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!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
hello africa tell me how you're doin!
i have an address now!
write it just like this
____________________________________________________________________
Lindsay Songstad
your address goes here
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 :)
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
feliz ano novo!
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 :)
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 :)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year( Hope you have lots of time to read!)
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
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
Thursday, December 6, 2007
ummm
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!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving!
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 :)
linds :)
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Wasting time
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 :)
hugs and kisses!
linds :)
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