Site!!

I have a home!! I am living in Professor housing at a teacher training institute (IFP) with a fellow PCV roommate Arielle. Our house is pretty swanky by PC standards and it’s really starting to shape into our own home. We have a large countertop/sitting area in the kitchen with a separate room we use to cooking in and a pantry. We also have an indoor bathroom which is a big deal (no squatty potty in Moz for me!!). No running water though so no flushing (to flush we manually pour down water). There’s a living room with a sofa and chairs for hanging out. We’re lucky because the school has a wood shop and welding class so we have a lot of furniture provided for us. Then there are our two bedrooms, including built in closets which I’m loving . Since we are replacing two other volunteers we arrived to a fully stocked house which is nice. We have a fridge, dishes, pots and plenty of reading materials. After a heavy cleaning and purging of 3 years of built up stuff from the previous volunteers plus some new curtains and couch covers, we’re really enjoying it.
We inherited a guard dog who is really smelly but really on the job. His name is Wonder and he barks at everyone so we’re always aware if someone is around the house. (Also for the men in my life all the windows have security grates and every single door in the house has a lock (even the pantry) and there are bars that we can put up on the doors at night—VERY SAFE. Plus there’s a guard at the gate to the IFP and they lock the gate at night (as we learned trying to leave for Christmas at 4:30 am and were locked in)). Another amazing inheritance is our empregada (maid) Avelina. She’s a sweet lady and comes every morning to do laundry, dishes, sweep and mop the floors. Plus anything else we need like the massive cobweb removal that was necessary upon our moving in. She’s so great and I really appreciate the work she saves us.
I will be teaching at the secondary school (high school) and I had a chance to help out with end of the year grading with my new colleagues. My school is really nice and new (only ~2 years old) and all my colleagues are younger and are really welcoming. Plus they’ve been working with a PCV for the past 3 years so it helps that they know I’m going to be a bit strange in my ideas and teaching. I’m still not sure of what exactly I’ll be teaching yet but I’ll keep you updated.
My town of Ulongue is about the size of down town laurel. We can find basically everything we need (except I am still on the search for meat besides canned tuna) and there’s a giant market that you can get lost in. There is a ton of produce and a lot of variety which is key here. Also through the previous volunteers we’ve inherited the sweetest little vegetable lady and she always throws in free stuff like extra tomatoes or bonus carrots or something. She even has her kids trained to throw in extras. Really nice and it shows that she recognizes us as part of the community.
Everyone in town that sees me knows that I’m a teacher. Walking down the street all I hear is “Good Morning Teacher” or “Good Afternoon Teacher, How are you?” Also the previous volunteers close friends in town Eddie and Juliet have made us feel really welcome. They run a preschool (started by a grant from the pervious volunteers) to start teaching kids English at an earlier age and their house is always open for us to go hang out at. Funny enough we speak English with them since Juliet is from Malawi so she doesn’t know Portuguese. Also they are graciously letting us use their PO Box in Malawi so that I can get mail a little more securely and hopefully a little faster. My site is amazing and I’m going to enjoy the next two years.