Carnival, Hiking and COESAO

Hey everyone, hows it going? So I'm about a month and a half into the school year and things have really picked up, it's crazy how different it is the second time around teaching! Aside from just having more work at school, I've managed to get an English club up and running with one of my colleagues at school, so we meet with our students twice a week for a few hours to practice English in more fun, interactive ways (theatre, speaking, informal dialogue, films, music and games) and so far that has been great! I am also trying to organize some type of book drive to get novels donated to a school library. Many of the students here hope to be Primary and Secondary School teachers, and apply to Teacher Trainer Institutes after graduation. I want to set up a sort of big brother/big sister program at school so that ideally these students who want to be teachers can work with the younger students at the primary school, or the 8th graders at the Secondary School to tutor them/teach them how to read...so right now its just an idea but I've been playing around with it and talking to my colleagues and working with local organizations here to get more books, we'll see what happens!

I tested my students last week and so far...out of 150 tests have been graded and I think 5 passed, I've got my work cut out this year that's for sure....

A few weeks ago I came in town to celebrate Carnival with a bunch of other PCVs and it was a pretty good time. As I arrived in town I saw a parade with students from all the Secondary Schools in the sorrounding area. Later that night we went to the Feira Popular, an area with lots of bars and restaraunts, and there were tons of people out! Usually Chimoio's a ghost town, and the night life is nonexist, but this weekend the people were out and ready to party. It was cool, people were wearing masks and costumes and everyone was having a jolly good time. Here's a picture from the parade:

After a fun weekend in Chimoio, I went back to school, taught all week as usual and then Thelma and I decided to have an adventure day and go hiking! There are BEAUTIFUL mountains in Vanduzi, the only problem is they're at least a 4 mile walk outside town. I've wanted to explore these mountains for over a year now but I wasn't sure if there were foot paths to follow and had heard there were baboons, both of which made me reluctant to go explore alone. Now that I've got an adventurous roomie though it's much easier to explore town, so we set out for the mountains and this what we found...

The dirt path we walked for about 4 miles to get to the mountain...

A close up of the mountain we planned to summit:

Luckily we got picked up and got a ride for a good 2k of the way...


Once we got closer we had to weave through overgrown bushes and small farms...occasionally running into children


Once we got closer we ran into a really sweet little girl who led us through avocado farms and up the side of the mountain and brought us here...



WATERFALLS SO PRETTY!!!! Didn't know those existed at my site :)


Here's our adorable little guide....we thanked her with a honey/pb sandie and she seemed pretty pleased?



Last weekend we had a volunteer get together at Casa Msika, A lodge about 45 minutes outside of the city that has beautiful land to hike/explore (where apparently giraffes live!) and a really nice pool! The point of the get together was to welcome the new volunteers, talk about secondary projects at school and just catch up about work and site. It was a really fun weekend, and was great to finally meet the other volunteers who are living here in central!

hanging out at the pool!

The new central crew!

My wonderful roommate Thelma.

Oh, and we finally saw some wild life! Fourth time at Casa Msika is a charm...hehe

In other news I got another parasite...ha, family I promise I am healthy and fine but its funny I'm currently on de-wormer medicine...the same kind of medicine I give to my dog, Amendoim. Things I never thought could happen until I moved to Africa...haha

In my next blog you can look forward to some pictures from school and english club, until then have a great weekend everyone! Tchaoooo!