at around 4 in the morning some of the neighbors begin to chop wood, at first the sound awakens me, but within a few minutes the consistent sound sends me back to sleep. Around 6 I can hear the distant beat of a drum and the buzz of the insects all around which is actually quite relaxing. As I try to pull myself out out of bed i can hear the neighbors pound the cassava so that they will have GB( almost like a paste made from boiled cassava then pounded) to eat for lunch. Then soon the neighborhood is full of noise, the radios come on, children are singing at the water pump, there are shouts and buzzes from the soccer games that constantly fill our front yard, and the constant sound of motorcycles buzzing past and honking the horn. As the sun sets things slowly settle down and the buzz of insects once again take over.
School started last week which has been quite interesting. My students who are in grades 10-12 have difficulties identifying the subject and the verbs in sentences, so I think that it is going to be a challenge teaching them how to write compositions over the next 6 months. As I was coming to use the internet today I had a wonderful old man as me if I was Peace Corps and he followed up by saying that he wanted to congratulate me because he has always loved Peace Corps and he is so happy to see us back in Sanniquellie.
This past weekend I had to go to the next town to go to the bank( we only have 1 in our county). On the journey there are check points that all public transport must go through, being that our taxi was overloaded, like all taxis are we had to pay what the driver referred to as a "service fee." This service fee is actually a bribe paid to the police so that the driver does not get a ticket for having an overloaded car. There was a small argument between the driver and the officer and the last comment from the officer basically summed up so much of the goings on in Africa. As the officer is taking the bribe from the driver he says "Don't try and condemn our government." Oh the joys of people abusing power! To end on a more positive note, when the principal introduced me to the students they were literally jumping up and down because they have a teacher who is from America.

Sanniquellie

2011-01-25T06:24:00.000-08:00

Sanniquellie is my new home! I am currently living in a "city" in northeastern Liberia. I say "city" because it is the county capitol, but it has more of a village feel. The citizens say that it is huge, but it doesnt seem so to me, but I love the village feel so I am very content. Sanniquellie is the home of the Organization of African Unity. I have yet to start teaching, but the past week and a half has given me a lot of time to go out and explore the town. I live in a neighborhood that is about a 20-25 minute walk from the main road, so i have made a lot of friends along the way. There are a few ladies who are giving it their best to try and teach me Mano (one of the two local languages). My subpar skills have made me quite a few friends at the local market. As I was walking to the market the other day I started keeping track of all of the things that people shouted at me along the way " White man, white woman, friend, Kau( the name given to me in Mano) man, woman, and friend. There have been numerous people who have approached Katherine( my roommate) and I to introduce themselves to us, and many of them have expressed their happiness that Peace Corps in finally back in Sanniquellie, one man even told us that it was announced on the radio in Monrovia.
My house is HUGE it has 4 bedrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. Katherine and I have closed off 3 bedrooms( yes we share a room due to the fact that our neighbors generator is so loud you cant sleep in 2 of them, and the other is only accessible from the outside) and the kitchen. There is no running water or electricity, so the days are kind of short, I am normally in bed by 9pm. Everything is going great so far, the village is beautiful and the the town is wonderful! I hope you all are well
Lindsay :)

One year, one month, and one day later

2011-01-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

One year, one month, and one day after my arrival in the States I am getting ready to leave again. My next journey will lead me to the west African nation of Liberia. Liberia was settled by freed slaves from America and is one of only a few African nations that was never colonized. Liberia has a very interesting past and I am thrilled to learn the way of life in a new nation. Once again I will be teaching English in a secondary school, but this experience should be a little different, as English is the national language of Liberia. I am not sure if I will be teaching literature, or grammar or what, but I am very excited for the opportunity to live and learn in Liberia. I will update as much as possible, but at this point I am not sure what Internet availability will be like. If anyone has questions feel free to ask

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page

The title needs an update

2010-12-06T15:15:00.000-08:00

No idea if anyone ever looks at this anymore being that Iam back stateside, but if so....I will be goin to Liberia for the next 6 months, so some updates will be coming soon
:)

1 month 1 day!

2009-10-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

just one month and one day until i am done with peace corps! as excited as i am to be done i am getting terribly sad to leave. my trip home was amazing! it was so wonderful to see everyone. while i was there my great aunt and uncle dory and rube gave me some jewlery to bring back to the kids, and as i was crossing the border i had a nice little argument with the border gaurd because he was sure that i was going to come back here to sell it, when i told him that it was for my students he said that if i was a teacher that i would know to bring books back, and i said that next time if he wants to carry 350 books for me that i will bring them, that seemed to shut him up and he put my bag right back in the car. last weeek we had our last teachers day celebration which was really fun, just a day of hanging out with our colleagues and dancing, and other than that not too much exciting has happened. love and miss you all! see you in a few weeks
linds :)

2009-06-04T00:29:00.000-07:00

Oi! I know that this has been a long time coming…. I have been pretty bad at keeping in contact lately, sorry! It is just that everything in my life here has become so “normal” so the stories that I used to think were interesting, are no longer news, and therefore I have been lacking creativity and motivation to write anything. I cant remember what I wrote in my last short little message, but I am writing this from home where I have no internet, so if anything is a repeat , my apologies. The trip that I took in April was about much more amazing than I can even begin to explain, but I will try (I am going to try to put some pics up on webshots, so check it out too!) I started out the trip with a (sorry about the negative attitude) horrible bus trip from Chimoio to Maputo. The bus left early in the morning…. And is supposed to take gasp….17 hours. Not something that I was terribly excited to do. We ended up getting stopped a few times because they thought that the bus had human cargo… hmmm obviously being a passenger bus we would have human cargo, but the police thought that there were people in the bags on top of the bus and almost made the workers unpack everything, it was kind of crazy. When we were about 4 hours from Maputo the bus broke down in some tiny little village that had no energy when we arrived. Being the drama queen that I am I started crying because my bus from Maputo to Pretoria was leaving at 7 am the next morning, and they said that we would not get there until 11. As I am bawling my eyes out ( strange enough that I am the only muzungu in the village, but I am crying, which is very rarely seen in Mozambique) this darling old woman tries to comfort me in broken English because she didn’t realize that I spoke English, very cute and sweet of her. I somehow made it to my bus and arrived in Pretoria. I went bowling in the largest mall in Africa, and got a whopping 93! Pretty impressive huh? I guess that’s what happens when you don’t bowl for a while, but its not like I was ever any good to begin with. We took a day driving from Pretoria to Botswana, and on the way almost ran out of gas so we had to stop at some house in a tiny tiny village and ask to buy gas from them, you always know you are getting quality products when they come out of a plastic bottle, but the family was so sweet, so it actually turned out to be a pretty neat experience. Botswana was so different from Mozambique because there was wildlife everywhere, TONS of baboons and even a few wild ostriches. Namibia was one of the most beautiful countries I have seen. There are sand dunes everywhere, and they are absolutely beautiful. I went sandboarding while there, and if you ever get the chance I would suggest it, but the time it takes to walk up the dune( no lifts because it is a protected area) may or may not be worth the 3 seconds that it takes to board down the dune. Sossusvlei is beautiful, the dunes where giant and unfortunately I don’t have the words to explain it. We also saw more wild ostriches and a bunch of hoofed animals(springbok, Impala, blesbok, gemsbok and kudu) which by comparison make they lovely white-tailed deer in American very boring. Namibia is also home to the Himba people, who are believed to be the most traditional tribe remaining in Africa. The women still go totally topless, and they cover them selves with a brown mud-like mixture which is apparently to help keep them young looking, it was beautiful. Driving the the Zambian boarder we saw an elephant right on the side of the road, probably about 10 feet from our car, and of course TONS of baboons and warthogs too. We also managed to spend a few days in Livingstone Zambia. Victoria Falls was amazing. Apparently the falls are at the largest capacity that they have been in recent history, so if there was even the slightest breeze you could not seen the falls because of the vast amount of water pouring over, but it was increadible! There is a bridge over the river that I would guess is between 50-75 yards from the falls, and walking over it was astounding! It was so loud that you could not hear the person walking next to you, and when you finally crossed over the bridge it looked as though you had just gotten out of the shower, and I was wearing a poncho! Hopefully the pictures will be up soon!
Here starts an unrelated story, so if you are tired of reading this might be a good place to stop
Carrie and I have this wonderful student, Helio, who basically does all of our gardening because he just seems to have some inate ability to do so. He bothered us all year last year to visit his house so a few weeks ago we finally went…and I am trememdously excited that we did. He lives in a village smaller than Catandica called Nhamatama, located about half way between Catandica and Chimoio. When I say a small village I mean SMALL. There are about 12 little stores that all sell the same thing( sugar, margarine, salt, oil…..) and they have a school that has grades 1-7. Its pretty tiny. When we got off the chapa he took us on a “tour” which took all of about 5 minutues, but he was so proud to have us there. His house is about a 30 minute walk away from the highway in the middle of the bush. Part way there Helio yelled something in dialect that we didn’t understand, and he told us that he was asking for permission to cross the stream, because the place where we were going to cross was the place where women take baths, so for men to cross they have to first ask permission. When we first arrived things were pretty awkward. First of all there are 27 people who live at his house. When I say house, it is more of a compound that consists of about 15-20 structrues that range from houses, to kitchens, to chicken coops, goat corals, cow corals you name it . His father has 2 wives who live at this compound, and one more who lives somewhere else, but we did not get the chance to meet her. There were so many people that it was impossible to keep them straight. He has 3 brothers from the same mother, all of whom have wives( 1 or 2) and children. There were so many women and children, it was quite overwhelming. The entire time that we were there Carrie and I were the only females who sat on chairs, all of the other women sat on straw mats on the ground. Also none of the women or children speak Portuguese, and the 15 words that we know in dialect don’t get a person very far in conversation. Helio also told us that it was the first time that any of the kids had seen a muzungu, and surprisingly we didn’t manage to make any of them cry! A real success! The children(especially the female children) are extremely respectful of their elders. When they greet someone they bow slightly, bend their knees 3 or 4 times, and do a cupped hand clap as a sign of respect. I felt like we had walked onto the set of a movie. When it was time to eat lunch Carrie, Helio and I were served first and we sat at a table by ourselves while the others sat and watched until their food was ready. We were served xima ( ground corn flour, cooked with water and salt) and eggs. When everyone else ate the father at a table by himself, all of the men and boys ate at a table, and all of the women and girls sat on the ground. They all ate from community bowls and everything was shared. They ate xima and an okra sauce. After lunch when we asked if there was anything that we could to do help clean up they laughed at us like it was a crazy thing for us to even offer. They did let us help de-cob ( take the kernels off the cob, not sure if it is called de-cobbing or what) corn to make more flour. It was kind of embarrassing when the 4 and 5 year olds were doing it twice as fast as we were, and ended up getting 2 pretty big blisters on each of my thumbs and they ladies were quite concerned that I was not going to be able to pilar( pound the kernels to flour) when I got home. Little do they know that I have only pillared once in all of my time in Mozambique. Before and after dinner we sat around a fire and talked to the men, because unfortunately none of the women speak portugues as I mentioned. There was one girl who showed up a little later who spoke Portugues, and when she told us that she had studied until 7th grade she was so proud. It really made me realize how lucky I was to be born in a country where women have equal rights. We were talking to one of Helios brothers who has 4 children, and Carrie asked how many children he wanted and he said “muitos” (many) and when she asked why he wanted many children he said it was because there was so much land that was suitable to be farmed and that they needed more people to work on the farm…kind of a sad reason to have children isn’t it? When bed time finally rolled around about 9 o’clock I got a little scared, I had known what was coming all day, but when I was actually getting ready to go to bed, reality set in. We were going to be sleeping under a circular structure that was about 12 feel high and maybe about 20 feet across. In the middle was a pidegon coop that was raised about 5 and a half feet off the ground, and carrie and I were going to be sleeping on the edge of this structure, that’s right no walls, just a grass roof… and let me tell you it gets cold, at least cold enough that at 7am I could still see my breath. I slept about a total of 3 hours because carrie being the darling that she is said that I could have the inside closer to the fire, but little did either of us know that closer to the fire is where all of the goats and dogs like to gather and night, and the fire caused their shadows to look like a cougar( ya I know they don’t exist here) and needless to say, I didn’t sleep much….at about 5.30 we were woken by roosters crowing and turkeys gobbling. Definatly not the best night sleep that I have ever had, but it was certainly worth the experience. As we were getting ready to leave his family presented us with a gift of a turkey to say thank you for visiting. We really didn’t want to accecpt it, because it clearly would have been of more use to a household that has to feed 27 mouths, but it is particularly rude not to accept gifts here.
And that’s about it (hahaha…I know is really long…sorry) for now. Maybe a couple more funny( at least in my mind) stories. One of my over achieving students is reading a copy of Alice in Wonderland, and the other day he asked me how to saw tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum in Portuguese, because he couldn’t find it in the dictionary. I was writing on the board today and all of the sudden all of my students started laughing and I asked what the problem was and one of the girls told me that one of my students was crazy for me…isn’t that every teacher wants to hear. I then had to students named Koudra and Claudio who asked me if I could start calling them Stephan and Klauss in English class….strange little kids. Love and miss you all! Less than 6 Months until I am done!!!
Linds :)

long time!

2009-05-11T01:31:00.000-07:00

sorry i know is been a long time.....i guess i have just been pretty busy, well kinda. at the beginning of april i went on an AMAZING trip to south africa, botswana, namibia, and zambia. it was absolutly fantastic, unforutnatly i am having trouble putting pics up because most of the computer places wont let me use a flash! boo. but it was a great trip... i went to soussvlei...home of the largest sand dunes in the world and it was breath taking, victoria falls was like being in the most crazy thunderstorm of my life...it was amazing..sorry not much time to write. love and miss you...its getting cold her finally....72...hahah i am a wimp...see you in december!

fine.....

2009-03-27T04:35:00.000-07:00

so things here are going awesome...... just finished my 1 trimester of the last year of being a teacher and i am pretty excited about it. in about a weeek i am leaving for a trip that shoudl prove to be pretty darn fun...south africa, botswana, namibia and zambia...too bad that i cant go to zimbabwe. but things are good. i am learning to play african style drums, so when i get home hopefullly we can have some awesome campfire jam sessions...i aslo just found out about 10 minutes ago that i will oficially be done with peace corps on 20 november....that means after a short trip around eastern africa i should be home mid january or something like that...not really sure yet. i dont know anything exciting to tell.... if you have any questions just ask.... love and miss you all!

2009-03-14T02:39:00.001-07:00

if anyone still reads these let me know because i am running out of thigns to write

2009-02-09T01:04:00.000-08:00

hi everyone! so school is finally starting again, and i am kind of excite to have something to do again. i am going to be teaching my same students as last year, and i dont really know how i feel about that. on the first day of class i went in and had one class get up and start cheering, and another class that literally moaned when i walked in the class room. made me laugh. carrie and i made the schedules this year, and we are extermely lucky and are only working in the class room tuesday,wednesday and thursday. i am very excited about that! last week one of my favorite students came over, and he was really concerned about something, so we sat down and started talking, and he was telling me how he thinks that he had a curse put on him. he said that everyone else in his family had stopped studying after 7th grade, and that they are all angry and dont understand why he wants to keep studying, so someone in his family went to the witch doctor and had a curse put on him so that he would become crazy. i was trying to explain to him that i dont belive in the witch doctor, while at the same time trying not to make him feel bad, and it was really hard. he went to the traditional healer, and apparently got some medication so that he wouldnt beocome crazy. but i found it so hard to believe that one of my best and smartest students believes in it. i guess that i had always thought that well educated and intelligent people were "above it" for some reason. when he came to my house he was terrified. other random stories....walking home from the market a few days ago we had a ton of amazingly cute little kids come running up to us with cement powder all over their faces saying that they were muzungu like us because they thought that they looked white... we have 5 watermelon growing in our front yard and i am so excited for the to ripen that i can hardly wait... i kind of love mozambique...and i love and miss you all!
linds :)

Finally!

2009-01-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

so i have finally made it to the less than 11 months to go mark, and it is kind of a weird feeling. looking back it seems crazy to think that i have been gone so long, but it seems like it went by in a flash. i am very excited to to be back in mozambique,and so happy to see everyone that i missed over the holidays. school starts again in a few weeks, and i am not quite as excited about that, but i am looking forward to starting some new groups and projects. not too much exciting going on. just wanted to say hi! love you!
linds :)

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-23T00:29:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, although it certainly doesnt feel like christmas to me when it is over 80 outside...oops sorry that wasnt very nice to all of you who happen to be dealing with the snow. I hope that everything is going well back stateside. life in africa has been of eventful. after spending about a week in maputo(the capital of mozambique) i went to Swazliand to Hlane game reserve, and it was FANTASTIC! even though i had been living in africa for over a year the only thing i had seen was a baboon, but at the game reserve i saw crocs, hippos, rhinos, zebras, giraffes,warthogs,impala,elephants,lions, and dung beetles.it was amazing. the elephants were so close to the truck that i honestly was scared for a bit,they are HUGE! both nights that i was there we had massive thunderstorms, with lions roaring...just a little african touch. unfortunatly i dont have any pictures because my camera was stolen again. Also in swazi i went to the incwala cermony. it is basically the first fruits ceremony where the king eats the first fruits of the harvest, therefore giving the rest of the popluation permission to enjoy the harvest as well.very very interesting...the kind has 13 wives! after swazi i went to durban south africa, but left rather quick like because i am still not a real fan of cities. i then headed to a place called coffee bay and hung out at the beach for a few days. after coffee bay i went to east london where i got to spend some days with my wonderful friend amanda. i stayed with her family for a few nights and it was fantastic. not too much exciting happening now...hanging out in pertoria for christmas, and then back to mozambique in january. love and miss you all!

ohh ya my phone number here is 0797327879
i think you have to dail 02779327879 or maybe 002779327879, not sure...that is my south africa number, so i will have it until the end of december/early jan!

back again

2008-12-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

hello hello...back again! so my life in mozambique has been pretty exciting for the past few weeks, not really, but more exciting than normal. lets see...we had some kids threaten that they were going to the witch doctor to have a spell put on us because we stole their soccer ball after they continually kicked it in our yard, and the threat was rather entertaining because all of the neighbors were really worried. i was on holidays for a little while, and was unfortunatly bitten by a dog, and had to be flown to maputo(the capital) for rabies shots, thank goodness we had already been vacinated because i am not sure how well i would have dealt with shots for 21 days. it is so crazy being in the city as compared to my life in the bush, there are resturants and grocery stores...its kinda weird. and some places even have christmas decorations up! so i guess things really havent been that excting... just wanted to check in and say hi! love and miss you all!

lots of love from mozambique!

2008-10-31T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hi again! I am done with my duties as a teacher…I am officially half way done with my teaching career! Life is moving along rather quickly right now, our house has been a parade of visitors lately so things have been exciting. A few random stories from the past weeks. We had the Mozambican equlivant of senior prom and it was pretty fun, the students “waltzed”, but it was more like all of the most dramatic parts of a waltz in a few seconds and they just repeated it a few times, but it was pretty cute. There should be some pictures on webshots if you are interested. The other day I was telling one of my students about winters in south Dakota and how children like to build snow forts and snow men and all of those other types of fun things, and right before we finished talking he asked if these snowmen could walk. The idea of making a “person” from snow was so far fetched for him, but it was really cute. Not sure if I have mentioned this before, but I have become a little bit of a liar here, and I told all of my students and the neighborhood kids that jackie chan is my father, and they think it is the coolest thing ever. But everytime a white guy comes to our house they first ask if he is one of our husbands, and then they ask if it is Jackie chan. Or when I ask them what my name is they say dona Cecilia Jackie chan. They also asked if all of the people in Jackie chan movies actually die or not, I guess that they don’t totally understand that they are movies and not real life things. Went to the market to buy food today and stopped to talk to this lady we know, she might have had a bit to drink, but as she was explaining some things to us she was patting my boobs like you would pat someone on the shoulder and thought absolutely nothing of it, it took just about everything in me not to burst out laughing in her face. Hope you are all preparing for the upcoming cold months, we are almost finished with the really hot stuff, just waiting for the ultra exciting rainy season to start. Rain 7 days a week…cant wait! Lots of love!
Linds J

2008-10-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

Ola! Everything is going well here in Catandica, finally finished my classes for the year so now all that I have left to do is what we call conselhos de notas, which is when all the teachers get together and they try and make you give students higher grades, kind of annoying, but if you aren’t there they might just go ahead and change grades, but that is a couple day process and then I am done. We went to the beach a few weeks ago,and it was amazing, minus the fact that I fell asleep reading on the beach, this made the ride home one of the more unpleasant experiences in my life. I loved the beach before coming here, but going to beaches with next to no development is amazing, we walked along the beach for 2 hours and the only thing we saw was a small fishing village with less than 100 people. It was BEAUTIFUL! Not too much exciting has been going on. Although we did get a helicopter fly-by hello from some of our friends, and then the kids were asking if we saw the helicopter. Last week we had a huge thunderstorm for about 2-3 hours, the energy went out and it was one of the coolest storms that I have ever seen. Normally I might be kind of crabby about the energy going out,but I was quite pleased this time. 12 October was Dia dos Professores- Teachers Day, and I think that teachers in America deserve this day too. The day started off amazing when my best friends ( boys ranging in age from about 4-14, whose father is a witch doctor) brought me ripe mangoes! Starting the day with ripe mangoes, nothing gets any better! We had a party at our school where the students served us chicken, salad, potatoes, and beer. It was pretty fun, a little bit weird to have students serving beer, but some of the other teachers were so drunk they could hardly dance, so I didn’t feel too bad. By the end of the night all of the teachers were dancing and the students loved it. I think that it is the goal of a lot of students and teachers to get carrie and I to dance, because when we do they go crazy. On Monday I presented certificates to the students who participated in English theatre, all of the students who were there happened to be boys, and thought that rather than shake hands that it would be appropriate to do the kiss on each cheek thing, and after every student the other students had a lot of fun cheering,it was kind of embarrassing.On Saturday we have the Baile Dos Finalistas- which is basically the equivalent of a senior prom. The preparation for this dance has made me realize that I teach at the closest thing to a “ prep” school that exists in Mozambique. The students have been working since the beginning of the year to earn money for the dance, but it is kind of sad because a lot of them don’t get to go because they don’t have money. It costs 150 Meticais, about $10, which is a ridiculously large sum of money for most of the kids. But they are brining in chefs from Chimoio, they have been learning the waltz, and there is a dress code. The boys have to wear black pants and suit coats and the girls have to wear white or crème colored dresses, it all seems a bit over the top to me, but we will see how it goes. The students are really excited about it, and really excited about the fact that carrie and I are going. I cant imagine being excited about having any of my high school teachers being at prom, let alone asking them weeks in advance to save a dance for me, but I guess that just goes to show how different the student/teacher relationships are here. Another thing that I have been wanting to write about for a while, but have just failed to do so is the way that names work here. First of all people have names such as Vinagre( Vinegar), Cebolla (Onion), Alface (Lettuce), Castigo, Ndamo( Punishment) Faz-Tudo ( does everything), Sabao(Soap) Sande(Sandwich) Tendai( Gratitude), Torres( Tower). All lovely names, so we all know how names work in most western countries right? Well here it is a little bit different. First of all when people get married a lot of them don’t change their names, at least where I live. The other thing that is a lot different is the way that children are named. For example. John Smith marries Jane Doe, they have a child and name it Matthew. So the kids name would be Matthew John Smith, if Matthew has a kid named Ben, the kids name would be Ben Matthew John, , it took me a while to figure out why when you ask someone their name do you get a million names rather than just the first name, and this is why. And in many cases the mothers name is just forgotten about. Interesting huh? That’s all for now! Hugs and kisses!
Linds :)
Not sure if I will get to it, but there should be some new pics up on webshots!

2008-10-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Hello! I am having a love hate relationship with Mozambique right now, so take this as a warning before you start reading. First of all thanks for the birthday wishes….it turned out to be a very interesting day. I was in the city the day before and when we were at the chapa (mini-bus) stop we were kind of playing with this little boy and making faces at him and whatnot. When we are almost out of town Carrie notices that this little boy is still on the chapa, so she asks the cobrador (the guy who collects the money) who this little boy is traveling with, and he continuously ignores her. 150kms later, we arrive in Catandica. (On the way we stopped on this bridge and watched some guys slaughtering a hippo…kinda gross, but kinda cool). We start walking home and notice that this boy is following us, so we ask what he is doing and he starts crying. We take him back to the chapa stop, and they tell us that we are responsible for taking him to the police because if not we are going to be accused of child trafficking. AWESOME! So we take him to the police station where we get to deal with an officer who appears to be intoxicated, and more concerned with our marital status than this boy. Over the course of a few hours we learn that this boy is 7 years old and that his father cells CDs on the street in Chimoio. The police say that they will take him to social services...done with that thankfully!......or so we thought…Monday morning the boy shows up at our house bawling….he ran away from social services so Carrie takes him back and they say that they are sending him back to Chimoio on Tuesday. Ohh wait….Wednesday morning I look out the window and who is sitting under our tree…none other than the little boy. So we once again take him back to the village, and during the course of the 30 min walk this little boy becomes almost un human…it takes 3 adults to carry him as he is kicking, hitting, screaming and trying to bite us. We get him back to social services and they claim that they have been looking for him, but who really knows. But honestly a 7 year old kid travels 150kms by himself, and no one really seems to care…soo weird. The other part of my hate relationship is that I am working with a couple teachers and about 15 students on an English theatre presentation, and the night before the competition their biggest concern seems to be what we are going to eat for breakfast and if they are going to get a per diem or not…soo frustrating…cant you just do something because you want to and not because of the money that you think you should get. And the love part of it…. For my birthday 3 students who also come and hang out at our house gave me a teacup and saucer…they are so sweet. They were a bit upset that I wasn’t here in the morning on my birthday because apparently the thing to do is pour water on the birthday person. The Kids here are just sooo CUTE! When we first arrived all of the kids just called us muzungu( white person), but now they say Dona Cecilia Dona Cecilia tali shanwali( no idea how it is spelled, but it means hello friend in dialect.) and I also find it rather amusing how much entertainment can be had by the hair on my arms….the kids think it is really cool. Basically the kids are the best thing ever…if I am having a bad day I can almost be guaranteed a smile when I walk down the road with all the kids…some of the parents have even started telling us that the kids talk about their friends Cecilia and Carolina J
Other than that not much new, but the time you read this I will have officially been in Mozambique for over one year! To get you really excited about the upcoming winter months at home…it has been 90 by 9am the past 3 days…sounds like fun doesn’t it? And I finish school in 21 days!!Love and miss you all!
so that is all kind of old news now, but since i already had it all typed out ifigured that i might as well post it. the english theatre competiton went well, minus the fact that the other 2 teachers from my school and 3 of the students thought that it would be a good idea to get drunk, but other than that it went well. i just got home from the beach...it was amazing, you can walk for miles and miles down the beach and there is no development, it is just untouched and so beautiful. i guess not much else to say...school is done is 11 days! yay! love and miss you! :)

:D

2008-09-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

hello everyone and good afternoon! how are things back home? going well here, not too much has changed, but i am super excited that i am closing in on the one year mark! only 15 months left to go! school finishes in a little more than a month , and i am getting very excited to get out and do a little bit of traveling. other than that not much new...i was doing lessons on gender equality in my classes and one of my students was kind enough to inform me that men are intelligent and that women are not intelligent, and that women can not fly airplanes...and they also told me that they hate me.ohh i love being a teacher. a few weeks ago i had one studnet put a dead bird in another students backpack! ohh exciting! not too much else for now! love and miss you all!

beijos

2008-08-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I hope that all is well back in america...things are moving along quicky here. I cant believe that I have already been gone almost a year. It is a pretty crazy thought. Sometimes I forget that I am living in Mozambique....but the things that remind me that I am here always make me laugh. For instance: the other day I was wearing this dress that I had recently purchased, not the most beautiful dress ever, but I wanted it to use as a patten for a different dress, but anyway I was walking to the market, and this guy calls me over to his house and says in portuguese “ cecilia you are not pretty today, you are ugly and that dress is ugly too.” ok thank you! And then I continued a little ways down the road and this old man says in english “cecila today you have beauty, you are very much beauty.” sometimes the honesty makes me laugh, but I love the fact that you can be told you are ugly and beautiful within 10 min. the other day some of my students were looking at my pictues from america and they were telling me that I used to be fat and that my skirts were too short.ohhh mozambique. In class the other day I teaching time and my studetns asked if if was the same time in mozambique as it is in south dakota, so the next day I brought in a globe to show about the rotation of the earth, and they told me that I was lying because if the world were turning we would fly off. There is a year 12 student at our school and everytime she comes over she yells at me for not wearing my flip flops in the kitchen. Mozambicans are pretty big on the idea of wearing house shoes( for that matter if any of the new moz invitees are reading this, despite what peace corps say bring flip flops because your host family will want you to wear them in the house.) last saturday we had a meeting that lasted over 7 hours ( just a note, it was supposed to be 3) I honestly thought that I was going to die, it could be on the top 3 of the most miserable days of my lifer Ohh ya when carries mother came to visit she brought carries comptuer, and we now have battleships! That was thrilling. I never know what is going to be interesting for you guys...so if you have questions let me know. I did just find out that our villa has a population of 20,000...never really realized that.....now I am curious as what what percentage are under the age of 7....i think it is probably about 20-25%. we are also going to be getting a bank here, how is that for exciting? But apparently a bank means a supermarket too....not a supermarket like any of you are thinking, but something that sells more than beer, whiskey, and really gross cookies. In my wishful thinking I am also hoping that it means internet...but I am not getting my hopes too high for that. The other day at our market I got a new shelf for our house, and the guys that I got it from are zimbabweans, and they had left zim at 4am walked to catandica, a 12 hour walk. And as soon as they sold their shelves they were going back home. 2 guys one with a shelf one with a coffee table, and they would be walking for about 24 hours in total to make less than $20. makes you think about how tough life actually is huh? Better cut if off before you are all bored to death. Love and miss you all! Just a friendly reminder.....dont forget the importance of september 14th....... I am 17,000 miles from home :P and I really like fruit snacks, cereal bars, and my ears wound not mind some new music, and my eyes would like some new magazines....i promise that somewhere in my soul I still have some amount of shame.and if you want to check out some of carries(my roommate) pictures they are on webshots, I think you just have to search carriecarnevale, but beware they might make you want to come visit even more than you do now. So I never know what to write anymore so if there is anything that you want to know... leave me a message!
Linds :)

end of the world

2008-07-28T02:22:00.000-07:00

sorry about the random titles...so i am on my way home from a whirlwind tour of northen mozambique. my friend natalie and i used our 2 week break from school to heat north. we went to this place called lichinga...otherwise known as the end of the world. it took us 5 days to get there and 4 to get home, but it was definatly a fun journey. we basically hitchhiked all the way there, and some of hte people that gave us rides were hilarious. we got one from this semi truck driver and part way he got out his digital camera and then we all had to get our tof the truck and take pictures with him in front of hte truck...it was super funny. i am highly suggesting that any one and everyone come visit mozambique because it is beautiful, and well...i kind of miss you guys! i hope that all is well at home!
linds :)

:)

2008-07-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

so it has been way too long since i last wrote,sorry! i am kind of stupid and ruined my flash drive, so now it takes me forever to type these things when i am actually at the internet. i hope that evryone at home is doing well. things are mozmabique are good for the most part, you know...besides having daily cravings for mexican food. i just finished my 2nd trimester, so that means only 4 more to go until i am done being a teacher! woo hoo! i hope that everyone had wonderful 4th of july weekends. we had a bunch of our pc friends come to our house and it was fun, definalty not like being in america though, but we made the best of it. lets see random funny stories from the past few months. on wednesday morning i saw all my little best friends going out into the bush like they do everday, but then when they finally came out at about 3 they had caught and killed 47 field mice that they were going to take home and eat! i took a picture, and it almost made me vomit just because i hate mice so much, but they were having a heck of the time with them. and yesterday when i got to the city there was a woman who had a basked full of grilled mice that she was selling, kinda crazy huh!ohh ya the president(of mozambique) also visited about 3 or 4 weeks ago. and i got to shake his hand and he asked me if i was a teacher and what subject i taught, and ya it iwas in portuguese so i felt kind of cool. i think i have already told you this but i started taking shona( local language) lessons, and they are coming along pretty slowly, but yesterday our language tutor walked to villa with me and he was telling me what all the kids were saying and it was quite funny. when the kids would walk far from their houses the other kids would yell at them and tell them that they were going to get stolen, it was kind of making me laugh. i hope you are all well at home!
love and miss you all!
linds :)

2008-06-14T05:18:00.000-07:00

amazing mozambique...the 13 original colonies that are being taught at one of the secondary schools here: albany,new york, boston, chicago, florida, california, mexico, los angeles, korea,uruguay,georgia, and philly....amazing educational system. ohh ya i now have a new phone so feel free to call me whenever. made it 6 months so far..only 18 left!
love and miss you
linds :)

boo boo boo

2008-05-30T03:53:00.000-07:00

hello! so i last wrote on sunday..at that point everything was going wonderful. carrie and i had just gone to visit our friends in this place called mangunde...the most bush of africa..it was kinda funny...and we had a great time. and then my phone got stolen when we were only about 3 min from our house! so i am a little bitter about that, but it was kind of funny because my students and all the other teachers were so mad. they were all telling me to go to the curendario( traditional healer) and have him work some magic on the guy who stole my phone, but they said that i had to be careful because if i didnt do what the guy said or if i didnt pay him that i would go crazy. they also told me that the crazy people in the villa are crazy because they went to the curendario and took some medicine to become rich. it is just kind of funny the things that some of them believe. the said that they guy who took my phone would know that i went to the curendario because the curendario would use a bicycle pump, and when the used it the theifs stomach would grow and then he would know that there was curse on him and i would get my phone back.sorry this is kind of random...just wanted to say hi....i am still working on getting my old phone number back... so for now i am cellphone less!
love and miss you all
linds :)

howareyouhowareyouhowareyou

2008-05-25T06:28:00.000-07:00

Once again not too much exciting stuff is going on here. I had an awesome trip to the beach a few weeks ago... well it started out pretty awesome at least. We were waiting at this place called Inchope to get a lift, and there were these 4 little girls who had just finished school and they just kept running back and forth in front of us and then randomly stopping and dancing and laughing and laughing and laughing. It was pretty darn cute. We were lucky enough to get a lift in a private car, so we made the 400 Km trip in about 4 hours, this is exciting news because on the way back we got a lift in some random transport truck that went about 50-60 kms/hour, so our trip home took us almost 8 hours, definatly not the coolest thing that I have ever done. But once again the beach was awesome. There were a ton of volunteers there, so it was awesome to get to see everyone. We even found a place in the villa that sold smoothies and wraps...i am not really sure that I am in the peace corps any more. The only bad part about the trip was that on the way home we had to take a chapa ( a van type thing that should seat 15, but normally has between 20-25) from inchope to chimoio, this is a 60 km trip that normally costs 45 mets. Not a bad deal right? I gave the cobrador( the guy who collects the money) 500 mets, and the jerk only gave me 50 mets back and told me that I was a liar and that I didnt give him 500 mets, I was so mad I thought that I was going to go to jail for murder and maybe if I was lucky get sent back to america. Annoying that he robbed me of 400 mets ( only about $16), but I was just plain mad that he was calling me a liar. Ya enough of my ranting.

So this next portion is going to involve a bit of foul language...sorry. But today was just too funny...first of all before the bad words. I was teaching one of my classes today and another professor came into my class of 53 studetns and pulled all but 18 of them and said that they couldnt be in class because they were still not caught up with their work in the school garden, I guess that they dotn realize that it is more frustrating for me than for the students because I am the one who has to deal with students who are behind. But whatever.... now the bad lauguage...i am sure that this really isnt going to be funny to anyone but me, but I found it hilarious so in my mind it is worth sharing. I walked out on the front porch today and was telling my neighbor how I am still scared of kelly( the girl who lived here before us)'s dogs and she says in english “be careful because there is a bitch in your yard” ...kind of struck me as funny. And then we were walking to the market, and normally there are a bunch of kinds who yell “ howareyouhowareyouhowareyouhowareyou” and have no idea what they are saying....but today after we passed our little howareyou friends there were a couple kids saying F*** you, no clue where they learned it, but it still struck me as funny.

Yesterday we were at the market and started talking to this lady that we had met before, and she took us over to her little shop. She sells traditional medicine to people and to the witch doctors, so we started asking her about the stuff, and it was kind of interesting. There were all of these powders and beans and tree bark, and something that looked like hedgehog quills. She was telling us how some of the powders you mix in tea or this corn meal kind of stuff and it will help to get rid of stomaches or headaches. That I can understand because I am sure they are just some herbs, so it didnt seem to far off. But then she was saying if a woman is pregnant and is having trouble with the pregnancy, she can eat this powder and within a month she will have the baby, but she also said you can only take it towards the end of pregnancy, so that just seems like a mental thing to me. And there were also some to take to get rid of bad spirits, and some for male masturbation and she was also telling us how sticking the quills under your braids will help get rid of something, but I cant remember what it is... it is all just kinda crazy interesting. I am now how of the 20s and into the teens....less than 19 months to go!

Linds:)

at the market the other day this guy had a monkey on is back and I asked to take a picture super cute monkey, but guess what his name was..... george bush! The picture is on webshots

hello hello!

2008-04-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

So life has not been terribly exciting here as of late. I have turned into a big sissy, I keep thinking that it is cold here...i think wrong. We finally got a thermometer and it is about 62 when tend to think that it is cold. I dont know how I am going to survive another south dakota winter. Hit the big 7 month mark today( april 27th), I cant believe that I have already been gone 7 months. I think that this is the longest that I have been away from home, kind of crazy. So now I have less than 20 months to go.. woo hoo

eu so eu ( i am me)

2008-04-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

hello hello! so i have so much to say, but i am being kind of lazy and dont really want to type it all. but i just finished a pretty darn amazing week. there is this girls group here called Redes . in english it stands for girls for information education and health. we had 54 girls from all over the country together learning about womens empowerment and making healthy decisions. it was so crazy to see the transformation in the girls over the course of a week. some of them came in super shy, and they left with so much confidence. it was great! i have also never seen people have so much fun with toilet paper. we did a human mummy contest, and i think that hte girls had more fun playing with the tp afterward. it was just hilarious. i think that i am going to get in on the planning for next year, so that should be fun(a ton of work) but fun. random gross story. bt i woke up this morning feeling terribly ill, and when i got off the bus in the city i got sick. then some dude walked up to me and told me that i had to clean it up..uhh sorry dude you just watched me be violently ill. thanks! and then afterward i went to the post office to mail some letters, but they didnt have stamps. a post office not having stamps? alrighty then. i think that is all for now. love and miss you all!

this is what i really wanted to say

2008-04-10T03:24:00.000-07:00

So much to say: Most days there are 7-10 different boys( of course not girls, because they have to be home or in the field helping mom) who hang out in front of our fence saying “ tha-tha” “tha-tha” (hello in dialect, probably spelled wrong) “dona Cecilia, dona Carolina” and they basically just stand there in shifts talking until they get some sort of acknowledgment. Some of them take the goats to and from the fields, and the others...well i am not sure what they really do. I asked some of them how old they were... my guess would have been about 6 or 7. but they said they are 9 and 10. i also asked if they go to school and they said no. I am not sure if this answer is entirely true because they don't speak Portuguese all that well, so they may not have understood the question. But it doesn't seem that unreasonable that they wouldn't go to school because they sit in front of our house everyday. I was just sitting outside messing around with them and i figured that i could at least do something useful, so i wrote down the numbers 1-10 on a piece of paper. Clearly something that i thought would be elementary for 9 and 10 year olds, but i was wrong. They could all count to 10, but if i pointed to a number out of sequence, the only way that they could recognize it was to count up to it. I am not exactly sure why they don't go to school. School here is free until 7th grade, but students have to wear uniforms, and these are not free, so that could be one reason. They also might have to work in the field, or in some cases it could just be that the family does not think that education is important. Whatever the reason may be, I am hoping that we can at least get them to recognize the numbers 1-10 and letters, hopefully over the course of the next 2 years we can move on to reading and simple math, but who knows. It is just terribly sad to me that they could go to school for free, and for some reason unknown to me, they don't. I have been learning a lot about the school that I teach at recently, and there is so much of it that I just cant believe. Sorry if I have said this already, but every morning classes start at 7 and kids have to be there by 6.45 and then line up by class and sing the national anthem. We have these 2 huge gates at the front of the school, and when they are getting ready to close the gates the guards blow a whistle and the kids run like made to try and get in before the gates are closed. One day I was walking to the market and the director was standing in the guard house yelling “run, run , run, faster, faster.” it all just seems so weird to me. The reason that it is such a big deal to get there on time is that kids are only allowed 3 absences per class, and if they have more than 3 they cant pass (well theoretically, but there is so much corruption here that they can just pay someone, but that story will wait for another day.) What I have been learning that I don't like mostly has to do with the dorms. The kids have to wake up at 4 everyday but Sunday, and then they can sleep until 6. they are also not allowed to leave the school grounds except on Sunday, and even then they have to be back by 4.30, so if your family lives far away, you can only seem them on holidays. Also students have to be sick for 15 days before the head of the dorms will let them leave to go home, it is so crazy weird. Tembo (one of the boys who stayed with us) was sick and we were trying to get them to let him come rest at our house so we could give him good food and stuff, and we had to go to the dorms with the director of the school, and as we walked through he woke up everyone who was sleeping and told them that they had to go do work. Some things here I will never understand. There is also a couple students from other classes who like to come over and practice reading and speaking. It would be nice if they were my students, but oh well. But one of the boys is 16 and the sweetest kid ever. His family lives 1.5 hours away by chapa, and he lives here in Catandica with 3 of his brothers, all students at the school. The four of them share this two room mud hut, and I think that things might be pretty rough. But last time he went home to see his parents, and he came to my house on Monday with a pumpkin, a cucumber, and 4 lemons. It just amazes me that they have nothing to give, but they give everything that they have. I cant really imagine 4 brothers in America being sent to live 1.5 hours from their parents and supporting themselves. Nothing else too exciting has been going on, the children still jump up and down and chant “ MuZungu” every time Carrie and i walk by. Amazing that after nearly 3 months of living here and walking to and from the market on the same road everyday that the sight of a MuZungu never ceases to excite them. They are also incredibly amazed by indiglo watches, indiglo watches might actually be cooler than the muzungus wearing them. We made the mistake of the little “1,2,3 and then you pick the kid up and swing them game” now every time we want to get rid of them it takes about 5 minutes to pick up every kid and swing them, but thats ok, they love it. I think thats all for now!
Happy Birthday Kenz!( Ya I realize that it is really late now.)
Love and miss you all!
Linds :)
ohh ya the trivia from last time....lots of plastic bags and a condom.....a soccer ball. They take all the plastic bags and tie them together and them for a soccer ball, real soccer balls here cost about $40, a bit spendy. The condom is blown up and put in the middle and all the bags are wrapped around it. Sometimes they only use the plastic bags, but then the ball doesn't have as much of a bounce. Genius kids huh?
This is unbelievably long...sorry...but I the first one is the one that I couldn't post last time...and well.... this is about my amazing vacation that I took over Easter weekend. I thought that Mozambique was pretty amazing before, but after visiting the beach I am sure of it. You all need to come visit. We went to a place called Vilankulos and it was amazing. It might have been the most beautiful beach that I have ever seen in my life, and in addition to being beautiful, there were no tourists. The tides are just amazing. When the tide is out there are a ton of boats that are beached and then when it comes back in all of the boats go out for fishing. It is pretty cool to see. You can also buy fresh fish, shrimp, crab, squid, and just about any other sea food that you can think of for next to nothing. One day we took a day trip out to one of the islands and went snorkeling. It was my first time and to be honest I was pretty scared at first, but after about 5 minutes it was awesome. I got a little cut up because being the smart girl I am, didn't realize how strong the current was and bumped into a huge rock thing...oops, but it is ok because it was totally worth it. I think we probably saw about 50-70 different types of fish, it was just awesome, I guess I don't know how else to say it. I guess you just have to come and see how amazing it is. I think that my next goal is going to be to get certified for scuba diving. They also had some amazing art that doesn't come to my parts of the country. I might have gotten myself into a little trouble splurging on art...but oh well.... I will only live in Africa once right? When we were driving back on Sunday we saw a group of about 20 wild monkeys just hanging out on the side of the road, it was kind of crazy, something that I never thought that I would see in my life time. Ohh ya...embarrassing story of the year.... I got home from school the other day and realized that I had a hole in my skirt....so my students could probably see my butt for all of class ...nice work teacher Cecilia. I think that is all for now. Love and Miss you all. One trimester down....only 5 to go! If anyone has some recipes they would like to send me,(email would be best) that would be amazing. They have to be pretty simple because our ingredients are pretty limited here. Yet another random comment... I was talking to one of my colleagues and he asked me what the significance of my anklets was.... I guess they dont have a significance, just for looks really. He told me that people here only wear them to fend off bad spirits, and they type of thing around your ankle depends on what type of spirit you are trying to keep away.
Another random story.... I went to school this morning to do some work and I was in a kind of bad mood. To annoy me even further this police officer said ( in Portuguese) “ good morning, how are you?” “ we are good thanks, and you senhor?” and then the jerk says “ senhor policia” you have to be kidding me. Senhor isnt good enough it has to be senhor policia. Clearly I am not Mozambican, give me a break jerkface.

ohh ya if anyone still loves to send packages:
i dont need anymore chapstick,lemon pepper, toothbrushes, and razors
things i would love to have more of:ketchup, parmasan cheese,once again girly things, and fun spices

lots of love!
Linds :)

hello hello!

2008-04-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

once again i cant get my darn flash to work! ahh i am getting so frustrated! but i love and miss you all!, i am back now with nothing to do, so why not at least give a little sort of update. over easter weekend i went to this place called vilankulo, and it was absolutly amazing! it was probably the most beautiful beach that i have ever seen, and there were no tourists. we went snorkeling one day, i was terrified for hte first 5 min but i got over it and had a blast! i wasnt the smartest girl and didnt realize how strong the current was, and therefore got a little cut up, but it was totally worth it. i am guessing we saw somewhere around 60 types of fish, it was crazy- i think you might have even liked it zo :) we also got to eat some amazing seafood, something that we definatly dont get here in the mountains. when we were driving home the guy slowed way down and on the road in front of us was a group of about 20 monkeys. something that i would never have thought i would see in the wild. not even in a reserve or anything. they were just hanging out. pretty darn crazy. i just finished up my 1st trimester! finally! 1 down and 5 to go. i could quite possibly be the most unpopular teacher in all of catandica. the students love to cheat, and i think that carrie and i are the only ones who give zeros for cheating, the kids hate us as teachers, but other than that i think they like us. I gave a couple zeros on the final trimester exam, and those kids really hate me because that grade is worth 50% ....my students here make me laugh so hard becuase the days when i feel the crappiest and crabbiest are they days when i walk to school and the neighbors and my students say how pretty i look. i think they must have pyschic abilities or something, they can just tell when i am having a bad day, pretty impressive. yesterday i was talking with one of my colleagues and he asked what the sifnificance of my anklets was... i said that they were just for looks. he then told me that people here only wear them to fend off bad spirits, so people think that i am trying to fend off spirits...always nice to know. the other day i was in a pretty bad mood...what a surprise... and i was walking to school and this police officer said ( in portuguese) good morning, how are you? and i said i am good thank you, how are you senhor? and he turns around and says "senhor policia" i was pretty annoyed with it. clearly i am not mozambican, do you really need to get angry about me saying the policia part... frustration! ohh ya if anyone wants to send me some simple recipies, i mean really simple that would be great. those involving squash would be fantastic because that seems to be what is growing the best in our garden, and i am not really sure how to cook it.
love and miss you lots!

eu vou comer arroz com boi

2008-03-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

once again, i had a great post, and i cant seem to get it to work. ya the condoms and plastic bags...used for soccer balls...pretty smart huh? a realy soccer ball costs about $40, and when the average pay is $2 per day, isnt really reasonable. i guess nothing is super exciting. i started tutoring some 7-10 year olds who dont know the numbers 1-10, it is going pretty well. umm ya i guess i dont have a whole lot to say. i will post the other thing when i get it to work. love and miss you all! thanks a ton for hte packages!! it is like christmas in march!!! :) :) :)

2008-02-24T03:10:00.000-08:00

This will probably be kind of random because I am writing weird things as they happen, so it might just be a random blob of stories. Every Friday we have what are called reunios de turma, which are just meetings of the classes. Some of the students didn't think that we were going to school, so they came to our house to make sure that we would be going to school, and then they carried our bags for us...interesting. I am the director de turma, basically I am just a homeroom teacher.Yesterday we didnt have anything to do and they wanted me to sing (dont asky why-they obviously dont know horribly I sound), so I taught them some lovely songs in English. You know the good ol classics twinkle twinkle little star, itsy bitsy spider, abcs, head shoulders knees and toes. If anyone can think of any other fun easy ones tell me because they love them. The other day my roommate said she was woken up at 4am, because she could hear students in the gym. 2 of the students came to visit us and we asked what time they had gotten up and they said 4. apparently the school made all of the students who live in the dorms get up at 4 and go running in the gym. A lot of the students have been sick and the administrators think that it is because they are doing any sort of exercise...once again interesting. I also met a German girl a few weeks ago who lives in my village and the other night we went to have dinner and drinks together and were talking about the AIDS project that she is working with, and she was explaining how they do a baseline study to figure out the level of information that community members have. And one of the things that a lot of people reported on the survey is that they think that white people created HIV/AIDS so that they could have even more control over black people in Africa....sad huh? And more random stories...And more random stories...a few weeks ago when we were coming home from the city the chapa stopped and everyone had to get out and go through this hand washing station, we all had our hands washed with bleach water in the hopes that cholera will not be spread. They also implemented the same thing at our school, everyone has to wash their hands when then walk through the front gate. Weird, but whatever. I finally remembered my camera one day when we walked to the villa, and on the way home I asked one of the mothers if it would be ok to take some pictures.. when the kids saw my camera they went crazy. They love to have their picture taken. After each picture they would jump up and down clapping and screaming because they were so happy. I love the simplicity of life here.The only bad thing is that everytime I walk to town at least 3 children say “Dona Cecilia tirar foto.” “Ms. Cecilia, take a photo.” I am also working on learning dialect- lets just say the progress is going to be really slow. I am only working on good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, and what is your name- but it is going to be a long process. One of the ladies in the market is teaching me, so everyone else gets a nice laugh when they hear me try to repeat what she says. But the dialect is so hard.My favorite world is malala- good morning. Muzungu is someone who is sick but MuZUngu is a white person, then plural white people is AZUngu...looks like it is going to be a long road. Thanks to my cousin Paige for the hemp, we have been making lots and lots of stuff, and we started our girls group, and at the first meeting we all made matching hemp bracelets, and they loved it Norths and Grams-first- THANK YOU so much for the packages! you might find this kind of interesting- All of the movies that you sent in the last package had stickers on the boxes, so one day I was being anal and peeling off the stickers while Tembo and Simba were here. I had fully intended to throw them away, but the boys had better use for them. They used them to decorate their phones and notebooks, and the continued to go on and on about how beautiful their note books were. And these stickers were not beautiful by any means. They were stickers with blockbuster bar codes- ohh the simple things that satisfy. As I am typing this there are 4 children standing outside our fence begging to come in, and then speaking Mbarue(the dialect) thinking that we understand. Yesterday one of carries students was wearing a Sioux Falls shirt- how crazy is that! Sorry about the bad link to my pictures, my mother informed me that it doesn't work trying to get it fixed, but I think if you go to webshots and search for Lsongstad it should still work. Once again apologies for this being so random, it has been written over the course of the last 4 weeks, which have for the most part been pretty awesome, so there is a lot to tell about. You will have to go look at my pictures, because I finally got to go to the top of the mountain and it is BEAUTIFUL! I am not even going to try and explain it because it was honestly breathtaking. We drove to the very end of this 'road' which was more like a footpath, it was like the end of the world. It is actually the path that the people coming over from Zimbabwe use. If you don't know, conditions in Zimbabwe are really bad, really bad to the point that people will walk for 2-3 days just to come to Mozambique to buy a bag of rice, and then make the 3 day journey back home. If they are lucky and can get a lift they can save about a day, but most of it has to be done on foot, horribly sad, but the people are still are so friendly. We were also privileged enough to meet this guy who is writing / doing a photo documentary of the Mbarue culture. And he has taken us to see some pretty amazing dancing, singing, and instrument playing. The last few days have been the days where I am getting ready to go to bed saying that I could live in Mozambique forever .I hope that all is well at home. DONT FREEZE! Love and miss you all.

ps- mom I have a new obsession with patsy cline. And to both mom and dad- HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Colleagues

I have some pretty amazing colleagues, ( have I ever used that word in America- No, but here it seems to have become common place) in the English department. One of my favorites is a guy from Zimbabwe called Goodluck. Nope not a nickname, his name is really Goodluck. My favorite thing about Goodluck is that one day he wrote a note to another colleague called Albino asking for a favor. In this note he asked Albino if he could get some stuff from me, but in the note he said “ Could you please get the 9^th grade book from the woman (white). Awesome reference huh, but I guess when you are one of 4 white people in the entire town it is kind of fitting isn't it?

And trivia for the next post.... if you had a condom and a lot of plastic bags what would you do? Or what do you think a mozambican would do. Nothing perverted please.

just so you can all be jealous...i went tubing on a croc infested river yesterday...good thing i didnt fall off!

I love it!

2008-02-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone! So I am officially a teacher! What a scary thought! I am teaching 5 turmas of 9^th grade english! I everyday at 7 or 7.50 and I am done by 12.05, so I am going to have a lot of free timeA turma is basically just a class. Each turma has between 35-55 students. And I teach each turma 3 classes a week- so my work load here is going to be pretty light. Only 15 classes a week. It kind of makes me feel bad because there are teachers at the school who are teaching. Classes in the morning, afternoon and evening. Our school is so big and overcrowded that they have classes broken up into morning afternoon and evening. I think that there are close to 45 turmas each with about 45 students. So there are somewhere around 2000 students. Last week we were helping with some tasks at the school and having meetings, and you would not believe some of the things that were brought up at the meeting. We spent 45 min discussing what is and what is not an appropriate teacher/student relations. They also talked about not beating your wife, children, girlfriend, boyfriend, ect, in the street because you are a teacher and a role model. I am not so sure what I really think about the teaching thing. Monday was the first official day of school, but we didn't teach. There was an assembly where they went over the rules(One of which was “when you have a question raise your right hand), and expectations for students and teachers. It was almost 3 hours long and really boring. One thing that I am not sure if I have mentioned or not is the way in which question/answer sessions are held here. When they open the floor for questions, people ask questions, the questions are written down, and then all of the questions are answered at one time. It just seems odd to me. The first day of actual class was pretty interesting. My first class was first period, so I went a little early. Classes start at 7, but students have to be at school at 6.30. Before school they line up by turma and at 6.45 they sing the national anthem. The students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers move from class to class. When the teacher enters the room one student says “ Attention class” and then everyone stands up and says “ Good morning teacher, how are you?” I am well how are you? “ we are fine thank you.” and if you forget to tell them that they can be seated they will continue to stand until you remember. Also whenever students want to talk they have to stand, it all seems so odd Most of the 9^th grade curriculum involves Mozambican culture and teaching kids to be able to speak about Mozambique in english. Today we were talking about traditions. And one tradition here is called the Lobolo- it is basically just a bride price. So in class I was asking my students to explain this to me, one boy asked if he could explain it to me using an example. So he stands up and says “ I want to marry professora Cecilia and I go to her father and give him money.” I told him that was a bad example, but the class had a great laugh. But things are going well and I think that for the most part I am still enjoying myself. Before I forget I wanted to mention that my favorite part of Africa is sitting in my bed with a flash light for 10 minutes before I can go to sleep to be sure that all of the bus INSIDE my mosquito net are dead. Another story about the little criancas...when I was home from the market yesterday my hands were full and this little boy came up and grabbed my arm and started walking with me, a few feet down the road another boy did the same thing, and it was adorable because they were just grinning from ear to hear, and they were speaking all kinds of dialect to me that I couldn't understand, but really when a kid is grinning from ear to ear just because he can hold your hand does it really matter?

Estou a pedir (I am asking for)

This lovely saying is quite possibly one of my least favorite parts of Mozambique People will estou a pedir for just about anything. One day a child pedir(ed) for ONE flip=flop... really child what good is one flip flop going to do you? We also have people pedir for work at least once a week. One of my all time favorite pedirs was estou a pedir a bebe – I am asking for the baby. There is also a mother on the road to the market that will say A bebe esta a pedir um mil. The baby is asking for 1 metacal? And the thing about estou a pedir is that there is no shame in asking for anything here. People will ask for you for just about everything. I have read stories of other people comparing estou a pedir to the lottery. You play and play but never win... you just continue with the hopes that it might work. At least with estou a pedir they have nothing to lose.

Estou a pedir some beef stock...yes I know it sounds weird. And some glow starts to hand out to students who do well on tests, and crushed red pepper, Parmesan cheese, anything girly (ie facial stuff, pedicure stuff, manicure stuff, and magazines...new or old.

Love and miss you all (South Dakotans...please don't freeze- Africa is warm...come visit!)

linds :)

Ela Danca Bem

2008-01-17T03:02:00.000-08:00

Back again, but this time only because I am a total and complete idiot. I have been told I am a dumb blond before, but I think that this story tops them all. At some point over my Christmas holidays I lost my bank card, I wasn't too worried about it though because you need the pin to do anything so I was just kind of putting off getting a new one as long as I could. I finally went to the bank on a Friday and got a new card, considering all of the paperwork was in Portuguese it was much easier than I had imagined. It took forever but oh well. To make a long story short, my card didn't work for 4 days, and when it finally worked I was so excited to finally have money ( I had been living off 3.5 Mtn- about $0.10 ) that I left my bank card in the ATM, now I get to go through the entire process again, hopefully this time it wont take 4 days to get a working card. But anyway... I am falling in love with Catandica. As I have said before we like a few Kms from the market, so we have to walk into town most days to buy one thing or another, and the kids that live along the road never cease to make me smile. They now know that I am not professora kelly and that my name is cecilia (Lindsay is way to hard for native Portuguese speakers to say). When then see us coming down the road they start yelling “professora cecilia, professora carolina.” it is crazy to be able to make a kid smile just by saying good afternoon. What is even more cute is the fact that the really young ones don't even speak Portuguese, so they don't even understand good afternoon, they just love the fact that we say something. They have also picked up the habit of grabbing my hands if they are free. It is the cutest thing to see huge smiles just because they can walk down the road holding my hand. The past few days we have been doing some work at the school, helping to type lists of kids who passed and those who failed so that they can make up new lists for classes this year, and the directors are amazed at how fast we can type. I have a feeling that we will be asked to do a lot of typing over the next two years. We also have two kids living with us. Simba and Tembo( the boys who lived with the former volunteer) are living with us for the time being. They stayed at our house over the holidays, and when we got back they asked if they could stay with us until they could move into the dorms. So for 2 weeks we have 4 people living in our house, a little cramped for my standards, but I can deal for a couple weeks. And they do lots of cleaning for us, so it is a fair trade.
From this point forward I am going to try and include random facts/stories about Mozambique in general:
The Capulana- Possibly the best invention ever.
The capulana is basically just a wrap, but it can be used for just about anything. Most women wear them as a wrap, usually over another skirt or pants ( I don't know how they do it with the heat). Capulanas are also used to carry babies. The women put the babies on their back and then use the capulana as a carrier- simply genius. Any one who has a baby and doesn't want to spend $70 on a baby bjorn let me know and I will send you a capulana. Capulanas are also used as bags, blanks, sheets, pillows, wall decor, diapers, curtains,. They are also wonderfully used to make shirts, skirts, dresses and pants. When I come home with 86 capulanas in 2 years you will know why- they are amazing! I have yet to see this done, but we were informed early on not to use a capulana to carry an animal( ie. Puppy or kitty) because the women will see it as offensive.
Also if anyone has any suggestions as to how to improve this- or any questions that you want answered- let me know
love and miss you all!
Linds :)
I am going to try and start my webshots thing again so if I get it to work I will put a link under my address!

hello africa tell me how you're doin!

2008-01-03T06:44:00.000-08:00

i have an address now!
write it just like this
____________________________________________________________________
Lindsay Songstad
your address goes here

Alexa Banks

C.P. No.173

Chimoio, Mozambique

_____________________________________________________________________

that my friends is supposed to be an envelope. so address everything to alexa and just put my name on the return address with your address

also a watch would be a wonderful thing to have sent- i would prefer one with a velcro band

love you-

linds :)

feliz ano novo!

2008-01-02T00:49:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! so much has happened since i last wrote. For christmas about 15 of us went to stay with some friends in gorongosa. it is an amazing place close to gorongosa national park, unfortunatly we were not able to go to the park because they close it for the rainy season, but we had a ton of fun. we spent most days at the river and most evenings cooking amazing meals. who ever would have thought that on christmas day i would be taking a bath and washing my clothes in the river. we spent alot of time having a "spa". we sat between rocks on the river and let the water beat down like a massage, then did little peticures using river rocks. it was amazing. on christmas night we even had cheese foudu! there are now 10 of us in a place called chimoio. chimoio is the capital of manica provice and i think there are about 20,000 people that live here. it is a cool city with a lot of little shops and stuff. my friend alexa lives in a really cute apartment here, so we have been having fun. for new years we had an 80s prom party.we went to the used clothing market and bought some of the worst dresses that have ever been made and ended up having a great party. new years day was a day that seems so far from being in the peace corps, you probably wont believe what i did, here is a brief recap just so you can see how unpeace corps the day was:
first of all we texted a friend using a cell phone(cell phones in the peace corps?)
at 10.30 he picked us all up in his brand new honda truck, on the way to his house i listened to music being played from his ipod, and i was actually using a seatbelt(a first for mozambique) we got to his house and put our stuff by the pool. he then asked if we like gin and brought us out gin, tonic and limes. around 1 he left the house and told us to cook whatever we wanted. we then had a lovely lunch of shrimp and pasta while sitting in a massaging chair watching mtv. when we got home we had chicken stir-fry and chocolate fondu for dessert.it was just such a crazy day. i never would have thought that i would do anything like that in all my time in the peace corps. this guy works for the world food program and knows most of the peace corps volunteers in mozambique, he said that we can use his house whenever we want to have pool parties- he has also offered to give us rides to and from catandica and chimoio when he has trips to make. dont worry we have checked with other volunteers and this guy is cool, no one has had any problems. he is just a cool guy with an awesome house. hopefully today we are going to set up a post office box, and if everything works out i will put up my new address tomorrow. if anyone wants to send a garlic press feel free. also any movies would be great because life in catandica can get to be a bit blah(but i still love it!)any random spices(because i am going to be an amazing cook by the time i get home!) old navy flip flops size 7- i know it is winter so they probably arent avaliable now.i think that is all for now. love and miss you all. i hope the snow is not to horrible! ohh ya if anyone has a number with an area code that starts with 31 let me know because there is a loop hole in the mcel network and i can call for free!
linds :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year( Hope you have lots of time to read!)

2007-12-20T23:11:00.000-08:00

18.12.07 Tuesday
Below (6.12.07) is the post that i was so upset that i lost last time. But if you don't want to read it don't bother because it may not be too exciting. But anyway... i am now a Peace Corps Volunteer! Finally! After 10 weeks of my darling homestay family and living like a 12 year old again, i am very happy to be living on my own. Well kind of on my own... i have an awesome roommate named carrie who is from Charleston, south Carolina and she rocks. She is a huge fan of phase 10, honestly how could we not get along. Our house is great. It is actually nicer than the lovely little place i called home in vermillion.(I just took a little break from writing to fix the lock on the back door, this might be one of my proudest moments in Mozambique to date- I just fixed a lock!) Sorry if this is a lot of stuff that I have told you about before. But our house is in a teacher sort of compound. We are about a 2 min walk from the school and there are 12 teacher houses set up in a town house sort of fashion. Our yard and driveway are fenced in and we have 2 gates that lock, well one locks and the other is broken, but no big deal. Good thing we have a drive way that way when I get all sorts of visitors who rent cars they have a place to park the car at night :) but I have a living/dining room with a table and 6 chairs, a couch , 2 chairs, a book shelf and coffee table. In the kitchen we have a stove fridge, pantry, and sink. The bathroom has a BIG mirror(the largest I have seen since leaving America), shower, toilet and sink. My room has a huge closet, bunk beds and a small dresser. I just said today that I think that this place would be the perfect place for me in America My school is amazing. All of the rooms have desks, chalkboards,and ceiling fans.there is also a computer lab,and chem/bio/physics labs. The directors are all very nice, and I am really looking forward 2 the next two years. I have made 2 new friends. Simba and Tembo, they are students at the school and lived with the volunteer who was here before us. They are 18 and 19 and amazing. They help us with yard work and for the first few days went to the market with us to be sure that we were not getting muzungo( the word for white in the local language) prices. The most important thing to mention is that I saw a monkey in the wild. It was probably about 100 yards away, but it was amazing. I have also become more domesticated than I had ever imagined possible. I can now make a wonderful mango salsa that rivals my mothers homemade salsa (sorry mom, I guess you will just have to come visit to see for yourself ;) to go with the lovely salsa I can also make homemade tortillas and tortilla chips. Other amazing food that we have made includes spaghetti, curry and nan, and yogurt. One night we also make chicken strips (from a frozen chicken that we had to cut apart ourselves, a big accomplishment for both of us), but we ate them with real ketchup! I am so excited to get gas for the oven because as soon as we can bake the possibilities will be endless! The one down side to this house(sorry I have ADD and cant put this in any sort of order) that there is a HUGE bug problem. Lots and lots and lots of bugs, so I am glad that I got over that fear during homestay. I have also decided that the whole idea of those princess net things is crap, the only reason that you should sleep under a net is for protection from icky nasty bugs. The other night I woke up because there was a bug crawling on my leg( and yes I was under my mosquito net). But the beauty of this place makes up for the bugs. Hopefully there will be pictures accompanying this, but being that I am pre-typing this I am not sure if it will work or not. We are surrounded by mountains and they are amazing. It rains almost everyday, but that is the reason for the amazing lush greeness of the area so I will not complain. I love it here, so hopefully it will keep up for the next 2 years. I can not believe that it is almost christmas. I try and tell people here how cold it is at home and they think that I am struggling with portuguese because there is no way that it can really be that cold. That will be it for now. I hope that I am not boring you all to death. I love and miss you all. Once again thanks for all the thoughts and mail! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. I am still working on figuring out something for mail.
6.12.07 Thursday
So I hope everyone has a lot of time to read...I woke up at 4.30 this morning and i have nothing to do, and now that i have my computer i can write my blog entries at home... it is going to be long. Tomorrow is swearing in-when i actually become a real volunteer and not a trainee. I am really excited. Then on Saturday I leave for Catandica, the place that i will call home for the next 2 years. I don't even really know what has happened since the last post. We had one more week of model school and thankfully that is over. I loved teaching but no so much being observed by my colleagues all the time. This past Monday and Tuesday we had a supervisors conference where we got to meet the director of our school. He seems like a really cool guy, but i am kind of worried because when we had question and answer sessions he was the one who was always asking why volunteers cant work more hours and why cant volunteers teach night classes, so that makes me a bit nervous. This conference was the most boring thing ever,and it was done in all Portuguese so it was pretty exhausting to be translating things for myself all. They served us lunch each day, and let me tell you buffet style eating is not a talent here. The concept of a line is out of the question, at first i got really angry about it, but then as we started talking about it it made sense. These people were raised with the mentality that if you don't eat now and get your fair share it might not be there 5 min from now. After i realized that i was a little less angry. The last session of the conference we were given the opportunity to write down questions that we didn't feel comfortable asking, and you would not believe how many of the questions were about volunteers marrying Mozambicans or volunteers being in relationships with directors or volunteers having children here. It was crazy. We are scheduled to get to our site on Sunday, and when we told the director he asked us if we wanted to start work on Monday. (We don't have to start until January when school starts) Peace Corps said that if we don't want to do it that this is the perfect time to start practicing the wonderful word NO! Apparently the school will ask you to do just about anything and at first a lot of people struggle to say no, but we said no, so hopefully they wont ask again for a while. Oh ya last Saturday we had a homestay celebration. It was basically just a party to say thank you to the families that took us in for the past 10 weeks. There was so much food and so many people it was pretty fun. We also got capula (the wrap sort of thing that the women always wear) from our families, and it was really cute. I guess i really don't know what else is going on except that i am so very excited to go to site!
i think that i should have a new mailing address in the next couple weeks, so as soon as we get our post office box set up i will let you know! I love and miss you all!
and for my darling family in cali:i got 2 of the packages yesterday...THANK YOU! I can not wait to eat ketchup(real stuff that doesn't taste like sweet and sour sauce)

26.11.07 Monday
Wow I am so excited! I am sitting at my homestay house on my computer and I can actually type correctly and not struggle. What an amazing day!On Friday night I went to the preschool graduation with my sister and it was so cute. All of these 4 and 5 year old kids singing and dancing. Saturday all of the peace corps volunteers had this huge thanksgiving feast and it was amazing. I have not eaten so much good food in one sitting since I was in America. It was really fun, and it almost didn’t feel like I was half way across the world. On Sunday I had my hair braided. Now I am not so sure that I want to shave my head because I kind of look like a man with my hair braided….but I guess I will just wait and see what the future has to hold. Model school is annoying because it is supposed to help prepare us for what school is really going to be like, but that is kind of a joke because like there is anyway that we will ever have a class with only 10 students, every teachers dream right? When I got home on Friday night I discovered that my 2 year bag had been dropped off(hence why I now have my computer) and I was ecstatic! But I realized that so much of what I brought was a total waste of weight. I can get toothpaste and soap here. Some stuff like school supplies I am really glad that I brought, but I feel like a lot of it was a waste. But I wont complain that I have it. Getting some more clothes was like Christmas a month early. I can not even imagine how sick of my clothes I am going to be by the end of two years, thank goodness for used clothing markets. Who ever would have guessed that goodwill(or worse yet…clothes that even goodwill couldn’t sell) would be the highlight of my week? So I love and miss everyone and I hope that everything is going well on the home front. Like I said I think that internet at my site is going to be kind of rare so this may be my last post for a while. So if I don’t get to the internet again before Christmas…Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. If anyone can figure out how to do the 315 area code thing through google I can call you for free so jump on it! Hugs and kisses
Linds J

ummm

2007-12-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

so i had this amazing post pretyped and now i cant get it to open. so not to many details. but i am alive and i swear in tomorrow. i am ~going to be a real volunteer now, not just a trainee. going to catandica...sorry for the spelling error. hopefully i can get the other update back and post it . i am still loving life... i hope all is well

zoey grams gramps doug and boys...thanks for the packages..i got 2 of them so we will just see if the other two come. i cant wait to eat real ketsup.love and miss you all

linds :)

this picture was taken on my site visit. these kids love cameras!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T06:40:00.000-08:00

hello everyone! back again and i am so excited. i am going to be teaching english in a place called catandinca. the school was just bulit 2 years ago by the world bank, as was the house that i will be living in so they are some of the nicest in mozambique. i am pretty sure that i just quit the peace corps and joined the posh corps, i am going to have running water, electricty, ceiling fans, a fridge and a stove. there are also computers at the school but not internet. so i am thinking that after i leave homestay that internet will be about a once a month thing. so expect raelly long pretyped updates in the months to come! ummm not exactly peace corps in my mind but i am not going to complain about it. i am going to be living with a girl named carrie who i believe is from south carolina. i can not wait to see the looks of confusion from people in town because carrie and i both have blonde hair and blue eyes and people here have trouble telling me apart from someone with dark skin and dark hair. i am sure people are going to be realy confused. but i am really excited about my site placement and i am really looking forward to the next 2 years. other news... thanks for the mail...but as much as i hate to say it...put a hold on it for now because i will be leaving for site in a few weeks and i prolbably wont get stuff for a while. but i will have a new address when i get to site, i just have to get a post office box set up. other random stories from the past few days - i was outside studyign the other day and my 4 year old brother came out naked so i told him to goput some clothes on, but he thought it was a much better idea to go crap in the yard. yep he just squated down and pooped right in the yard. nice and healthy huh? people in this country love to dance! i have been going to all these things called xtikis lately- they are parties where one person gets all these gifts..i dont really get the whole concept but hey cool for hte ladies that get the gifts. but they randomly burst out in song and dance all the time and i love it. i can not wait to pick up these mad dance skills. at the last xtiki that i went to this lady asked if i have a boyfriend you know the rest of the drill....but this time she thought that the only logical reason that i was not attatched was because i was a sister in the church and it took me forever to convice her otherwise. i am also becoming a master at washing clothes by hand honestly who needs a washing machine. this past week was the first week of modle school. we are teaching classes that are supposed to seem real but it really doesnt work taht way because sometimes there are 4 kids and sometimes tehre are 13, but in a real class it will be closer to 40-60. so not very realistic but oh well. i made apple sauce the other day and it was amazing, and my family loved it which blew my mind! last silly story but the other day this guy told me that my hair is beautiful like sugar. didnt know that sugar was beautiful but hey whatever works for them. i love and miss you all. eat lots and lots of good food today. i will eat some tasty rice and think of mashed potatoes gravey turkey and cranberry sauce. hugs and kisses
linds :)

Wasting time

2007-11-17T01:56:00.000-08:00

So i have spent way too much time on the internet this week. but i am done with the whole host family thing. i love my family here to death, but really i am 23 and not 14. but everything is still going well... i am just ready to get out on my own. we have model school next week...how scary. we have to get up in front of a class and actually teach! i am extremely nervous, but very excited at the same time. during the first week i will teach 2 9th grade english classes, and the 2nd week i will teach either 11th or 12th grade. it is really hard to figure out what to teach because my brother is in 9th grade and doesnt even know the english alphabet. kind of crazy isnt it? if any of my darling teacher friends out there have any suggestions for fun activities with mininal(really minimal) resources it would be greatly appreciated. i just came to the realization not too long ago that my family must not use toilet paper when i am not living with them. the toilet paper has been gone for a few days and it doesnt seem like a big deal to anyone.thank goodness that i have a secret stash in my room. i find out for sure on wednesday where i am going to be living for the next 2 years! i am really excited but really nervous at the same time. so many exciting things going on. right now. only 3 more weeks of homestay and then i am off to my site! that is al for now. i will probably be back on wednesday...either bawling or screaming with excitment! hopefully it is the latter
hugs and kisses!
linds :)

Tete!

2007-11-11T00:55:00.000-08:00

back again! i just got home from my site visit yesterday and now i can not wait for site placement. i went to tete province to a city called moatize and loved it. alyssa(another pct) and i stayed with this guy named bak and loved it. it seemed really crazy when we got there because he lives on the third story of an apartment buliding...not exactly what i picture when i think of the peace corps, but hey it was cool. we wentto visit current volunteers to get a better idea of what life might be like when we are actually out there on our own. it was weird to have so much freedom for 5 days. i didnt have a knock on my door to wake me up, i didnt have to bathe 2 times a day if i didnt want to and i could eat when i wanted. there was so much less structure than here at homestay it was amazming. anyway...moatize is a city of about10000 people located outside of tete city(the provinical capital) the city was really cool and of course the people were really funny. all of bak's neighbours kept asking if we were his wives and one of the girls who is 11 would not believe that we were just visiting. we basically just did a lot of hangingout. the first night i spoke portuguese for about 3 hours with these men who work at the mozambique/malawi border, and that was the extent of my portuguese for the past 5 days, and i felt like i couldnt even speak portuguese last night.... kind of a problem. the weather was HOT!! people basically dont do anything from 11-3 because the heat is pretty unbearable. one of the professors at the school told me that it was one of the hottest weeks of the entire year. one of the days we hiked to the top of this mountain in a thunderstorm, probably not the best idea, but it was really cool. everyone thought we were crazy because we were just walking around in the poruing rain, but it was really fun. after our little hike we went to this shop to have a beer and it ended up being a huge dance party. we were trying to take pictures of these kids and they were going nuts. they LOVE to have their photos taken. i also learned to passada. it is a traditional mozambiquan dance...not that hard, but it was really fun. these women were trying to teach me how to dance like a mozambiquan but it just was not happening. even 3 year old children can move thier bodies like nobodys business. we also visited another site at zoube which was a little more rural, and i am not sure that i want to be placed somewhere like that, but the girls that lived there had a really cute house. we spent friday night in tete city which was amazing! the girl that lives in tete city has a place with air conditioning and running water. it was crazy. we went out to dinner at this great resturant and then went to this brazilian guys house and went swimming. tete provice has a bad rap...but i kind of want to get placed there, but i am not sure that i could handle the heat. i also have a newfound love of mangos....mango season is in full swing here and i love it. i have a lot more that i could write alot more but only one computer is working and there are a ton of people waiting to use the comptuters...more later!
love and miss you all!
linds :)

Devil´s Layer

2007-11-03T04:38:00.000-07:00

hello again! i feel like i am on the computer way more than i should be...oops! when i talked about thread the other day i meant embrodiary(or however you spell it) to make bracelets. i had a language test on friday, but it didnt go so hot. i know that i can speak much better portuguese than i did during my interview...but oh well i guess i still have 5 more weeks to learn. the other day one of my cousins came over for dinner and she told me that i need to eat more because i am not a fat american and that i need to get more fat like my sister melita, and she said this right infront of my sister. i thought it seemed really odd, but i guess here it is not a big deal. for all of you that are doubting that i will come back single...think again! i dont think that i could ever be an african wife. there is no man who will tell me what i can and cant do :) so next week we go on site visits. basically we go and stay with a current volunteer for a week to get a better idea of what service will be like. i am going to tete province...hence why my blog is titled devils layer. the guy that i am staying with said that right now it is about 105 in the sun. ohhh my gosh i think that i am going to die~, but at least this way i will have grounds for telling the peace corps why i dont want to be stationed there. i am also very haopy to inform all of you that i have gotten over my fear of mice, cockroaches,and spiders. well not totally but i dont scream when i see them anymore, and if i see a spider on the wall i just let him be. that way he can kill all of the mosquitos that want to give me malaria. i feel like everything i write is so random. and then after i leave the internet cafe i think of all of the important stuff. did i mentoion that last weekend this lady here told me that i could sell my hair here fo $200 us dollars. she mentioned that darma do bling would buy it. darma do blig is this huge time rap supestar here, she is actaully pretty good, but funny that my family wants me to sell my hair to her. i am pretty excited to start teaching. i have actually been preparing for my lessons lately, and the students get really excited, i know that this will be an exception in the classroom, but if even 5 kids want to learn that will totally make my day.
love and miss you all...hopefully i have a good report when i retun next week.
other things i wouldnt mind having
word~search books
red nail polish or any color(you were right mom...i miss it)
candy
star chart of the souther hemisphere
reading books
world map
hooks to make earrings
a batter charger( mom if you unpack any of my stuff i think i have one), cause i blew up the other one.
dry soup mix
powdered drink mix
an ac adaotor for my ipod

hello all!

2007-10-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

hello everyone! all is well here in mozambique! whats new.... i have started teaching some english classes at the secondary school, not real classes, but between 7 and 12 students who want some extra practice. it is really cool but really imtimidating at the same time, i never realized that being a teacher would be so hard. what is more weird is that most of the students are my age or older and they call me o senhora professora which is a sign of respect both in and out of the classroom. this past week was interesting i thought that i had a really good week for portuguese and we had a mock lang interview on friday and the guy told me that i need to increase my vocabulary and work on past tense verb forms. so much for me thinking that i had a good week, but i heard today that he told everyone the same thing, so we are kind of thinking that it might just be a scare tactic. this past weekend was the 6 month ceremony for the father of my house having passed away and it was a huge learning experience. friday i watched the head of a cow be cut all nasty to eat and i watched a goat be slaughtered. i think about 30 people slept in my house on friday, and i felt like a huge snot as a lounged all alone on my full size bed and huge room while everyone else was cramped elsewhere in the house, but i am not nearly comfortable enough to offer to let someone else sleep in my room. saturday morning a caravan of 10 cars went to the cemetary and there was a ceremony in the local language. a lot of singing and talking that i did nto understand. everyone present placed flowers on the grave and then family members sprinkled watet over the grave, not sure the significance of that. afterwards we returned to the house and everyoned washed their hands before going in the yard, once again not sure of the significance. the men all sat on chairs and the women sat to the side on straw mats and a prayer was said and then we all ate. i was a veg for the weekend because i was not about to eat cow head, goat head, or chicken innards. after eating the men all drank wine and beer and the women sat and talked. i asked why the women dont drink and one of the men said that it is because their husbands say they cant. but for some reason i was allowed to drink, but i have been told before that american women in mozambique are not really women but they are not really men, somehwere in between. i spoke a ton of portuguese and learned a lot but it was frustrating to speak to all these people who are not used to dealing with me and my horrible portuguese. other than that not much is new. i guess i got another marriage proposal on friday when i went to the bar with my brother to buy some beers. it is amazing how many people here speak english. really makes it hard to learn portuguese. i have been telling people that i cant speak english, so they dont really know where i am from. i guess that is really it for now. love and miss you all!
linds :)

1 Month!

2007-10-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

ok well not really one month, but it has been one month since i left home, saturday will be one month in Mozambique! so just a bunch of random stories from the week past. one day my sisters friend came over and she was asking me if i know how to cook and do lanundry and i said no i am learning, but i said that i do know how to iron. and she then told me that i was never going to get married in mozambique. ok i didnt plan on getting married here. no you wont even get a boyfriend if you cant cook and do laundry. by the end of the conversation i was laughing really hard. what was more funny was that the next day a cousin came over and told me that he loved me and that i would make such a beautiful wife and mother. the tactfulness of mozambiquan men. saturday a bunch of volunteers got together and made french toast..ohhh it was amazing! i just learned the other day that they do pay as you go electricity here. people go to some shop and buy credit and then come home and punch the numbers on a reader to get electrictity. kind of crazy. i also went to church for the first time on sunday. it was in portuguese and shanganna( i dont know how you spell that but it is the local language). last night i atteneded an english class...it is going to be very interesting to have my own class. the teacher was handing back final exams, and he called each student up in front of the class and then told them their final exam results. if people did poorly he told them so in front of the class... so much different from what i am used to. after he finished the results i introduced myself and the class asked me some questions. the first question was wether or not i am married. and it was followed by my age. i declined to answer either just because i didnt want to deal with more stupid comments. this week is going well so far. my class has a new portuguese professor and i think that things will work out well. i am still not learning as fast as i would like to, but there is not much that i can do. i always feel like i should stay home and study, but it seems so much more beneficial to go out in the community and be social with the people. i learn a lot more quickly that way , but what i learn is not what i am being tested on. oh the dilemma. if anyone wants to send me some string that would be cool. like the kind that you use to make friendship bracelts in 7th grade. and maybe some chewing gum because i love it. that is all that i have for now. my next post might be pretty interesting because my host moms entire family is coming this weekend and from what i am understanding i am going to spend the day at church on friday and at the cemetary saturday followed by some party. it is looking to be an interesting week ahead! take care! love and miss everyone!
linds :)
not sure if i mentioned this earlier, but many men here have more than one wife. we had a presentation earlier today done by a current voluntter and he told us that he had a conversation with a chapa driver and this was his justification for men having more than one wife. there are more women in mozmabique than men, and women can not take care of themselves, so it is a mans social duty to take care of a woman, and if he has the money to take care of more than one he should.... interesting isnt it?

back again!

2007-10-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

whoa back again in just two days...but today was a short day for class so hey why not. so after i left a post on sunday i was so lucky to go to the salon with my sister again...i tried explaining to them that it is silly for me to get my hair done because it doenst last, but they dont seem to care and still want me to get my hair done. i really dislike going to the salon because i feel like a grease monkey afterward. my hair honestly looks like i just got out of the shower,but my family thinks that it looks so pretty. so what do you do? dad this one is totally for you...good thing we cant have visitors during training... on sunday i was doing the dishes with my mom and the soap in the sink was gone so she went into the bathroom and got the soap from the tub. yep you got it, they use the same soap for dishes body and clothes! tasty isnt it! today my portuguese class made lunch for our moms, interesting trying to come up with an american meal in mozambique. our first idea was hamburgers and plan b was blts, both of which fell through because we cant get ground beef or bacon. we ended up making fancy grilled cheese with tomato onion and lettuce and onion rings. the moms were impressed, and it was tasty. what a wonderful day. but i do have a sweet battle wound... a blister on my pinky from hot oil. we cooked at my friend jesses house and he has 2 year old twin sisters who i am in love with! they are the cutest kids. i was holding one of them and the mom told me to take her back to america...and she was not kidding. it is crazy. i really dont have much else to say now! take care
linds :)

did i ever mention that i shower 2 times a day... i thought that i was going to shower every few days...but no my mom makes me shower every morning and night. crazy!

Galinha (thats chickens in portuguese)

2007-10-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

So i dont know how to stay roosters in portuguese, but that is how you say chickens. i pretty much have grown to hate roosters with my entire being in the last 2 weeks. i kid you not they start crowing at 4am- honestly roosters give a girl a break. but other than the roosters i am still loving it here. as hard as it is to beleive that it can be cold in africa it has been muito frio lately. like cold enough to wear jeans sweatshirts and socks, not at all what i was expecting for africa, but then again i am about 5 min from the border of swaziland, so we are pretty far south. the last week has been somewhat uneventful, but i have learned to do my wash by hand and how to cook some local dishes. both of which take considerably more time than they do in the states, but i am going to be one heck of a domesticated woman when i return. we cooked this dish called couvey. it is made from the leaves on some plant, but it takes almost 3 hours to cook. first you have to smash peanuts and then cut the leaves and then grind coconuts and then let it all cook. these mozambiquan women are seriously amazing, i dont know how they do it everyday.ohh before i forget, thanks for the phonecalls and comments, it is a really great feeling to know that people care. i miss you all! and mackenzie figured out the country code and left it as a comment, so if you want to call she put up a bunch of info as a comment on the last post. last week after dinner i was clearing off the table and as i was walking to the kitchen a mouse ran across the floor and i freaked, then 10 min later i went use the bathroom, and i got the door shut and looked up and the mouse was on teh door frame, and i couldnt get the door open because it sticks really bad so i was screamning like a mad woman,and my mom about had a heartattack because she couldnt figure out why i was screaming. now they make fun of me all the time because i am scared of mice. yesterday a bunch of us volunteers went to this waterfall about 6 km away. i am sure that during the rainy season it is really cool, but do to the lack of water, there was no waterfall, but the area was still really cool, so it was still worht the time it took to get there. not sure if i said this last time but my village is called namaacha, not sure if there is anything online but it might be worth a try.after the waterfall trip we went and watched a couple games at the local soccer field with proved to be really entertaining. another thing i learned this week was that the father of my family recently passed away. my mother wears all black and my sisters wear a black ribbon on their shirts. i found it ratehr interesting how they mourn. unlike the states it is not accepted to cry in public after a week or so. i cant really think of what else has been going on.i miss you all and hopefully i will be able to get back on again in the next week or so. ohh ya i stupidly put my camera cord in my other bag, so i will not be able to upload ny pictures until december. keep in touch!
linds :)

more...

2007-10-06T06:34:00.000-07:00

so i have way more time than i thought... my mobile number is 826279082 but i have no idea what the country code, and the internet is too slow for me to want to look it up. but if someone wants to look it up and call me that would be cool. i think that i am 8 hours ahead of central time. so more about where i am living. it is a village of about 9000 people and i will be here for the next 9 weeks. we have language and cross cultural training everyday. it is pretty cool. my host family consists of a mother, 2 daughters, 1 grandaughter (all of whom are close to me in age) and a grandson who is 4 and he is the best porgutuese teacher ever. he follows me everywhere and cries if he cant sit next to me at dinner. .. its cute. my house is a mansion compared to most of the other volunteers. i have a kitchen and bathroom that are both in the house. and my bathroom has a bathtub(no running water to it though) and a flushing toilet. i never would have thought that i would enjoy bucket baths so much. basically it is a a big pail of water and you bathe yourself by pouring it over you cup by cup. sory this is so scater brained and not organized. food is awesome. lots of rice and potatos...no south beach here. but i cant believe that they can cook so much good food from scratch, but it is all tasty. they are severly lacking in the peanut butter department though. ohh ya so i took my first chapa ride today. a chapa is kind of like a minibus but you cram 19 people into a space made for about 12, but it is less than $2 for an hour ride...not to mention they dont have shocks and people dont want to open windows ...so is life in africa, but it is great

Mozambique!

2007-10-06T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone! Sorry it has taken me so long to get in touch- we are on a field trip to Maputo now so we are spending a little time in an internet cafe. i arrived in Mozambique last tuesday after a super long flight from philly. but the flight was good and my fellow peace corps volunteers are amazing, so it was alright. mozambique is absolutly amazing! i moved in with my host family on sunday...things are starting to get better. the first few days were really rough because i could hardly communicate , but with 5 hours of language class a day things are getting much better! i have learned a ton of portuguese the past week, but i still dont feel like i am learning fast enough. last night i helped my sister cook dinner...she must think i am a total idiot, but i told her that i never cook in the us, and then she thought i was really crazy. i also went to the salon with my host sister yesterday. she had the lady to my hair in curlers...i guess that she didn realize that my hair wont stay... but it was cute for hte few hours that lasted....
umm i dont know what else to say, i am a bit homesick, but i love this place...the people are amazing and so is the food. everday i walk about 10 min to my portuguese class and i laugh so hard because little kids will chase me yelling white in portuguese, and when they catch up to me they laugh because i talk to them in portuguese. i hope that everything is well at home. i miss you all terribly! love you!

linds :)

philadelphia

2007-09-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

hey everyone just wanted to let you know that i made it safely to philly. i am having a lot of fun so far and i have met a ton of really cool people. i hope all is well. i miss everyone already :)

2007-09-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

so now i am really starting to stress... 5 days to go( why am i wasting time on here?) i have packed and repacked my bags about eight hundred times and i am struggling to make this 80 pound weight limit. ohh did i mention before that we have to pack everything we need into 2 bages weighing no more than 80 pounds. it seems easy, but really its tough. i feel so shallow because i am sure many things that i am bringing as necessities are probably luxuries for other people...ohh goodness. but beyond the packing everything is good. i am getting so excited to leave, but at the same time i am finally beginning to realize that this is really 2 years. back to the packing. hope everyone is writing lots of letters :P

Important Information (well kinda )

2007-08-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

So this is the really important stuff...like making me feel special by getting letters in the post! From September until mid-December of 2007 my address will be

Lindsay Songstad,PCT
Peace Corps
C.P. 4398
Maputo, Mozambique

Make sure that you write "Air Mail" and " Par Avion" on anything that you might send. If you get really ambitious and think that you might write more than one letter, please be sure and number them because rumor has it that the postal service is not extremely reliable. I have also heard that writing in red ink, and writing God Bless, Teaching Materials, or drawing crosses on the packing has helped other volunteers receive more complte packages. I am hoping to get a mobile phone when i get there, but obviously i dont have the number yet. I know that calling overseas direct can get really expensive, but there is this thing called Skype. It is free to download, and using it you can call Mozambique for somewhere around $0.16/min. Not the cheapest rates out there, but much less expensive than calling directly.

At this point i am really excited/nervous. As much reading as i have done i feel like i should know what to expect, but i really have no idea. it seems like everyone has a different experience,but all volunteers seem to love moz, so that is reassuring. i am most nervous about learning portuguese, but i guess when you are thrown into a situation where you have no choice but to learn the language, you either sink or swim. although i have been trying to study portuguese, i dont think i have been making much progress, but i am trying right? well i think that might be all for now. 6 weeks and counting :D

Mozambique

2007-07-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

So I am pretty new to this blogging thing, but I figured that this might be easier than sending out a mass email, and I have heard that internet service in Mozambique is rather slow, so i figured that this would be a better option. But for those of you that have not heard i am going to Mozambique September 25th to teach English at a secondary school and i am extremely excited! After I leave I am not sure how often i will be able to update this, but i will do my best to keep everyone informed as to what is going on. Take care and wish me luck!