Science Fair

Francisco did an experiment for science fair.  We sprouted some bean seeds under varying environmental conditions and he won 4th place at the district fair.

Now we're going to add another component and spiff up his project for the Provincial science fair in a few weeks.

Ninjas are not Shy

I'm re-posting these because apparently there were problems with the last post. 

We climbed to the top of this hill and sat in the shade reading the Wild book about the lady who hiked the PCT with absolutely no idea about how to walk around carrying stuff. (Which should have been titled "Hiking the PCT: a more appropriate response to grief than shooting up heroin")  We're starting to making plans to hike the AT next year.  Exciting, right?

After a while we realized that these two little kids are putting on a show for us. They were peeking around the corner and then skittering away when we looked up.  Once they felt certain they had an audience they started coming around the corner while pretending to be various things.  A grandma with a cane, a juggler, a monkey...  

That was just the warm up though.  We were observing "Best of Mozambique as Preformed by Dramatic 7 year old" First, school time.  The little girl made her brother stand behind her while she held her arms straight at her sides, stared at the ground and sang the Hino National (national anthem) with 30% of the words correct.  

After the Hino she began imitating every Mozamauntie ever by yelling into the bushes at another friend that I couldn't see.

"Vai para casa, tomar banho!  Oviu?!"  (go home and take a bath, do you hear???)  She yelled over and over interspersed with various things in dialect that I did not understand.  

I never did see her friend, but the little girl and her brother dissapeared into the bushes and came back with THESE NINJA OUTFITS ON and proceeded to the grand finale.  A ninja battle.

That time I went on a beach walk and saw a Ninja Fight

This one time I went on a beach walk with Amy and she had her camera and took all these awesome photos.  All I did was walk along and then I put all these pictures on my blog.  

where there is no microwave

At the beginning of May I had a week long break between Trimesters.  I spent some time in Tofo and then headed up to Amy's site.  She was teaching so I spent the week having some cooking adventures.  My kitchen is extremely small with an extremely large roach population, so I don't enjoy cooking at home.  Amy's house has a non-existent roach population, lots of room to cook (she lives in a converted classroom! cool!) and she has lots of fancy ingredients.  

Here are a few of the things I made...

In college I worked for food service...one of the things I did was make to-go-sushi, you know, the kind in those little plastic boxes with gummy piles of pink ginger and crusty wasabi surrounded by spiky plastic grass that you grab from the cooler by the cash register?  I was the person who made that...  

That was over 10 years ago, but I dug deep and summoned the muscle memory and managed to

come up with something surprisingly sushi like.

Amy thought it was good.

Then it was Amy's birthday, so I made some peanut butter cookies.  Then I made some peanut-butter-cookie-candy-ball amalgamations (abominations).  They were good as long as you didn't exceed the recommended serving size of just looking at the cookie.  Anymore than that and it was stomachache city, but the journey there was delicious at least.

THEN! I made a meatloaf.  There were mashed potatoes too...

It was a delicious vacation.

More Blogs

Kim's blog about the library is better!  Read This!

Even more exciting?  The volunteers started their Own Blog!

The Library

Things are going well with our library program.  Yesterday we had nearly 70 kids show up for story time.

Today Kim and I went into the actual library for the first time to organize the books that are there.  We found hundreds of great kids books packed away in dusty boxes.  

I dug through this stack of book to find some good primary school text books.  Most of this stack is second grade math books.

Praia de Tofo, aka, the coolest place on Earth.

These guys are headed off over the flat to go fishing.

Look at these cool little tide pools.  They're like little coral-reef fish tanks you can walk up to.  Or wade in.  

End of the 1st Trimester

I'm getting to the end of the first trimester of my second year of teaching.  This year is going much better than last year.  A majority of my students are passing, I'm even having a fun time in the classroom.  I'm also starting to think a lot about what I'm going to be doing when I get out of here.  Fantasizing about hot running water and washing machines and fast food.  McDonalds, TacoBell...grocery stores with cheese.

But then Filomena comes over and reminds me how sad she will be when I leave in November.  And I'll be sad too.  I wish I could just pick these guys up and transplant them to the land of convenience food and infrastructure.


Avo and Moosey came over to visit today.  Look at Moosey's beautiful weave and hand-made school uniform.

Little Sister Grandma (Mana Avozinha) is hip.

 They colored some Mozambican flags.

The other day it rained.

This kid never stops.... 

This is probably what he's saying....

"Tio! Tio! Tio! Tio!"  

"Yes, Vito"  (That's me)

"Is this a dog?"

"Yes, Vito"

"Tio! Tio! Tio! Tio!"

"Yes, Vito"

"You have hair!"

"....yes, Vito"

..........

What I do

These days.  I'm busy and feeling uninspired by my food choices lately.

I'm teaching 8th grade Biology 12-8:30 pm two days a week. My students are much more enjoyable this year since I've learned how to manage my classroom better.  I'm also teaching an English class once a week to the three priests-in-training at Kim's mission school.

Kim and I are running a reading activity/tutoring program once a week.  We're still working the kinks out (IE:  how to avoid Book Riots)

I'm writing a grant to get the water system fixed at my school.  Right now, students have no access to bathrooms or drinking water while they're at school.  Kids who live in the dorms have to climb on top of a water tank to pull up buckets of salt water for washing and drinking.  Their bathrooms would classify as cruel and unusual treatment anywhere else...

I'm working with the Museum in the city once a week, trying to get a functional educational program started, but I'm running into all sorts of obstacles on this one.  Turns out the employees that would be running the program don't actually have a job description so we had to go back to the beginning on our training plan, and then I was sick for a while and so was my counterpart at the museum so a few meetings got cancelled, and then next thing I know I lost a whole month.  Hopefully this week we'll get moving again.

I volunteered to generate the schedule for my school (which has 43 teachers, 35 classes and 17 time periods a day--it's a triple shift school) so that I could manage my free time myself.  Turns out this was a gigantic mistake.  Each time I made a schedule I would hear countless complaints and then the Ped. Director would tell me of the three professors who couldn't teach their assigned classes because of whatever reasons.  After I made the Ped Director swear to talk to all the teachers and find out what their restrictions were I'd remake the schedule.  We'd post the new schedule and within minutes at least 6 teachers would be knocking on my door or cornering me in the teacher's lounge telling me why they couldn't work at whatever time was assigned...and so on.   I believe we're on the 5th round of this.  I think this time it's going to stick.....

I'm over Mozambican food.  I'm tired of endless days of soggy green leaves in coconut sauce over rice (which is really really good...but still....).  I'm tired of trying to be creative with the limited choices in the market (beans, chicken, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbages, coconuts, peanuts and green leaves).  I want fast food.  I want things in cans.  I want frozen vegetables.  I want variety.  Good news though, it's Avocado season, so I'm eating lots and lots of delicious guacamole.

I'm really getting the hang of cooking while sitting on a straw mat. You should try it, it's fun.