Week 5

Here's the week 5 Happs.

We found out where we're going for site visits.  I'm off to Manica!  I hope there are mountains at my potential site.  (It's a reasonable hope--because Manica is home to the largest mountain in Mozambique--Mt. Binga).  Besides maybe seeing a mountain, I'm lucky because I get to leave Training Village on Friday afternoon and stay overnight in Maputo.  That's right, I'm *probably* going to take a shower.  I'm SO excited.  I can't wait for the water to automatically fall without me having to dump it over myself cupfuls at a time.  It's been cold here in TV and taking bucket-baths is getting old, fast.  But, just in case you were worried:  I got this, I can handle bucket baths.

My laundry is all done and "dry" (this is a word that doesn't mean the same here in Mozambique that maybe it did at home.  Here, dry means...not dripping anymore.  It took 4 days for the laundry I did on Sunday to get to this state.  But that's okay, because we iron EVERYTHING.  Shirts, pants, t shirts, underpants? Yes, even underpants.  Sheets? why not, iron ALL the fabrics.  Helps 'em dry.

My room is clean.  I threw out garbage, swept and mopped.  My mae was super proud of me.  It's good that she has low expectations for my ability to do routine adulty-type things.  I keep amazing her!  She claps her hands and tells me that she's proud of me when I do things like: iron my shirts.  (I'm still pretending that laundry is too complicated for me to grasp...).

In addition these seemingly mundane events (maybe when YOU live in Africa you can understand how exciting it is to have clean/dry laundry) life remains pretty sweet.  Everyone is nice, I'm learning more and more Portuguese.  I say this tentatively though, because I have my mid-training language interview tomorrow.  If I fail I think that I get pulled out of TECH sessions until the end of training.  As much as I don't want to fail, I'm a little tempted...

So, Here's a few pictures of my life.  And I'll be off the grid for a week!  I'll have a full report on the Manica life when I return.

This is what my laundry looked like today.

This is my room.

This is SamWell the dog.  I think my neighbor named him after me.  I'm not sure if I'm offended or not.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this dog.  He follows us everywhere and his tongue hangs out of the side of his mouth.  Always.

It's too much.  I can't stand all the cute-ness up in here.  I hope I don't get a disease from petting this dog.