Really quick hellooooooo!!

Greetings from Mozambique!!! I’m settled (maybe unpacked is a better word. I’m still getting to know things) into the community where we are doing our Training for the next few months. So a quick rundown:

Host Family=AMAZING!! I lucked out. My host dad (I call him big brother, and he calls me his youngest sister) is a self-described cowboy with dreams of going to the home of all good westerns: TEXAS. Actually, Texas is pretty much the only place that Mozambiquans know about … it’s an automatic in if you’re from there (Oregon… blah… not a city… nope…. not a village either….hmmm. California is met with blank stares too). He has been giving me extra Portuguese lessons in the evenings, which have been much more useful the actual classes I’ve been taking. His wife is one of the toughest ladies I’ve met, but full of warmth and welcome. There are two other girls who live in the house and a grandmother (my Mama… just got to be careful which “a” I emphasize or it comes out inappropriately…oh Portuguese). They do talk a lot about their other volunteer from last year—standards are high. But they keep saying that when my parents come they can’t stay in the hotel the have to stay with them (the other volunteer’s parents came a few months ago for a couple days… it was a big hit)…. so get ready for bucket baths mom and dad!

Rather than one larger building for everything, their home is a collection of smaller buildings facing inwards towards a well-swept dirt yard with mango trees. There is a building with three bedrooms and a dining room (with TV and endless hours of steamy steamy Brazilian telenovelas…. scandal has a whole new meaning), another building with a kitchen (learning how to cook over coal), and then a third with the grandmother’s building. There is an outhouse a little ways away. The community has a severe water shortage so even though the bath has piping to a water tank, the water level is too low for it to function. Lots of carrying around water. And getting up a 5/530am to do things like clean my floor before going to class/lecture. I'm still totally useless and wimpy in comparison....

I have a nice room, looks like I have a princess bed with the mosquito net up (that damn thing is so annoying it better be working, I keep getting netted in the early mornings or when I have to get up in the middle of night). Lots of posters which are reminiscent of a certain Peruvian hostel (Chels and Kate you know the ones)…

Living with a host family is always a little awkward, and I am such a baby here because EVERYTHING is done differently. For the first few days I kept hording trash because I couldn’t figure out where the burn pile was. Basically, I speak a lot of Spanish. And despite some similarities there are a lot of major differences between Spanish and Portuguese. Like pasta. I’ve been telling them I like to cook pasta all week. But since pasta means paste in Portuguese I’ve really just been telling the about my culinary explorations with paste. Ah all those weird looks I was getting make so much sense now….


So trying to make that leap into Portuguese.

The PCT group is really nice. None of that competitive air that I’ve heard can happen. Weirdly Westwind connections have extended here to Mozambique… seriously… how does this happen everywhere I go?!!!

Oh and to anyone who that got that big send out email, the address on there is wrong, so don’t send anything to it. I’ll email the correct one when I get it….