new bike

Yay! So, yesterday, Vanessa, my roommate, and I went to Beira to get me a new bike, which is going to be paid for by Peace Corps. Isn't it nice? Got a basket for groceries, backseat for passengers, and even a bell. Honestly, school is only a 15 minute walk from home, so I don't really need a bike, but it's so hot here that even 15 minutes in the sun is exhausting. Plus, I haven't rode a bike since who knows how long, and though it's only 1 speed, it's really so much fun :-)

Anyway, so school started last week. Even though I was trained to teach bio, I ended up having 4 English 8th grade classes in the afternoon and 1 8th grade class at night. The way school works here is that regular day school is from 7 to 6 at night. You either have morning classes, from 7 to 12:45, or afternoon classes, from 1 to 6.45. Night classes are for older students who have never passed, and since the majority of the population has not finished school, a lot of the students in my night class are adults. I taught afternoo classes, so I didn't have to be at school until 1 so I usually did planning in the morning. I liked that a lot, but that's all going to change next week.

So, apparently we don't have enough english teachers so I have to take over all the 8th grade English classes, which is 8 classes altogether, and that includes morning classes. Since I will be teaching morning and afternoon, I didn't think I would have enough time to plan, so I'd asked them to drop my night classes, which is a little disappointing cause I was looking forward to teaching the adults bio, but I guess that's one thing you learn in the Peace Corps, it's that you gotta be flexible. holy crap. i have no training in english. It can't possibly be that hard, right? We'll see how it goes..

So, my first day.. I was super prepared and had everything written out that I was going to say, and guess what happened?! I had like 10 of my students out of 50 showed up, and even worse in might class, 3 of the 50 ppl showed up! Apparently, it's common for ppl not to show up to school here the first day, not even teachers. Can you believe it?! So, whatever lesson I had planned was worth nothing cause I couldn't teach it to just a few students so I had to improvise. Damn. It's really not as easy teaching english as you might think. the students don't have books and so any vocabulary had to be written on the board and copied. They take a very long time to copy, especially when I have to wait on 50 students, and they're all at such different levels. No overheads so that means no visuals unless I draw it with chalk. Shit! I'm no artist, and then they're also no artist so they don't even know how to copy down my drawings. Last week, I taught about family, like how to say mom, dad, uncle, etc, but that was only to 4 classes. The ones that didn't have me had no English class, so they have not had English at all. It's unbelievable that we're still rearranging classes and schedules, not just of individual students but entire grades, and it's the 2nd week of school already. We had to dissolve 2 8th grade classes and split those students up into other classes because one of our teachers transferred and we don't have enough. Students don't know when they have classes and when they don't. It's all so sketchy. You would think it'd be more organized!

Anyway, so far, i don't feel like the kids are bad. They just don't understand. I ask and they don't know how to respond so it's very frustating for me, especially when the answer is so obvious. It's like teaching elementary school. I gotta remind myself that they just were never taught to think, only to memorize and regurgitate, so I have to be patient.

Damn but it's hard to be nice and patient when it's so rediculously hot and I have to wear a lab coat on top of my clothes to teach. Dude it's like atleast in the 90's everyday, and they fit a room with 60 ppl, no AC and only windows. i gotta keep a sweat rag in my lab coat pocket to wipe the neverending trickle on my face. I've got heat bumps all over my skin from all the sweating cause I just never stop. As soon as I put on clothes after a shower, I'm sweating again. It's so hot at night I can't even sleep sometime, even if I sleep naked. That's one sure way to make sure you get up early. Just be so hot.

Other than that though, I still love it. It just offer to rain or cool off. Then i'll be happy.

Holy Crab!

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Look what I just discovered existed at my site for the price of 2
eggs?! Fresh from the river Buzi that divides my town in half, picture
3 from above.

Yes, while I may not have the mountain view I'd longed for in the
beginning, there are some real benefits to being so close 2 the river!
Nothing is ever as it seems here.

stove quest

Oh Shit! Let me tell you about my day yesterday. What a long day! And it all started with a stove.

So, my stove broke the night before yesterday, and they don't sell stoves in my town. I had to go to the provincial capital, which is Beira, in order to buy a new one, 1st picture above. Yes, I could have used the coal stove, 2nd picture above, which I did that night, but that thing is rediculously inefficient and slow that I decided to get a new stove.

So, yesterday morning, I woke up at 6 to take the 3 hr boat ride to Beira, didn't actually leave dock until 8 but was actually scheduled for 7, walked to the store from the dock, bought the stove, and walked back to the chapa station right away to take the chapa back to Buzi. That was about 1230, but the one going directly to Buzi had already left, and since the next one going directly to Buzi didn't come until the next day, my only alternative was to take a chapa to another town on the way, Tica, and take a chapa to Buzi from Tica.

Well, since i've already done this twice, having missed the direct chapa to Buzi twice and having to detour to Tica, I already knew that I was going to be spending some 2 or 3 hours in Tica waiting for that chapa to fill up. That's why I hate going to Beira. It's such a waste of my fucking time! Anyway, since I knew on one in Beira, I waited at the chapa station from 1230 to 3 for the chapa to Tica to fill up, and then got to Tica around 4.

There, I'd figured I only had to wait another hour or two since the Tica chapa to Buzi usually left around 5 or 6. Boy was I wrong. At around 530, i heard the chapa driver say that since there were so few passengers going to Buzi, we would all have to pay more to make up for his lost or he wouldn't take us. Holy crap! I started freaking out because it was already so late in the afternoon on a sunday. No one else was going to come. Everyone else looked like they weren't wanting to pay the extra cost, and there were no cars driving by that road in order for me to even hitchike. I didn't know anyone with a car nearby that could come pick me up. The others were thinking about going back to Beira, but they knew ppl and I did not know anyone there I could stay with either. I also wouldn't want to pay to go back to where I just came from and waste all that money, so if he refused to take us, I would probably sleep in Tica, the town with population 75!

I started looking around and Tica had no hotel or anything like that at all. It was maybe a collection of 20 houses, and the only thing my panic state of mind could think of was to sleep on someone's front porch until the next day when I could catch the chapa back to Buzi. WTF! I did not know what to do. See, this is the problem with being by yourself in a country you are not used to.

We waited around some more, but no one else came, and it was 630, getting dark. Other ppl were begging the driver to take us, but the Mf kept refusing saying he wouldn't make any money taking us. In the end, a couple of us ended up paying double the normal price to cover others who didn't have enough and we were on our way when it was dark. i was just so happy because i didn't have to sleep on someone's porch, but the ride has got to be one of the worst ride i've had. It was 2 hours on the back of a truck bed on an unpaved road. Imagine someone bouncing you on their knees every 10 minutes, except instead of falling back down on a cushioned knee, you land on a hard truck bed. Since it was so bumpy, i was afraid my new stove would break, which would have defeated my entire trip, so I had to cradle it in my arm like a baby, cushioning it with my legs and dissipating the 'knee bounces' with my body. It's really hard to do when the driver didn't give a crap about us in the back and was speeding and braking like a madman and me trying not to slosh around all over the truck bed. I was just so happy I finally made it back around 9. Damn, if it was America and I needed to get something quick from the store, the furthest I would have to go is maybe across town and I could call on ppl if anything went wrong. It was really scary to think that I had no one to call. Sure I could call Peace Corps, but what can they do? They live in another province. The best they could have done was give me verbal advice..

Well, that was my long ass quest to get a new stove. Picture 3 is of my kitchen. 4 is my mini fridge and the big green thing in the back is what I store water in. 5 is my living room. 6 is my bathroom with the tub that i use for showering. Toilet is flushed with water in the green bucket next to it. 7 is my closet with the missing door. Next time, I'll post pictures of the town.