So, as some people love to remind me, I’m a bit behind on my
blogging – my apologies.
This last month or so has been a bit interesting – my
students have taken two tests each of which involves a process that is equally
amusing and exasperating. The tests start with me instructing all students to
put all of their belongings in the front of the classroom, they can have one
pen and a piece of paper, this reorganization of the classroom takes
approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Then, once everyone has stopped talking, I put
up the “papel gigante” on which I have written the test, and then begin to walk
up and down every aisle trying to stop people from cheating and talking – most
of the time this does very little good. Despite my repeated warnings that
cheating will result in a zero, I find students sitting on top of their
notebooks, with notebooks stuffed down their shirts, and blatantly looking over
the shoulder of the person in front of them. While these efforts to cheat are
rather disheartening (especially when they result about 4 people per class
receiving zeros), I really can’t say I blame them for trying. A good number of
the other teachers either leave the classroom during tests or sit in front of
the class working on corrections. I’m not saying I manage to catch all the
cheaters, but I really do hope that my students are perhaps starting to learn
some study skills instead of spending most of their time writing tiny sheets of
paper with what they think will be on the test.
My school is on the semester system, so we have a long break
in June/July, but we also had the week before Easter off. I got a lot of
correcting and lesson planning done during that time, but I also travelled down
to Mapinhane where Chris and Laurie are teaching to celebrate Passover. While the
hard-boiled eggs used during the Seder may have been decorated Easter eggs
(dyeing brown eggs is much more difficult than I expected), it was a great
first Passover – complete with a care package matzo ball soup mix and the lucky
discovery of walnuts in a grocery store in Vilankulos.
Also, last week was the “Reconnect” for my PC group, Moz-17.
All of us in the Central and Southern regions of Mozambique met up in Chimoio
for a week to discuss our lives at site, secondary projects, and how
integration into both our community and the school was going. It was great to
see everyone again, and the food was pretty good too (there were doughnuts!!).
On our way to Chimoio we caught a bus at the crossroads to Inhassoro that was
headed to Beira – we would get off at Inchope and then catch a chapa the rest
of the way to Chimoio. As luck would have in, the bus broke down about two-ish
hours away from Inchope, fortunately it ended up breaking down at a gas
station. We waited for about two hours for the bus to get going again . . .
Some of us even joined in the efforts to push the bus in order to give it a
rolling start, all to no avail. So I went and spoke with a lovely Zimbabwean
family that stopped at the gas station on their way back home. Not only did
they give all five of us a ride, but the car didn’t actually have seats for all
of us, so the mom held one of the kids on her lap and three of us crammed into
the back (let’s be real, it was still much more comfortable than a chapa). It
was so nice of them to give us a ride all the way to Chimoio – I might actually
be sad not to be able to give rides to hitchhikers back in the States.
Life has surprisingly become rather routine here – bugs no
longer really bother me (although the large number of ants might eventually
drive me crazy) and I’m back to taking bucket baths (it’s cold!!). I love the
fact that I don’t have to wash my clothes anymore (yay Rosa!) and am currently
putting together plans for an epic Moz/Johannesburg/Kruger trip in June. Miss
you all (and I’ll try to be better with the updates)!
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