School is Officially in Session

Hi everyone!  Well, the smell of chalk dust is in the air!  School is officially in session here in Gorongosa!  Brian and I were lucky enough to be given the responsibility of creating the school schedule, which has left me dreaming of little color-coded schedule cards every time I close my eyes.  It’s like the ultimate Sudoku puzzle, only way less fun.  After about three weeks though, I think we’ve finally got one that will work and keep everyone happy, or at least not hating me. Thank goodness!

This year I’ll be teaching six classes of eleventh grade English.  I must say, after teaching third graders for the past several years, I can definitely appreciate the slightly longer attention span of the big kids!  It’s also nice to plan just one lesson per day. Unfortunately though that means that I have to listen to the sound of my own voice while I repeat the exact same thing six times per day. That’s enough to send a girl over the edge.  I have also discovered that my third grade jokes aren’t quite as effective with the eleventh graders.  I’ve been getting a lot of blank stares.  I think I need some new material!  Overall though, I really am enjoying it.  In addition to day classes, I’m also teaching night classes which are mostly made-up of adults.  It’s a different experience for sure, but I’m really enjoying aspects of it.  For the most part, it is a much more laid back atmosphere and they are extremely motivated to learn, which is really nice.

Brian has started his chemistry classes also.  He’s got ninth grade, which is exactly what he was hoping for.  He’s already started the year off with a couple of experiments, which the students absolutely loved.  He intentionally lit some paper on fire in class.  It was huge crowd pleaser!
Editor’s note: Classes are going great for me so far; however, I still have so much to learn about Classroom Management. It can be really difficult here because three students share one desk so I am sure you can all imagine how hard it can be to get them to stop talking! Also, the other day I had to disallow about ten students to enter the classroom since they showed up 20 min late. That is almost half the period!! It is so hard disciplining some of these kids though because they are so darn cute! All in all, chemistry is proving to be really fun and I’m really excited to move forward. My computer class on the other hand is going to be a real challenge. I had my first lecture for that on Thursday and for this particular lecture I had one computer that worked for 20 min of the hour and a half lecture. And to make matters worse, I had to share that computer with 40 students. Rumor has it that we will be receiving six computers next week so let’s all cross our fingers! I am supposed to teach them Microsoft Word and Excel during these classes but I found out on Thursday that most of the students don’t know how to use a mouse or a keyboard yet so I am going to have to back my lesson plans way up! I am really hoping those other computers get here quick because I only get these kids for an hour and a half a week every other two weeks so I don’t have much time with them.

Our biggest challenges with teaching right now are trying to learn everyone’s names (I’ve got nearly 300 students!), the heat, and a serious lack of materials.  We have no books and neither do the students.  It’s also pretty expensive to make photo copies, so we likely won’t do that too often.  So we’re pretty much limited to the chalkboard, notebook paper, some markers, and a couple of packs of sticky notes.  We’re hoping to accumulate a few more materials with time, but we’ve managed to get pretty creative with the stuff we’ve got now.  I made a vocabulary game with a grid I drew on the chalkboard and some sticky notes the other day that was a hit!  I’m happy to report that one of my evening classes, the one made of mostly adults older than myself, nearly killed each other racing to the board to see which team could organize the stickies the fastest.  They are crazy and I love it!  The other issue that makes things a bit challenging is the heat.  In addition to being blazing hot here, teachers are required to wear “batas” which are like white lab coats. It’s probably a good thing that it makes me stand out as a teacher a little  since I’m smaller than most of the students but it is very very toasty!  I will say though that it makes an excellent sweat/chalk rag!  If you think I get sweaty in this thing, you can imagine what happens to poor Mr. Mills!  Not pretty!

In other news, we have had some unwelcome visitors in our home recently.  The first intruder made his appearance mid-morning last week.  While relaxing in our main room, we looked down to discover a big black centipede with bright yellow legs scurrying across the floor!  I grabbed the insect killer and Brian went for the broom. While he beat the living daylights out of the thing, I covered it in a thick layer of poison.  Eventually he went to insect heaven and we swept him out the door.  While, that very same night, while playing cards with our friend here, Espanhol, I felt a little twinge of pain in my toe.  I looked down to discover another creepy crawly yellow-legged centipede scampering over my foot!  Naturally, I flew into hysterics, hopping around on one foot while Brian and Espanhol beat this little guy to death.  At this point, after two intruders in one day, Brian and I decided to google “black centipede with yellow legs” on his phone to see what we could come up with.  The first result that really caught our eye was for a Giant Carnivorous Centipede.  The picture looked exactly like what we had seen so we read on.  Apparently this creature can grow to be over a foot long and is capable of eating live bats.  Yes, I just said live bats.  You can imagine how I was acting at this point.  Absolutely hysterical.  Well, we went on to read that it is only found in South America, thank goodness!  We figured out that our new found friends here in Gorongosa can give a nasty little bite, but aren’t powerful enough to eat small mammals and don’t grow to be a foot long.  They do however, have a mild poison that they secrete from the bottoms of their little centipede feet that can cause a mild burning sensation.  I became convinced when we read this that that was what had happened to me.  I had been burnt by the foot poison of a centipede!  Brian of course tried to convince me that it was all in my head.  Well, karma came and bit him in the toe less than a week later when, while watching a movie, he felt a crampy feeling in his toe and looked down to see a brown centipede clamped onto his foot.  After chasing the darn thing all over the room, it eventually escaped and is still at large somewhere in our home.  This is an official warning for all centipedes in the southern African region: no prisoners will be taken.  Anything with an excessive number of legs found within the general vicinity of our home with be killed instantly!

Well, we send you all the very best!  We miss everyone lots, but are having a great time here, despite the minor inconveniences that we’ve been facing.  Look forward to hearing from all of you soon!

This is a picture of the waterfall near our house. There’s a bigger one near the mountain too that we haven’t been to yet, but are hoping to towards the end of the rainy season when it’s nice and full.

This is our little friend, Espanhol.  He’s seventeen and basically lives here.  He loves playing on the computer and listening to the same songs over and over again.  He says his dream is to be fat.  We’re trying really hard to make it come true.  You should see this kid eat chocolate cake!  The more time he spends here though, the more and more he’s started acting like a little mini Brian.  It’s truly frightening.

Here’s another picture of Espanhol at the river near our house.

This is Brian with Thika before our first day of school.  We managed to keep Thika from following us there, thank goodness!

This is Jordan in her “bata” before heading off to school. How cute is she?!?! ~

These are a three of the little kids that play outside our house.  Simão, Amelia, and Adelina.  They’re really fun.

This is Simão.  He is absolutely adorable and was cracking up for no particular reason in this picture.

Thika is officially the laziest creature in all of southern Africa.  Not only does he spend all day sleeping, he can’t even be bothered enough to get up and eat.  This is him eating a piece of German pancake while moving nothing but his mouth.

Here is a photo of the enormous snails that come out of the wordworks here after it rains. Although, it may not be the best reference point since Jordan has the smallest hands in the world but you can see that this particular snail is larger than her hand. They are truly a sight to see when there are many crawling around on the porch.

Here is a photo of our empregada (maid) and I. Now you can all see just how small she is and how she puts me to shame since she is easily ten times stronger than I am. Not only does she haul all of our water for us, she washes our clothes and cleans our bathroom. We would be so screwed without her….although I may get some actual exercise if I had to haul my own water….

Here is Espanhol and I eating some Jordan’s delicious cookies that she made for a dessert when we had Espanhol’s family over for dinner. I think that we have found someone who enjoys Jordan’s cookies more than I do. Also, Espanhol would like to say to everyone:
Obrigado para dispensar Teacher’s Brian and Jordan de Estados Unidos para aqui em Moçambique.(He wants to thank all of you for allowing us to leave the United States to come to Mozambique.) How can you not adore this kid!

Até em Julho!

–Brian and Jordan

60 Minutes video on Gorongosa

Hi all! This is Karen! Here is a 60 Minutes video I found on another Peace Corps blog about Gorongosa, the area where Brian & Jordan are. It is very interesting and the photos are amazing. I showed it to Brian and Jordan and they wanted me to post it for you all to see. They also said that there are actually going to be two
Peace Corps volunteers working there this year. They are both girls who opted to extend their service for a third year and were chosen for this special assignment. Very cool!! Enjoy!!

To see the video in higher quality on CBS.com click HERE.

Or, to read the article, click HERE.

Also, here is a link to Gorongosa’s Wildlife park:

http://www.gorongosa.net/

Nossa Casa

Hi everyone!  We thought you might be interested in what the inside of
our home here is like, so we snapped a few photos for you.

This is our main room/dining room/kitchen.  Over on the left, the two
big silver things are our water filters that we run our drinking water
through after boiling it.  The kitchen area has our stove, mini
fridge, and oven.  There’s also a little spice rack in the right
corner.  We invested in a little mat to keep me from getting shocked,
in case I forget to wear shoes when I cook.

This is the spare bedroom.  Once we get a double bed in our room,
we’ll move the little one in here to replace the foam pad on the
floor.  Outside these windows is where we’ll plant our garden.
There’s no glass on the windows, but there’s a screen, wire, and bars
on the other side of the shutters.  The whole house has cement walls
and floors.

This is the little storage room.  We keep the bike in here and any
other junk that doesn’t have a home.  The line that’s hanging across
the room is for hanging underwear to dry because it is not considered
appropriate to hang them on the line outside.

This is our room.  We managed to effectively hang our mosquito net,
which we keep tucked in to keep all the critters out.  On top of the
mosquito net is a piece of fabric that we pinned up because dead bugs
fall from the light and through the net.  There’s a chair next to
Brian’s side of the bed where he keeps his book, his treasured sweat
rags, and our head lamps so that we can read without having to get out
of bed to turn off the light and re-tuck the net.  On the left we have
two cabinets where we keep all of our clothes.

This is the bathroom which is connected to the porch outside.  The
sink has a drain, but no running water.  The silver thing is the
bottom of an old water filter that we use as a faucet to wash our
hands.  We store all of our water in here in those buckets.  Unless
Thika is lucky enough to be allowed to lay right inside the door to
the house, this is where he prefers to spend most of his time.  This
can be problematic because he absolutely hates being splashed.  This
is also a great place to find Gorongosa wildlife such as tiny frogs,
giant snails, nasty spiders, and geckos.

Here is one more view of the bathroom.  We stand in this corner to
shower and use a little pitcher to dump water on ourselves.  There is
a small drain in the floor.  For those that are curious, we have a
toilet in the corner that isn’t shown that you throw water down to
flush.

Here’s another picture of Thika, hanging out outside the bathroom, his
favorite place.  His ears have a mind of their own!

This a picture of some flowers on the Plumeria tree in our yard.  You
can’t tell in this picture, but it’s huge and it smells so good!

And here’s a picture of us, looking sun burnt and sweaty, which is our
look here!

And finally, the moment that you have all been waiting for. OUR
ADDRESS!! We made it official today, it is Brian and Jordan Mills CP
134 Chimoio, Mozambique. That is it. If anyone sends us anything let
us know so that we can track how long it takes and whether it arrives

Happy Holidays!

Hi everyone!  We hope you all had a nice Christmas!  We had a great
time here.  All of the volunteers from the central region came to our
house to celebrate.  We had eleven people in our little house!  It was
very cozy!  So cozy in fact that a few people opted to sleep outside.
We’ve become very resourceful when it comes to hanging mosquito nets!
We spent most of our time cooking, eating, and playing games.  Card
games were the most popular activity.  However, Brian has this
computer game that helps you memorize countries and cities of the
world.  He can now name and locate every major city in Sweden!  Very
useful.  We also did a secret Santa gift exchange.  One of the
volunteers from Oregon knitted a really nice scarf for me and Brian
received a capulana (large piece of printed fabric used for making
clothing) with a giant picture of Barack Obama’s head on it!  It will
make a lovely shirt!  The soccer ball tree was a hit, but while trying
to fix the lights, I gave myself a nice little shock!  I knew I had a
bad feeling about it!

As for life right now, we’ve got quite a bit of time on our hands.
Our daily routine is something like: wake-up, read, eat, walk to the
market, eat, watch a show on the computer, read, eat, read, go to bed.
Very exciting.  School hasn’t started yet so it’s pretty quiet around
here, with the exception of daily visits from neighborhood kids.  They
like to play with our soccer ball right out in front of the house.
Thika does not appreciate this at all as it disturbs his napping.  I
think I mentioned in our last blog post that he has grown to be quite
loyal and faithfully trots behind us everywhere we go.  As a result,
we attempted to sneak off to church last Sunday without him noticing.
We were unsuccessful.  Just as we arrived at the church he came
bounding up behind us!  We told him very sternly, in both English and
Portuguese, that he was absolutely not allowed in church.  He wouldn’t
listen and, as usual, faithfully trotted in behind us through the open
church doors.  He curled up beneath our pew and napped through most of
the service.  We had to be very sneaky about getting up to take
communion so that he wouldn’t follow us up to the front.  He was
sleeping soundly though, as usual, and didn’t even notice.

We’ve heard that people are curious about our diet here, so we thought
we would tell a little about the kinds of things that we eat.  Our
diet has changed significantly since we moved out from our home stay.
While living there, we started the day off taking tea, which consisted
of hot chocolate or coffee, bread, and sometimes peanut butter or
cheese.  Then, it’s traditional here to eat a “lonche” midmorning
which is usually something like a juice box and a little package of
cookies.  For lunch, most people go home.  At our house lunch was
usually something like fried potatoes with fried chicken or fish.
From time to time we might have had a tomato or cucumber salad to go
with it.  Late in the afternoon most people take tea again, though we
typically didn’t do that at our house.  Then, dinner was served around
8 o’clock at night and typically consisted of rice with chicken in
sauce.  Occasionally we would have beans or a dish called “matapa”
which is crushed greens in a peanut/coconut sauce.  Brian’s least
favorite food of all was this stuff called “xima” which is finely
ground corn flour that is mixed with water to make a substance that’s
a lot like grits, only thick enough to cut with a knife and almost
entirely tasteless.  Mmm!

Since moving out on our own, we’ve changed our habits some to include
a lot less oil and quite a bit more fruits and veggies.  We are
basically vegetarians now.  Killing, plucking, and cleaning a chicken
is a huge pain and we ate enough chicken at our home stay to get us
through the next two years.  I’m thinking of writing a book called
“101 Ways to Prepare Beans” given that that seems to be one of the few
sources of protein available on a consistent basis and a new staple in
our diet.  If you’ve got any good bean recipes, I would love to hear
them!  Whatever else we eat sort of depends on what’s available in the
market.  It varies quite a bit, but things that we often buy include
cabbage, lettuce, okra, carrots, limes, bananas, pineapple, green
peppers, tomatoes, and onions.  Lately there have also been some
unidentified vegetables being sold.  I decided to give this
squash-like thingy a try and failed miserably at preparing it.  I’ve
wanted to bake the leftover squash into bread, but there haven’t been
any eggs in the market for several days!  We can also get pasta,
potatoes, rice, and bread here in town, so the carb department is
covered!  Last week we took a trip into Chimoio to the supermarket and
picked up several gourmet items such as soy sauce, mustard, oatmeal,
powdered sugar, peanut butter, raisins, lentils, split peas, and a few
spices.  Basically, we can get plenty of things here to keep a healthy
diet, it’s just not the same as home.  There isn’t access here in town
to canned goods (besides sardines) and dairy products can be difficult
to find and pretty expensive.  Many other things that aren’t available
prepared, we’ve just learned to make from scratch, like pasta sauce,
refried beans, and tortillas.  The key though to cooking in this house
is wearing shoes!  Though our little stove works very well, it will
give you a little shock if you cook on it while you’re barefoot!

That about does it for now!  Thanks for all the comments and e-mails.
We hope everyone had a great Christmas and that you have a happy new
year!

Pictures!!!

Click on the photos to make them bigger!!

This was one of our host brothers in Namaacha who from the beginning seemed to be a holy terror but turned out to be so adorable. One of his favorite things to do in the last couple weeks of our time in Namaacha was to bring his little plastic soccer ball to our room and set it in our laps to ask us to play with him. Also, probably the cutest thing he ever did was when we were sitting out on the porch reading one afternoon, he came around the corner with a little plate with wrapped mints on it and it handed it to me.

This photo is of the famous dog that everyone has wanted to see, Thika. As mentioned before, Thika means Hyena in the local language here in Gorongosa and if you use your imagination a bit; you can see how he got that name. The other day, he followed us all the way into town on what amounted to be the hottest day we had encountered since being here. The poor thing was so miserably hot that he just kept running ahead of us to find a shady spot and lay down until we caught up to him and then he would run ahead to another shady spot. It was pretty amazing how he stuck with us for the entire hike into town, around town while we bought items, and all the way home. He also loves to lie in our bathroom and snap at all the flies that irritate him. He is also proving to be a very good guard dog, however, sometimes he will bark continuously at well-meaning strangers.

This photo is of our house. You can see the front door on the right and the other door is to our bathroom. Thika is surprisingly not inside in this photo. We have a covered porch which will be really nice for eating outside in the future if we want. We have an extra table in our guest room that we could easily move outside when the temperatures get back down to reasonable levels where I don’t need to sit in front of a fan! That window in the front looks into our kitchen/dining room. To the right of the house you can see our Papaya tree growing and to the left you can see what will eventually be our garden. That is one of our future projects that we are looking forward to beginning. The nice thing about this house in comparison to our house in Namaacha is that the metal roof is not the final barrier here like it was in Namaacha. There is another ceiling built underneath that metal roof so when it rains it’s not amplified 100 times over. We gotta say though that we are extremely pleased with our first house!

This final picture is the view from our backyard. It is taken at the edge of where our garden will be and it just shows off a little bit of how pretty this place is. It’s unbelievable how green this place is and this is hardly the view the surrounding area can provide. The drive into town is breathtaking and the walk back from the town on a clear day such as this one, is amazing. One of these days, we will take our camera into town in order to get a picture for you guys that includes Gorongosa Mountain. We were advised not to walk around with our camera in the early periods of being at site in order to not draw unnecessary attention to ourselves but we promise more scenery photos to come in the future.

Gorongosa!

Hi everyone!  A lot has been happening since we last had a chance to update all of you.  Here are some of the highlights:

Model School: Because the students are on summer break from school right now, there isn’t a place for the volunteers to practice their new teaching skills.  So, Peace Corps arranged a “model school” in which students signed up to attend school for half days for two weeks.  I taught eighth grade English and Brian taught ninth grade chemistry.  His first day was a little rough, but by the end he was having a really good time and feeling really comfortable.  I have to say, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about teaching eighth grade, but I loved it!  The highlight for me was the possessive adjectives dance!  It’s sweeping the country!

Thanksgiving:  Peace Corps arranged for us to have our own little Thanksgiving celebration here in Mozambique.  We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pie.  It was incredible!  We also got our site placements that day.  We found out that we would be placed in Gorongosa in Sofala province and we were thrilled!  And to top it all off, we played a game of American football!  It was a good day!

Gorongosa:  We arrived here last Friday and it is absolutely beautiful!  As many of you know, there is a national wildlife park here which is about a thirty minute drive from where we live.  However, we have already discovered a lot of wildlife in our house including an abundance of extremely large spiders and also dozens of geckos.  There are also these crazy snails (not inside the house) with shells that are bigger than my fist!

Our house has two bedrooms, a little side room that could be like an office or a pantry, and a main room that serves as the kitchen/living room/dining room.  The bathroom is attached to the house but you have to go out on the porch to get to it.  We love it!  …with the exception of the spiders. Just yesterday we went to Beira to get a little stove, a toaster oven, and a mini fridge.  (Thank you beach mamas and friends!)  We also have a tiny little Christmas tree with soccer ball lights.  I’ll give you one guess to figure out who saw it and insisted that we had to it. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost Christmas as we sit here sweating in shorts and a t-shirt!  We are very lucky that we have several Peace Corps friends that will be here visiting us on Christmas.  It will be cozy here in our little house!

We’ve also inherited a little dog named Thika which apparently means hyena in the local language here.  He’s absolutely adorable and a very good guard dog! We love him!

So, we know that lots of you have been asking for an address where you can send mail, which is super generous and thoughtful.  The thing is that the address we have right now is for the office in Maputo, which is really far away.  We’re hoping to get something closer and we’ll get it out as soon as we figure it out.

If we don’t talk to you before then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Also, I would like to add that I figured out how to connect our cell phone that has internet service to our computer so that we can put posts up from our house. This is apparently working thus far but I haven’t been able to figure out how to upload pictures yet through it. I think part of it may be the weak internet connection. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure this out soon so we can send out some pictures of the people, house, and even the dog! We miss everyone and hope you are all doing well!

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!