Good morning, Cape Verde!

Good morning, hot tropical sun and cool (if not sporadic) Atlantic breeze.
Good morning, smell of frying fish at 9am.
Good morning, cute little old lady coming back from the market.
Good morning, ferry horn and school bell, making sure I don't stay in bed too long.
Good morning, little children playing in the streets.
Good morning, tall man with a six-pack standing in a towel signing your electric bill and hissing at me.
Good morning, friends shouting hello from across the square.
Good morning, students shouting 'teacher' from down the street.
Good morning, women of all ages sitting on the steps shelling peas.

Good morning, my beautiful life :)

It hasn't been too long since my last post, but a LOT has happened, so I'll try to fill you in on the gist of it.

First things first, CARNAVAL!! Oh my goodness what a blur of feathers and glitter and music and dancing. Toss in a bunch of American PCVs, a couple tourists, and a whole lot of Cape Verdeans, and it was definitely an experience to be remembered
(check out photos here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150618055208350.409591.501303349&type=3).

We started off with our school's Carnaval (Carnaval de Liceu) on Friday afternoon. Weeks of preparation went into this event, including a couple of late-night ensaios that did absolutely no good on the day of. The event was supposed to start at about 1pm, and true to form we were pulling out of the school lot at about 5pm. Alexandra and I decided to be Cape Verdean and showed up at 2, and still the only people there were the ones building the floats (which it looked like they'd started doing around 1pm). But little by little kids started to show up and we made our banners and were ready to go! It was so fun to see them all so excited and enjoying themselves. I myself did a couple of samba laps around the school with my students in pure excitement.


Afterwards, we all returned to the school and opened up what felt like a soup kitchen in the teacher's lounge, passing canja and bread through the door to the starving students. Then the students went off to a specially organized dance at the disco just for them and Alexandra and I headed to a party at the gymnasium, where I rang in the first couple hours of my birthday! The party was a blast. Almost all our Tarrafal friends were there. And everyone sang to me at midnight and they even lit a candle leftover from one of the days when we tried to do aeróbica during a power outage.
Saturday started the real craziness. We packed up a pick-up truck full of mattresses, water filters, pillows, blankets, a huge pot of catchupa, clothes for the next few days, and a puppy, and pretty much moved to Vila do Ribeira Brava, the island's capital city where the big Carnaval desfiles were held. We spent the afternoon putting on ridiculous make-up and copious amounts of glitter and then my fellow PCVs and some Cape Verdean friends threw me a birthday party! There was cake (a mix that came all the way from America via Fogo and was complete with a Pirate inside...much to my dismay), Jell-O shots, catchupa, and obviously plenty of love to go around.


Then the real action started! We periodically went to check on our costumes at the house where we'd be getting dressed on the first night. Of course they weren't ready until 3 hours after the appointed time. And even then, nothing fit right. I switched tops with 3 other people and still ended up with one that barely covered my chest. The zipper on my shorts broke so I was told to staple them together, but of course the stapler ran out of staples... After a few hours of yelling and running into big cardboard headpieces, we were off! Thus began our long trek down the narrow streets of Vila with the rest of Copa Cabana.

(see video here: http://videos.sapo.cv/FP8dVGTyjOeTLWV2Azlf - we're in the black and silver)


I thought I would be completely exhausted as we danced for about 2 hours straight - no stopping and singing at the top of our lungs! But I was loving so much I forgot how much my body hurt. And of course after the desfile is the dance in each group's sala. Parties are quite something here, but even I couldn't imagine this one - hundreds of people packed into a relatively small room with glaring music, almost unlimited drinks, a space solely for food next door - and all until about 8am the next day. Nocturnal was the only way to go.

Sunday was more of the same, although after the bodje we came home to Tarrafal to spend the "day of rest" here. Of course it wasn't a day of rest because Tarrafal has our own Carnaval. We spent a few hours out watching that one. A lot of our students were involved and it was fun to see them own the event like that.

Tuesday was the last day, so the parade started much earlier. The main difference was that there were so many more people. I think I saw about 75% of my students (while dancing) and pretty much everyone else I know from Tarrafal. Once again, we finished off the night (morning?) at the sala de bodje and Caranaval came to a close. At least for now. Apparently there's another one in the summer (Carnaverão haha). I guess they don't think it's fair that all their friends and family who come back just for the summer miss out on such a great event!

We spent the next week or so just recovering. It took quite awhile. We had a fellow PCV come visit from Mindelo and did some minor hikes and just enjoyed getting back into the swing of things.

Last weekend was one of my favorite weekends I've had in Cape Verde so far. Alexandra and I joined Txilite and some of his family and friends for a very fora (rural) day hiking on the interior of the island. We started the day freezing in the back of a hilux, where we happened to join some teachers who were also headed to Canto Fajã, our starting point. So of course, we had to stop for grogue and quejo de terra to "tra frio" (or tirar o frio) on the way. When we got to Canto, we went to see our colleagues house and met some of his family. We managed to avoid having to stay for catchupa, which we were forced to eat as soon as we got to Txilite's house to da força before our hike.

I thought the beginning part of the hike had to be the worst, as it was straight uphill, but turns out I'm not very good at going downhill so every 5 minutes I had to listen to "cuidod m'nina pa bo ka kai!" But it was a blast. We finally got to our lunch destination, where we spent a good 4 hours sitting around talking, drinking hot grogue right from the trapiche (homemade distillery), and picking and casca-ing veggies to put in the delicious caldo de peixe Txilite's mom made over the open fire. It was such an awesome day, just sitting around and talking and really being a part of a community. Lots of fun cultural experiences and conversations, though I do pity Alexandra for the amount of inappropriate proposals she received. I even spent a little while working in the farinha de mandioca (manioc flour).

Once we were done, we hiked down the rest of the mountain to Ribeira Prata where a car was waiting to take us back to Canto Fajã. We piled 21(!) people into the back of the truck, and what should have been an hour-long drive took about 2.5 for all the times we (well, they) had to stop and say hi to people and drink more grogue. Needless to say by the end of the night I was freezing and a tad bit annoyed by drunk men, but it was a really cool day of culture and fun! I stayed the night in Canto, so I got up early in the morning to start another fora day and picked ervilha (peas) in the horta (garden/farm) before coming home and teaching my 5 turmas. Exhausting.

And then the biggest news of all: I've officially accepted an invitation to transfer to Mozambique and finish my service as a TEFL Volunteer there. This means that in September, I'll be leaving Cape Verde to go directly to Mozambique and start a new 3-month Pre-Service Training. School will then start in January and I'll be required to finish out the last trimester, pushing my Close Of Service (COS) date back to December (instead of September, my original date). In some ways the decision was a hard one because it meant coming to terms with the fact that my time here in Cape Verde will end in September. And in other ways, I never really even had to think about the decision. Besides the sadness of leaving here, it's a pretty awesome opportunity and one that I think will make me grow in so many ways. I don't look forward to going through another PST or working so hard again to integrate, but I'm so excited to get to know another country and another group of people. I am lucky to have the lessons I've learned here in Cape Verde to take with me. Most importantly, PATIENCE! And the ability to live life at a slower pace. I think this time around I will be much better at just sitting and doing nothing. And much better at accepting things when they don't run smoothly. I'm also lucky that I'll have a leg up in Portuguese which will leave my mind freer to focus on some other things, including learning another local language! I'll pass along more details about the Mozambique program when I get them.

It's been a wild ride so far and it looks like it's about to get just a little crazier...