Swear In (and updates)

So, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. We (Moz 15) swore in yesterday at the U.S. ambassador’s house in Maputo.

Catching up on life since my last update…Thanksgiving was my first holiday away from home. We all had a potluck dinner complete with turkey and stuffing. After 6 weeks of a lot of rice, xima and fried potatoes with only salt for seasoning Thanksgiving dinner was a taste explosion in my mouth. Garlic galore. Salads not covered in oil previously used to fry previously mentioned potatoes. Steamed green beans. Freshly killed turkeys. (FYI you have to get them drunk to kill them; I hear there’s a funny video somewhere) Sugar-tastic cookies made by me and Emily. Cakes. Need I say more? I have to say that my first holiday from home was the best holiday abroad I could have asked for, and will be hard to beat next year.

Model school has come and gone. I ended up teaching about 6 classes of biology (some people got pulled out of our teaching rotation to keep practicing language) and we tested the kids. We had two classes that we rotated between, and they were very different. One was about eight 13-14 year old girls and one 11 year old boy, all host brothers and sisters. The other was a group was about nine 17 year old boys who were all friends and too smart for their own good. Talk about hard to control. Passing here is 10 (on a scale of 20) and all of our kids in the girl class passed (one was bumped up from a 9, but close). The boys class only had four of the nine boys pass. I gave one boy a zero. They were ridiculous and didn’t even try, but it was definitely good practice as far as class room management goes. It’s kind of fun here because you can mock your kids and tell them they’re bad and it shames them into behaving. For example, one of the boys I just called “Indisciplinado” (undisciplined)—I seriously didn’t even know his name. He was disruptive, asked me to be his “amiga” aka sleep with him, and I called him out and for the rest of the model school he didn’t say a word in any of my classes. Made me feel confident that I could lay down the law.

We packed up all our stuff from our host family houses. Somehow over the course of 10 weeks my stuff has multiplied into an additional two boxes of stuff. To give me credit, most of the boxes were filled with bed sheets, blankets and manuals provided by the Peace Corps. My Mãe made me a last dinner of grilled chicken, xima, fries, salad and sprite. This is the type of food they serve out at restaurants and is considered “fancy”. And she knows sprite is my favorite. It was really cute. I gave her a baseball cap that said “Montana” on it and got us both matching kapulanas. When Kikas got home he was trying to talk Mãe out of the baseball cap and I whipped out the CD mix I had made him. He got really excited and kissed me on both cheeks. Then he showed off his suit he just got for his graduation to be a teacher on the 10th. Overall a perfect night to end with the family. I’m sad to leave them.

I was sent off in the bus to Maputo with a giant Tupperware of food plus enough cookies to last me my entire week of traveling up to my site. To celebrate swear-in the Peace Corps put us up on Hotel Cardoso, a 5 star hotel overlooking the ocean. It was a glorious land of hot showers, AC, and there was amazing thai food right down the street. We got all fancy in our kapulana clothing (a pattern for each of the health volunteers, English ed volunteers and science volunteers) and were off to the ambassador’s house for swearing in. We did the deed, right hands raised, and were official. There was a reception following with little finger foods. Then we headed back to the hotel and celebrated our last night together. Overall the past 24 hours I have not felt like I’m in Africa.

Now the 70 of us have been scattered to the 4 corners of Mozambique. It’s funny to think that I didn’t know these people 10 weeks ago, and today there were tears all over saying our goodbyes. Depending on where you were placed, we may not see some of these people in person until the end of our 2 year service. Luckily Emily and I are both central so we have a few more days together. I don’t think I could’ve handled saying goodbye to Meagan and her on the same day. I am spending one more night in Maputo (at a much less nice hotel  ) and then heading up to my supervisor’s conference. I’m scheduled to reach my new house on Dec 9th. Love and miss you all!! (and new mailing address is coming, I promise).