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!