A Wrap Up on PST.

HELLO!

Sorry for another long lull in updates but the end of training was essentially a whirlwind between EXTRA Portuguese classes, model school and the stress of leaving Namaacha I pretty much spent every free minute with the new friends I made from my training group, or with my host family.

*I should also add that my old blog site just stopped working or maybe my internet here just couldn’t load it but I finally gave up and made a new blog, same name though so it should be easy to remember… anyway:

I did a site visit to Chongene in Gaza province to visit another current volunteer. During the visit myself and two other girls from my training group shadowed this volunteer in her village; we got to see the school she taught at, meet some of her students, explore the local village/sorrounding area, cook some really good food, visit an HIV/AIDS center and of course ask lots of questions about Peace Corps life. We also got to go to the beach, and sit around reading for hours on end…and I finally got to go for a few long runs too, all of which were great treats. The best part overall though was easily just getting to talk to another volunteer and see how she had made a home for herself in her village and to see how other people really accepted her in the community. She was really great and had done a couple of awesome secondary projects at her school, we got to meet some of her favorite students and that was really fun too. After site visits we actually found out our site placement, which I promise to talk about later…but yes when we all came back from site visits everything seemed to go so quickly! We found out our language test results, I did fine but still needed extra tutoring, and we also started getting ready to teach in model school-which was exactly what it sounds like model school.

Following Michelle's dog down a dusty old trail in Chongene

All smiles in front of Michelle's house after a fun week of exploring her site, cooking new food and just getting a taste of what the PCV lifestyle could look like.

In Mozambique right now it is summer and students are on break but Peace Corps offered optional school for a week and a half to any of the kids in Namaacha. We were each split into small groups (based on our teaching discipline) and then assigned an age group to work with for that week and a half. I of course was teaching English with a group of 6 other volunteers and we were assigned students going into grade 8, which meant our students should have had 2 years of English class already. Well, model school is funny because although it is really organized, once kids in town find out there is an alternative to staying home and doing chores, school becomes the cool new thing to do! Especially when it is being taught by the funny Americans that many of these kids live with and still didn’t quite understand why they are learning Portuguese and live in their house…etc What this means is that although I was teaching an 8th grade class, there were definitely some students in the room that had never spoken a word of English, or worse yet, barely knew Portuguese, but that’s okay this was just for practice and at the end of model school it seemed like everyone had fun.

I got to teach 3 classes and then at the end of the week my group put together a test for our students to take based on what we had taught them and also as an assessment to see if our teaching methods worked. Overall model school was a great experience and helped ease some of my nerves about teaching here but in reality the classes were small, and most of the students that were there LOVED school and wanted to learned, making my job a lot easier. I think that my largest challenge so far with teaching is going to be general participation, especially with girls. Students here are just much shyer and it can feel like you are pulling teeth to get them to speak. I sometimes envy my colleagues who are teaching math or science because they teach in Portuguese, so they can joke around with the students and the atmosphere is just more relaxed because the students are speaking a language they are comfortable with. At the end of the week and a half, after giving the test, we had a huge celebration with the students and that was pretty fun. All the students got certificates for participating and they actually went around and asked us all to sign their certificates, it was so silly I felt like I was giving them my autograph…and jokingly told some of them (mainly my younger brother and his friends) that they could find me on facebook in 5 years.

After model school things really did go fast. We had a huge despedida party with all of the host families and that was really fun. There was lots of food and some entertainment, including a DJ, who got lots of people dancing. My mae actually helped plan/organize the party and because of that she gave a little speech and of course she just talked about me, it should have been embarrassing but instead it was actually just really sweet. I couldn’t really understand what she was saying but the whole gesture was sincere, and it just made me really proud to have her has my host mother. After the party just about all of us volunteers went to a bar to celebrate our last Saturday out together and that was of course really fun.

Posing with my host family at our going away party.

Dancing with my neighbor's daughter at our little neighborhood suprise party.

The neighborhood kids, boy will I miss them once I move to site.

The next few days went by super fast. My mae, along with my neighbors, organized a smaller despedida party for myself and 3 other volunteers; so the night before leaving Namaacha we all had a big dinner party together. It was really thoughtful, our host families invited their friends too and the maes did all the cooking and we all sat outside drinking and eating good food, then after dinner my brother dragged our speakers outside and started blasting music and we were all dragged out of our seats to dance. At one point during the festa our host siblings gave a little speech about each of us and then gave us each a flower, it was really cute, I cried. Finally by 11 PM we were all exhausted, although our families wanted to stay up, we told them we had to go to sleep because we had a big day ahead of us so the party ended and everyone went home.

I gave my family their presents (which my American family was so awesome to send to me!) and they LOVED them, it was really great. I can’t emphasize how wonderful my host family was so it felt really nice to show them a real sign of my gratitude for all of their help and patience and just genuine niceness. The next morning I woke up super early to get ready for our swear-in ceremony. Go figure it was raining, but it seemed kind of appropriate because although I was so excited to become a volunteer and finally start my service I was also sad to be leaving Namaacha and really did not want to say bye to my family. My mae and Cleiton were so cute, they walked me to where the Peace Corps was picking us up and then waited in the rain until I actually left. My last memory is of them smiling and waving and wishing me good luck as I shut the PC chappa door and was driven off, with a bunch of my friends, to the next chapter of this PC adventure.

It continued to rain all morning so our ceremony ended up being inside the American ambassador’s house but it was okay, it was nice and cozy. The ceremony started with us all singing the Mozambique and then the America national anthem. Then a couple of different speeches were given, including one by a fellow trainee, Richard- and it was all in Portuguese and it was so good, I was really proud of him. Our program director, and the U.S. ambassador both gave speeches as well and we took our oath, which every American government employee must take, and finally, we sang a little song for everyone. It was a pretty cool ceremony, afterwards we ate hour devours and mingled, and everyone was excited because we were finally real volunteers! Everyone went out to the same bar that night to celebrate, and a bunch of PCVS who were COSing (close of service) met us out too and it was just really fun.

One of the last nights out at the local bar in Namaacha with our training group.  I can't believe we're all about to get split up!

Pictures from swear in.

The next morning we all split up to go to our separate supervisor conferences, which were grouped by South, Central, and North, so this mean I finally had to say goodbye to a lot people and that was really really sad. Supervisor’s conference for all the volunteers in the south was held in Bilene, and we stayed at a hotel about a good 30 minute walk from the beach but it was super nice and also super relaxing. The conference was supposed to be an opportunity for our school directors to meet us, and learn more about the PC and, to set up guidelines and a better understanding about what we were doing these next 2 years. Well my school director didn’t come so this meant after listening to people speak in Portuguese for 3 hours the first morning I completely checked out and couldn’t focus anymore. Oops. Supervisor’s conference lasted 2 full days and then on the morning of the 3rd day we all set out for sites, which would be our homes for the next 2 years. I am now living in Guija, it’s a super small town in Gaza province in Southern Mozambique. ---see next post to read all about it!

We were spoiled and we got to spend Supervisor's conference within walking distance of a beach.