Saturday, August 24, 2013

My how time flies...

23 August 2013

2nd trimester has come and gone and I am 3  months away from COS (Close of Service)!  My how time has flown.  It’s funny, I can’t imagine a time when I wasn’t thinking that.  Originally when I was thinking about joining the Peace Corps, 27 months seemed like SUCH a long time (as I’m sure it does to all volunteers – not to mention their family and friends), but I cannot think of a time when I wasn’t thinking “Wow, it’s already (insert date here)!” And, while I am certainly ready to be back home with friends and family, I cannot believe that I only have 3 more months here in Macomia.  I never imagined it would, but this place really has come to feel like home.  I wish I had time to get to know it even better.

As it has been sooo long since my last blog entry, I think I’m going to do more of a highlights reel of the things that have happened in the past 3.5 months.  I’m sure as I get even closer to finishing up my service, my posts will become more reflective and philosophical, but for the moment there are still a lot of happenings to report!

  • Teaching – 2nd trimester was a HUGE improvement over 1st.  I really enjoyed teaching, particularly my 11th grade English students.  I gave them much harder material and tests and they really rose to the challenge.  And I saw definite improvements in their speaking and writing abilities.  It’s going to be sooo difficult to leave them at the end of the year.  I really wish I could accompany them through graduation, at least as an outside source of help if not their primary teacher. Noções classes went well too, and fortunately the P.E. teacher is now back so my workload has diminished slightly.
  • English Theatre – Our English Theatre group is finally underway!  During the week of testing at the end of 2nd trimester, I held auditions for 11th and 12th grade students interested in participating.  We had pretty good turnout with 16 students and it was really hard to turn down anyone, but I chose a group of 10 really strong students (including 2 girls, yay!) to be the participants.  Last week, we sat down to write the play together and it came out really good.  It was entirely initiated by the students.  The overarching theme of the competition is “The choice is mine, the future is ours.” so we designed a play that shows some different choices available to students in terms of their education and how that will affect the future.  The play also sheds light on some of the corruption present in the Mozambican education system.  Again, it was all their idea! I’m merely there for support (and translation, pronunciation, etc.)  We’ll be traveling to Montepuez at the end of September to compete against 3 other teams.  Wish us luck!

  • New member of the family – We got a kitten because we have rat problems. It’s a boy, but we named it “Fofa”, which means “Cutie.” The kids love it.  We love/hate it depending on our level of patience at the given moment.

  • Music – Since the last time I blogged, my involvement in music here in Macomia has exploded!  I had been playing a lot of guitar with one of the 12th grade students, Zito, and we were able to perform at the Macomia Day celebration downtown.  Since then, I’ve recorded 3 songs with he and his group “Niggas Estranhos” – I explained to them that this term was offensive in the states, but here they just think it means someone who is involved in Hip-Hop and far be it for me to crush their dreams.  The group is made up of Zito, his cousin David (another 12th grade student) and one of my 11th grade students, Alfane.  Zito writes some beautiful songs and he and the other boys write lyrics to go with different instrumentals that you’ve probably already heard.  We’re working on 4 more songs to get recorded before I leave.  In one of them I rap(!)  I secretly hope we don’t manage to record that one because, while these ‘talents’ might be appreciated here with my high school students, I’m pretty sure it will just provide reason for laughing from all of you back home!

  • Radio – They started playing our music on the local radio station.  It’s community radio, but actually reaches pretty far – past the boundaries of our district.  One of the DJs also asked us to come down for an interview one weekend, which ended up being a two-night event! We had such a great time! It was fun to get my voice out there and be introduced to a new community.  Of course, the boys are ecstatic to be getting there name out there and feel famous.  It’s really fun to see.  The DJ actually asked me to come down and help him broadcast sometime.  He wanted to get a female voice out on the radio to encourage more girls to become involved.  I finally went down and participated last weekend and will probably do so again! I started off feeling very out-of-place, and I’m sure it was obvious to the listeners as well.  It was hard to know what to say and I just didn’t have the radio lingo down.  But by the end of the night we’d gotten into a good rhythm.  Lots of listeners called in and said they’d enjoyed the program and hoped I’d be back on the next night!

  • Vacation – Eryn and I had a WONDERFUL vacation just getting to know our own province.  It started off rough – we went up north to Mocimboa da Praia and the roads were so bad that Eryn got sick.   That was an interesting experience.  It’s a very Muslim town and since it was the middle of Ramadan, we couldn’t even find a place to eat lunch!   Everyone was fasting.  But we enjoyed walking around the fish market and seeing another part of the Cabo Delgado coastline.  Then we went to Mueda, which was an equally awful trip: 30 people in the bed of a truck filled with cargo in the middle (thus the hottest part) of the day.  It took us nearly 4 hours to go about 100 km (if memory serves me correctly).  Mueda was….ok.  We did some good shopping.  We came back through Macomia for a night to do laundry and sleep in our own beds, and the next morning headed out to the beautiful island of Ibo!  The trip went very smoothly.  We hardly waited between cars and got a very comfortable cargo boat to take us out to the island once we reached the coast.  We spent a lovely 4 days there, just wandering around and eating delicious seafood and enjoying good cocktails at the chique tourist lodges.  It was a much needed break after an exhausting trimester.  After that, we headed straight to Pemba for some sand and sun!  The break was restful and we saw a lot of people.  It definitely rejuvenated us for this 3rd trimester.

  • Post Peace Corps Plans – Well, one of the biggest parts of my life these days has just been to think about my after Peace Corps plans.  In terms of traveling, my plan as of now is to fly to Portugal and spend a week there before heading back to Cape Verde for a couple weeks.  I should be home by Christmas!  And…thanks to some researching on my dad’s part and some soul-searching on my part, I decided to apply to law school before getting home!  I’d always intended to apply, but had planned to wait until next fall so that I could have some time to rest.  But I’ll be home for a good 9 months before school starts and by that time I think I’ll be ready to get going.  So…it’s happening!  It’s been a challenge due to our lack of internet, but I’ve got a good draft of my Personal Statement and resumé done, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for my letters of recommendation and for the actual applications to open.  I’ve actually had a great time doing the research.  There are so many incredible schools and opportunities out there!  I’ve been pleased to find that many schools have programs that focus on public policy or support work in the public sector, which is where I’m interested in using my law degree.  So…I’ll keep everyone posted as the process continues.  Keep your fingers crossed!

I’m sure I’ve skipped over a million other fun/exciting/mundane things that have happened, but this is already long enough.  From this point on, I’ve just got to take advantage of each day because, before I know it, I’ll be done!