I'm still working on finding a balance between sporadic "was she sold in exchange for goats?" and oh too frequent "look at me! I'm a PCV in Moz" blog posts. I'll probably figure this out sometime around October, so bear with me.
Last week I turned 24 (or 51 if one of my students is asking) and celebrated with a spice cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting (I've got the Mozambique baking thing down) on the day of and PCV friends who visited during the weekend. But the most exciting part of February 28th was the fact that I have two brand-new baby cousins (first cousins, once removed to be precise) to share the day with!! Can't believe I won't officially meet them until November-ish . . . we might be spending a lot of time together next year as nanny-ing for them is my current back-up plan for life in the States (at least for the 9 months before law school will theoretically start).
Other tales from Moz . . .
1) One of my English students asked if he could be excused to go to the bathroom in the middle of class. As I said sure, another student stood up and asked, "do you have to go POOP?". Remember that both of these students are in their early 20s and think they are oh-so-cool. I was basically rolling on the floor laughing. Probably need to work on being more mature.
2) We finally started taking attendance this week (sounds much less exciting than it actually is). I was about to mark a girl absent in one of my classes when the rest of the class informed me that she was at the bank. This of course didn't really change my mind about marking her absent . . . until I found out that the teacher before me had sent her to the bank (a ten minute walk at my American-pace) to deposit money for him, so that he wouldn't have to do it in his free time. SERIOUSLY!??!!! She missed about half of my class because the line at the bank is almost always at least 30 minutes long. And I was furious. Not with her (I know it wouldn't have gone well for her had she refused to go to the bank), but at the teacher. Not only did he make her leave his class (no wonder my students don't always value classroom attendance, apparently the teachers don't either) but he did this knowing that she would miss at least part of my class. I'm going to attempt to have an adult conversation with him about this on Monday . . . we'll see how that goes.
3) This week we're singing Party in the USA in my English classes - should be entertaining
4) Also, major life victory. A significant portion of my English students have started saying "bless you" when someone sneezes. This is amazing because they don't usually say anything in Portuguese when someone sneezes and until last week looked at me like I was crazy for saying "bless you"
5) Another exciting moment. They put in new chalkboards in our classrooms (exciting, but not the main point) and the students decided to put the chalk on the ledge on the top of the chalkboard. Which doesn't really work for me. As I was standing on my tiptoes, attempting to reach the chalk, one of my students said (in English) "Teacher Allison, you should play basketball." And then started cracking up because she was so proud of her sarcasm. YAY!! Some of my students might actually understand basic sarcasm by the time I leave :)
6) I'm so over scorpions. I've found three in my house over the last week. Not a fan.
Last week I turned 24 (or 51 if one of my students is asking) and celebrated with a spice cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting (I've got the Mozambique baking thing down) on the day of and PCV friends who visited during the weekend. But the most exciting part of February 28th was the fact that I have two brand-new baby cousins (first cousins, once removed to be precise) to share the day with!! Can't believe I won't officially meet them until November-ish . . . we might be spending a lot of time together next year as nanny-ing for them is my current back-up plan for life in the States (at least for the 9 months before law school will theoretically start).
Other tales from Moz . . .
1) One of my English students asked if he could be excused to go to the bathroom in the middle of class. As I said sure, another student stood up and asked, "do you have to go POOP?". Remember that both of these students are in their early 20s and think they are oh-so-cool. I was basically rolling on the floor laughing. Probably need to work on being more mature.
2) We finally started taking attendance this week (sounds much less exciting than it actually is). I was about to mark a girl absent in one of my classes when the rest of the class informed me that she was at the bank. This of course didn't really change my mind about marking her absent . . . until I found out that the teacher before me had sent her to the bank (a ten minute walk at my American-pace) to deposit money for him, so that he wouldn't have to do it in his free time. SERIOUSLY!??!!! She missed about half of my class because the line at the bank is almost always at least 30 minutes long. And I was furious. Not with her (I know it wouldn't have gone well for her had she refused to go to the bank), but at the teacher. Not only did he make her leave his class (no wonder my students don't always value classroom attendance, apparently the teachers don't either) but he did this knowing that she would miss at least part of my class. I'm going to attempt to have an adult conversation with him about this on Monday . . . we'll see how that goes.
3) This week we're singing Party in the USA in my English classes - should be entertaining
4) Also, major life victory. A significant portion of my English students have started saying "bless you" when someone sneezes. This is amazing because they don't usually say anything in Portuguese when someone sneezes and until last week looked at me like I was crazy for saying "bless you"
5) Another exciting moment. They put in new chalkboards in our classrooms (exciting, but not the main point) and the students decided to put the chalk on the ledge on the top of the chalkboard. Which doesn't really work for me. As I was standing on my tiptoes, attempting to reach the chalk, one of my students said (in English) "Teacher Allison, you should play basketball." And then started cracking up because she was so proud of her sarcasm. YAY!! Some of my students might actually understand basic sarcasm by the time I leave :)
6) I'm so over scorpions. I've found three in my house over the last week. Not a fan.