Beer Olympics and the BEACH.

These past two weeks have been so fun, the only thing is I haven't been doing anything remotely related to my Peace Corps assignment unless it includes teaching Mozambicans some new drinking games. But hey, every once in a while PCVs need to take a break from living in the mato
(bush) and speaking Portuguese, and just relax.

Last weekend was the annual BEER OLYMPICS. An annual tradition, going back I have no idea how long but it is a tradition. Beer Olympics is basically like middle school field day, but with drinking mixed in. Volunteers from across the country escaped to Vilankulos beach for a weekend of relaxing and festivities. We were divided into teams based on our geographic regions in country, and well, the rivalries here run deep. Last year, my team, Central, won Beer Olympics, and we were hoping for a repeat victory and guess what WE WON. For the first time ever, there was a repeat victory! I know it seems silly to get so excited about drinking festivities but Beer Olympics really was a great way to channel some friendly competative energy, and just unwind. The day started with the carrying of a burning torch onto Vilankulos beach, then we all sang the [American] National Anthem, and after that the games began. Games included a shotgun relay, a relay race, dizzy bat, flip cup, beer pong and slam ball (delt ball!) And Central won, which means we get to proudly display the crazy little monkey statue (that has been in our office for the past year) for another year.

Here are some pictures from the event:


The wonderful, beautiful Vilankulos beach---mom and dad are you sure you don't want to visit?


Everyone getting ready for the days festivities.


Just some COESAO cheering to get everyone pumped up for the days festivities!!!


Team picture celebrating our victory!!! (Shane's holding the monkey trophy!)

After beer olympics, instead of heading back to Vanduzi I decided to travel a little further south to Tofo beach with some friends...I was already out of Manica province, and well once you're that close to the beach it's pretty tempting to stay.


Sunset over Tofo Beach.

And while in Tofo, I stayed with some other PCVs in Inhambane City, which is a city unlike anywhere else in Moz...there's a clear Portuguese influence, the town is much safer, and prettier and it was definitely like being on vacation.

A mural in Inhambane City.

And that's it for now---hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'm back to school tomorrow to start the second semester, my students haven't spoken English is almost a month it's going to be rough but I am excited to see their smiling faces again.

Until then!

-H.

Remembering Boston

This past week I've been staying in Chimoio for a Peace Corps conference. The conference was really beneficial because I was able to meet with other volunteers from my training group to talk about integration, lesson planning/school, and any other issues we have faced so far at site. The conference started Tuesday morning and finally ended this afternoon. Tomorrow I'll leave early in the morning to travel to the beach with some other volunteers and enjoy a really fun long weekend in Vilankulos.

I want to back track a bit just to write about the tragedy that happened in Boston on Monday. I was sitting in a hotel room, enjoying some libations and good conversations with friends that I haven't seen in months when one of my friends handed me his phone. I looked at it and saw the headline about the bombing in Boston. It was almost as if the world stopped. I swear, I sobered up, I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying, I couldn't even think. Thankfully I am so close to the PC office so I grabbed my computer and ran to the office to try and figure out a little more about the sudden catastrophe at the race. I sat in the office for the next two hours with another volunteer trying to read news headlines, look at pictures and get in touch with people from home. It was really scary. People always say its the sudden tragedies that make you appreciate what you have, but seeing something (on the news) so outrageous, happen in a place that I truly love was really difficult. Being so far from home, from family and friends, was also really difficult. I am so glad that I was here, in Chimoio, with my PC family when these events happened, because I was able to try and understand what actually happened and I had a great support system.

I'm not trying to write a post so that you can feel bad for me, but I think this sudden tragedy really puts things in perspective. I'm really far away from home, and when something scary happens it's very easy to feel helpless, and its difficult to even begin to understand why/how these kind of events occur.

I just wanted to thank anyone who sent an email or a text and kept me up to date with the current events in Boston, and thought to check in on me. I hope that everyone back home is safe, and is able to begin to register and try to make sense of what happened on Monday. I am really sad to know that the Boston Marathon, America's most famous race, is forever going to be changed, and looked at differently.

End of Semester Blues

If there is one thing that has broken my heart while teaching it is having to proctor exams. I was warned students would cheat, I thought I was prepared but the fact is it still just really sucks. The classes are too large, the students basically sit on top of each other so it is impossible to monitor who is looking at whose papers and who has casually switched exam papers with another student. I found too many students either reading their notebooks under their desks (even though I told them IN PORTUGUESE that they had to put all their notes and books in the front of the room) and countless other students were using their scrap paper (for math and science problems) to pass notes. So incredibly frustrating. It wasn’t even that they were so disrespectful to cheat that upset me it was the fact that I saw just how engrained into their culture it is to cheat. I would guess that just a handful of students actually study for exams, the rest rely on copying from those selected few. That’s the other thing; in most cases the students are copying the completely wrong answers from each other. Gah, it is just so frustrating. I guess seeing how the students “prepare” for these exams was just a reminder of how different my perspective towards academia is from theirs. For the majority of exams I was proctoring classes that I do not teach, so the students felt more comfortable pushing me to see how much they could get away with, thankfully, when I proctored my own classes there was much less cheating. My students were still trying to copy off their neighbor’s papers but at least I didn’t find any notebooks or cheat sheets and the whispering was pretty minimal…so that was nice. It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, my students respect me a little bit.

Proctoring exams also meant lots of grading had to be done, so I spent every night last week working through a pile of over 400 tests. The majority of the tests are multiple choice so that’s easy to correct but the tests that included a composition were a nightmare. The kids simply cannot write. I think out of 200ish tests that had compositions I had one perfect and just a handful of students who wrote decent compositions. Most students skipped the composition section completely or decided to respond in Portuguese instead of English. Let’s just say that grading exams has kind of been a slap in a face as to how much work I have to do here…Don’t get me wrong, I knew exams would be miserable, but I’m not completely pessimistic about school here. If anything I’m just excited to start off the next semester fresh, with plenty of new teaching ideas to use in my lessons. Now that I have my classes set for the rest of the year I can set up a better system to incorporate group work, check homework, give more quizzes to help their grades and ideally work more on writing and speaking…so much to do!

This week has been so incredibly boring though. I finished grading all my tests last Friday so that I could have my weekend free to visit friends. The teachers were all supposed to have their tests graded by Monday but of course no one finished (besides me!). So now it is just a waiting game...waiting for teacher’s to give me back my classes exams so I can calculate semester grades...and waiting for all the students who skipped exams to show up for the make-up test. There isn’t even real school this week, the students come everyday to hangout and play volleyball and see their friends, but no one is actually teaching…and I can’t really do anything until I get the tests back so I’ve just been so bored. I’ve spent my days so far reading, doing yoga, going for nice long runs and actually lesson planning for the next semester. Needless to say I am excited for the weekend—On Friday, the country director of Peace Corps is coming to visit me at site, then I have a friend coming to visit, and on Sunday I’ll go to Chimoio for a weeklong conference with other volunteers. At the end of the conference we’re all traveling to Vilankulos, a beautiful beach in Northern Inhambane, for a huge volunteer get together, so that will be really fun.

On a sadder note, there was some small political violence last week that resulted in 4 civilians being shot and killed from inside a tourist bus. Scary stuff. Peace Corps actually put up a travel ban to restrict volunteers from traveling anywhere remotely close to where the violence occurred but it’s still some pretty scary stuff. Hopefully it won’t turn into a larger conflict…

That’s it for now.