The answer is yes, but the things I am learning and experiencing are much more fun and interesting than what I am doing. Okay, maybe that last sentence doesn’t really make sense… but as I learn another language I think my native tongue is getting worse… (and by native tongue, I don’t mean German even though my last name is Nurrenbern…E brincadeira! You all already knew that! [E brincadeira = I’m joking])
What have I been doing? That is a good question. So much has been going on and yet so little at the same time. I’ve been here for 6 weeks now and only have 3 weeks left. Am I really suppose to be fluent in Portuguese in only 3 weeks? Training is all coming together here soon. We have a “model school” that starts next week. I’m lucky that I am teaching English because that also means I get to speak English (simple words and slow) while teaching. I’m still nervous about teaching English. It’s hard to see myself in a classroom… I see myself in a gym… or outside, open and free space. Instead, I’ll be in a small classroom with anywhere from 40 to 120 students in my class! But, there is a small chance I’ll get to teach PE instead… my fingers are crossed! But how do I teach PE to 120 kids at once? And no resources? I like the idea of the challenge!
I will soon find out my placement… in one week… AAH! It shouldn’t be so nerve racking because anywhere they place me will be great and I’ll be in Mozambique… but it’s still the anxiety of where I’ll be spending the next 2 years of my life: in mountains or on a beach? Green or dry? Isolated or by more people? A developed site or a new site? Will there be activities I can get involved with or start? (sports in particular) Will I have a roommate or will they be able to get me a place of my own? Electricity? What kind of food nearby?
Okay, so what else is going on because you probably don’t want to really know all that goes on in my head. I had my birthday a month or so ago. It was nothing big… I’m just getting old. It keeps amazing me how close to 30 I am… I mean, my sister is already 30, and she’s old!!! haha I hiked to some waterfalls nearby here in Namaacha…there wasn’t much water flowing, but they were still pretty. I’ve also been on a good hike with a big group of people to where Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa meet. I was in all 3 countries at once, just balancing on a big rock…I’ve also been to a traditional wedding, but I think I wrote about that in another blog.
Halloween: No, Mozambicans don’t really celebrate, but we Americans do! So, here in Namaacha they have 3 neighborhoods called Bairos. There is Bairo A, Bairo B, and Bairo 25 de Junho. I live in 25 de Junho, which is a big Bairo, and therefore is split into a couple different sections. I live in the Matadouro section. Yes, this is all relevant to Halloween. Matadouro in Portuguese means Butcher. We have a Matadouro in our section, hence are section is called this. There are 10 of us that live in this bubble of Bairo 25 de Junho, so 5 of us got together and had the theme of Matadouro for our costume. One person was the butcher and the rest of us were like a Chinese Dragon but as a cow, also known as a Centipede Cow. Obviously, we won the costume contest…one beer. So, what did we do with that beer? We dumped it into our bucket of sangria we made and now have a sisterhood thing: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Bottle Cap. Throughout the next 2 years, we add something to the bottle cap and send it on to somebody else out of us Matadouros.
I’ve been learning to make some of the dishes of Mozambique. For a class one Saturday, we cooked something American for our mothers. In our heads, burritos could and would work out. I mean, all we needed was rice and beans (no problem here), tomatoes (check), cheese (more difficult to find), garlic (check), onions (check), capsicum (check), cilantro (no, but salsa was still good), yogurt (no. For sour cream…), and avocadoes if possible. Oh, and bread flour, water and salt for the wraps. The moms had to buy our ingredients… and it’s easy to see how a lost in translation can happen…
There was no yogurt, but we found a way to make sour cream with powdered milk and vinegar… It kind of worked… They only brought 6 pieces of processed cheese slices… And the flour was corn flour… the flour they use to make this thing called xima… The wraps weren’t wraps at all. They were corn flour balls that we ended up frying…
We decided to call it Salada de Taco (Taco Salad), but here’s the funny thing with that…Taco in Portuguese means cheap, like a cheap person. As many challenges as we faced, and lack of correct ingredients, it actually turned out pretty good… I’ll make it again!
Other little things: I have not killed and feathered a chicken yet; I’ve only had 3 huge cockroaches in my room (dead); the centipedes here are huge!; I haven’t seen a monkey in Namaacha; my goal is to carry things on my head; I made my family here s’mores; my family doesn’t quite know why I put a couple bananas in the freezer (banana pancakes later…); Brazilian TV is funny to watch; not having or wanting a boyfriend is almost unheard of, especially at my age; the beer here is pretty good; I do laundry by hand; everything made is basically from scratch; I bathe from a bucket; instead of mowing a lawn, we sweep it to help keep rid of bugs in the house.
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