Halfway through Training!!!

Hi everyone! Well, we’ve officially been here in Mozambique for almost a month now and we’re nearly halfway finished with our training! Woo hoo! We’ve been planning and teaching a lot of lessons in preparation for model school in a couple of weeks. Tuesday we also had the chance to go to the orphanages in town and have a non-formal education experience. My group played “Tomate, Tomate, Frango”, which means “Tomato, Tomato, Chicken” (our made-up Mozambican version of “Duck, Duck, Goose”) and Brian’s group played “Brian Diz”, which is Portuguese for “Brian Says”. We’re also looking forward to our site visits which are coming up next weekend. We’ll each travel to another location in Mozambique where there is currently a Peace Corps volunteer serving so we can see what it’s like. It’s not necessarily where we’ll spend the next two years. We’re both looking forward to spending a few days out of town. It’s time for a break!

Last weekend we attended a Halloween party with all of the Peace Corps Trainees here in town. Brian and I went as Fred and Wilma Flintstone and we won the costume contest! It’s amazing what you can do with a couple of bed sheets and a hotel sewing kit!

Yabba Dabba Doo!

Last week we also attended a training about Permaculture. It’s a gardening technique that focuses on growing the maximum amount of food with limited space and even limited water. It’s involves a technique called “double digging” as well as a lot of preplanning and thought. A lot of volunteers use it as a secondary project at their sites. We really enjoyed the training. In fact, one of the other trainees who lives right across the street from us was so inspired that he asked his host family if we could practice what we learned on their land. We spent all day Sunday planning, digging, and digging again! Looking back on it, we could have improved a few things, but it still looks pretty cool regardless! Brian and I are looking forward to planting our own garden when we get to site.

Representing the Beavs in Moz!

As for ridiculous stories and embarrassing moments, there are of course a few, though they are becoming slightly less frequent as our Portuguese skills improve. On Saturday the current Peace Corps Volunteers who are helping with our training right now modeled a lesson for us. Brian decided to make the lesson “authentic” and play the part of the class clown. He managed to get himself kicked out of class! I was so proud! We’ve also been discussing potential pets for when we get to site.  Brian wants to get a pet elephant at site, and due to the size of elephants, he is suggesting the name Oreo.  What do you think Lauren?

Things have been great so far.  We miss everyone and look forward to hearing from you all!  Take care!

Aqui em Namaacha!

Well, we have successfully made it through three weeks in Africa and are having a great time so far.  We are staying with a host family in a town called Namaacha that has proven to be really interesting.  The     family that we are staying with is enormous.  We have a mom and an aunt that spends a lot of time here.  Along with them, we have a grandma that lives here who speaks the local dialect of Changana, making it tricky for us to communicate with her.  Between our mom and the aunt there are six kids that run around here.  The oldest is 14 and does most of the cooking and chores.  The other five range from the ages of 9 to 2 with two 2 year old twins.  The kids are absolutely adorable and we can’t get over it.  One of the twins is the funniest, most serious two-year old we have ever met.  If he is not marching around the yard he is probably pouting.  The running joke in the family is that he is incapable of keeping his pants on for any extended period of time.  We will try and get a photo of him for you guys but it is rare to see him fully clothed.  Jordan and I have our own house that is like an annex to the house where the others live.  It’s nice because it can be a little crazy whenever we are hanging out over there or eating.  To go along with all the people there is the occasional spattering of chickens or random birds that are just wandering around.  I can definitely say that this host family experience has been quite different from the previous ones that I have had.

Our mom can be seen in the middle back row.

 

Some of the kids that live with us at the house.

Every day we get up and get to start our day off with a bucket shower, which consists of a bucket of water and a soup can to scoop it out and pour it on ourselves.  It makes for an interesting routine when you gotta use one hand to shampoo in order to keep the other one clean to rinse.  Being that we don’t have an unlimited amount of water during these showers you really learn to conserve.  After that we usually have a breakfast that always consists of an inordinate amount of bread that I usually siphon into my backpack so that I can eat later in the day since we will never be able to finish the amount of bread our mom gives us in the morning ever!  The issue of eating here is also a contentious one.  Everyone liked to joke before we left that we were gonna starve while living in Africa but that is far from the case.  We constantly have to convince our family that we do actually like their food because we can never finish it.  They give us more food for every meal than we know what to do with and every time we don’t finish it we are accused of not liking it.  It will be a never ending battle.

Classes have been hard but it is comforting to spend time with some of the other 67 volunteers who are here with us right now.  We have two hours of language every morning followed by two hours of education specific classes.  Then after lunch, we have a couple hours of culture class which is really interesting but extremely exhausting to listen for two hours in Portuguese.  Then to top it off, we get to finish our day off with an hour of more language class.  It can be really tiring sometimes but both of our Portuguese language skills have increased dramatically in just three weeks so hopefully that trend will continue so we will be even more proficient when we go off by ourselves.

As for crazy stories so far, I had the pleasure of busting a plastic patio chair in my host mom’s house the very first night that set off what seemed like a thousand kids bawling.  It was both funny and embarrassing because at the point, I didn’t have any ability to communicate so I couldn’t really say anything.  Jordan had the misfortune of introducing me as her “wife” to the entire church congregation the first Sunday we were here.  She couldn’t figure out why everyone was laughing so hysterically until afterwards.  I had the opportunity a week ago to go purchase live chickens with my mom and bring them back to slaughter them.  They showed me the proper way to kill a chicken which consisted of holding its feet and wings with my feet then pulling its neck out with one hand while cutting its throat with the other.  It wasn’t as much of a traumatic experience as I was expecting.  I have since killed two others and it seems like it may be one of my usual jobs around here.  Jordan had a fun interaction with our grandma who speaks Changana when she came home early from class one day with a stomach ache and tried to convey this to her.  She was trying to explain this with hand gestures and actions and grandma immediately thought that she was pregnant.  Thankfully that is not the case so we are not coming home yet!

We will try and keep you all updated as often as possible but getting to the internet café is really difficult because of our schedule and computer availability.  We do however, have cell phones that are internet capable now and can check our email daily so if anyone wants to get a hold of us or chat, please send us an email and we can keep in touch that way.  Hope everyone is doing well and we look forward to hearing from you! Tchau!

 

Bringing home the dinner!

Here I am killing my first chicken!!!

Brian & Jordan in Africa!!

Hi!! This is Karen, a friend of Brian & Jordan’s! Before they left, Brian & Jordan gave me access to post on their blog in case they couldn’t due to lack of internet. Their internet time is going to be very limited for the next few weeks at least, but I did recieve an update that I thought I would pass along.

Both sets of parents heard from Brian & Jordan on Friday that they had safely arrived in Maputo, Mozambique! They also had some great news…… that they get to live TOGETHER with a host family during their 10 week training!! Yay!!! I know they are so happy about that!  

My brother Matt found this link to many other PC volunteer blogs who are also in Moz. It seems as though the top 10 or so blogs listed are from people in Jordan & Brian’s Group! They are all writing about Philadelphia & Cheesesteaks!! Some of them were able to give a more detailed update once they arrived in Africa too. Here is the link: http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/?showcountryinfo,mz. The Gator in Mozambique and The Traveling Panda have the most recent updates I think. 

This morning, Brian & Jordan’s parents got an email from the Peace Corps with this photo that we just had to share!! The title of the email was:

 

Your Peace Corps Volunteers have arrived…….

.......and are smiling!!!!

Can you see them??!! Brian on the top right and Jordan is smack in the middle!

Yay Brian & Jordan!! We love you, miss you and can’t wait to hear from you!! 

Karen

Mmm…Cheesesteaks!

Well, we have finally arrived at the point of no return!  Tomorrow morning at 3 am our time, we will board a bus to New York and then make our way to Africa.  We had the fortune of spending about 36 hours in the great town of Philadelphia.  We have been joking that the Peace Corps sends us to one of the most famous historical American cities before shipping us off for two years.  We did some exploring this morning and visited Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and Ben Franklin’s grave.  But most of all, we consumed a few cheesesteaks in this short amount of time knowing that is what Philadelphia is the most famous for….

We spent five hours in an orientation class today where we were both scared straight while being reassured at the same time.  We learned the many ways that one can be kicked out of the Peace Corps and that seemed like an hour all by itself.  Although my mother perked up when she heard about all the different ways that we could be kicked out and sent home, I assured her that we would not be participating in any of those activities!

So far we are having a great time, there are 65 Mozambicans here at the hotel and they all seem really great.  We have already developed some friendships with some of the other volunteers and hope to spend more time with them during training as well as during our service.  There are also 60 something Azerbaijanis at the same hotel as us.  On top of that there is a group leaving for Turkmenistan here in Philadelphia as well.  Apparently the majority of the population of this town is Peace Corps volunteers.

The emotions are a little mixed right now with excitement and nerves being that we don’t know what we are getting into but we are looking forward to taking the next step.  We appreciate all the support that we have been getting and we hope to be able to update you all once we get to Mozambique.

Mmm...cheesesteak!

The liberty bell! Click on this photo to see the rest of our Philly pics!

Olá!

Este é nosso blog!  That’s Portuguese for “This is our blog!”  I wanted to say “Welcome to our new blog”, but we haven’t learned that yet.    Brian and I are going to attempt to use this little site to share our stories and pictures from Mozambique over the next couple of years.  Should be fun!

For those who haven’t heard, we leave early on September 28th for Philadelphia.  We spend a couple of days there before bussing up to New York and flying to South Africa.  Fifteen hours!!!  That’s a lot of “quality time” on the airplane.    Once we arrive in South Africa, we have a short layover before we take a quick flight to Maputo, Mozambique.   In Maputo we will spend three days in the hotel getting a crash course in survival Portuguese and a lot of shots!  After that, we will bus an hour or two to the town outside of Maputo where we will spend the next ten weeks with host families.  It is going to be a crazy week!

We’re starting to get really excited, but really nervous too!  I’m not sure what kind of internet access we’ll have during training, but we will write as much as we can.  Can’t wait to hear from everyone!