Christmas

This Christmas marked my first ever spent away from my family and it was harder than I thought it would be, but it was made better by my awesome fellow Tete PCVs. Tete is a province of Mozambique, comparable to a state in the US. Tete is unique because it is almost practically cut off from the rest of Mozambique by Malawi so it can seem a bit isolated. They made a big push with our group into Tete so 7 people from our group are now in the province, plus an amazing couple from Moz14 (but they were state side for Christmas). We like to say “7 strangers, picked to live in Tete for 2 years…” Ironically 6 of us were brought in as Biology teachers so we all knew each other fairly well before site placements. I’m excited about our group because we’re all really different but we all get along well. There’s not anyone in Tete that I wasn’t excited about (and I’m not being cheesy, just honest ).
We all met in Moatize which is right outside Tete city and also our half-way point between all the sites. Two girls are staying in Moatize and their house is actually bigger than ours and has running water. We all crashed there on the floor, played a lot of card games, read books, drank a ton of mango sangria and cooked everything we could think of (lasagna, bean burgers, Mexican night complete with chips—what more can I say ?). For Christmas Audrey hand-sewed us all a stocking with our first initial on it and we stuffed each others stockings with candy, soap and matches (all necessities here) and also did a white elephant gift exchange Christmas morning. I ended up with a water basin, a kapulana which excitingly is the same as our new kitchen curtains so we’re going to make it into a table cloth and a USA belt complete with an Obama belt buckle. Quality gift Hannah, thank you. I gave a World Cup kapulana, peanut butter and a crystal light lemonade mix. All the gifts were good and it was nice to open something Christmas morning. Plus we woke up to a surprise Christmas tree drawn on paper in the corner so it was a fun Christmas morning. I called my sister (which was Christmas eve in the States) and got sung “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” by my Jones family which made me cry. I didn’t think missing the holidays would affect me that much, but I had that good cry with my sister and it was okay. I’m just glad that as a group we made a big deal out of the holidays and celebrated the best we could. Love everyone and happy holidays!!