Thursday, October 20, 2005
Olá!
Hi everyone! I just finished visiting the natural history museum in Maputo, which was a special field trip for biology teachers and we get a few minutes on the internet before going back to our training town. Eli and I are still having a great time and everything is going well. We´ve had some pretty hot days and still no rain.
Theres a lot of interesting stuff to talk about. Last friday we got to witness a ceremony at our school, where the neighberhood chief talked about the history of the town and the school, then revealed that the school´s founder was buried nearby. They then killed 6 chickens in front of us by beating them over the head with sticks, cooking them in a big camp fire, and serving us the chicken on leaves. The idea was to cook the chicken in the same way that the ancestor would have. We also got a special drink and were supposed to offer some of both the drink and food to the ancestor. Overall it was really interesting.~
Speaking about killing chickens, I told my host mother that I wanted to learn how to kill a chicken. It seems that other trainees wanted to do the same in the past, and really freaked out when she let them, so she was against letting me do it myself. I did watch someone else´s host mom kill some chickens today though, and I agree that I probobly don´t want to do it- it´s not humane at all, they just saw the chickens neck part way through with a knife and let it bleed to death.
That happened today so it´s on my mind- usually we´re not seeing chickens being killed. Last weekend we had a chance to play sports against some mozambicans, which was fun. Eli and I played basketball (I wore my chaco sandals, which by the way, you can get for 1/2 off if you are a peace corps volunteer, and I wish I´d known that before we bought 4 pairs). Our host brother joined us and played on the peace corps team, which was a lot of fun. Peace Corps does a lot of work to keep our time structured with classes and other activities. So far nobody had dropped out and I think the fact that peace corps takes such good care of us is really helping a lot.
Our portuguese keeps comming along to. We´re starting to work on lesson planning and teaching short- 10 minute lessons- to our language groups. I´m really looking forward to the model school we´ll be having in another 3 weeks or so. Also, we´ll be doing site visits to other volunteers in like 2 weeks and see what things are really like. All the volunteers I´ve met so far are nice and love their sites.
I´m not sure what eli thinks about this but I´m hoping we get placed up north in Nampula or Tete because it´s supposed to be very beautiful and also more isolated. Hopefully Eli will have a chance to update the blog this weekend because I´m rushed and forgetting a lot of the good things that are going on here.
-Paul
Theres a lot of interesting stuff to talk about. Last friday we got to witness a ceremony at our school, where the neighberhood chief talked about the history of the town and the school, then revealed that the school´s founder was buried nearby. They then killed 6 chickens in front of us by beating them over the head with sticks, cooking them in a big camp fire, and serving us the chicken on leaves. The idea was to cook the chicken in the same way that the ancestor would have. We also got a special drink and were supposed to offer some of both the drink and food to the ancestor. Overall it was really interesting.~
Speaking about killing chickens, I told my host mother that I wanted to learn how to kill a chicken. It seems that other trainees wanted to do the same in the past, and really freaked out when she let them, so she was against letting me do it myself. I did watch someone else´s host mom kill some chickens today though, and I agree that I probobly don´t want to do it- it´s not humane at all, they just saw the chickens neck part way through with a knife and let it bleed to death.
That happened today so it´s on my mind- usually we´re not seeing chickens being killed. Last weekend we had a chance to play sports against some mozambicans, which was fun. Eli and I played basketball (I wore my chaco sandals, which by the way, you can get for 1/2 off if you are a peace corps volunteer, and I wish I´d known that before we bought 4 pairs). Our host brother joined us and played on the peace corps team, which was a lot of fun. Peace Corps does a lot of work to keep our time structured with classes and other activities. So far nobody had dropped out and I think the fact that peace corps takes such good care of us is really helping a lot.
Our portuguese keeps comming along to. We´re starting to work on lesson planning and teaching short- 10 minute lessons- to our language groups. I´m really looking forward to the model school we´ll be having in another 3 weeks or so. Also, we´ll be doing site visits to other volunteers in like 2 weeks and see what things are really like. All the volunteers I´ve met so far are nice and love their sites.
I´m not sure what eli thinks about this but I´m hoping we get placed up north in Nampula or Tete because it´s supposed to be very beautiful and also more isolated. Hopefully Eli will have a chance to update the blog this weekend because I´m rushed and forgetting a lot of the good things that are going on here.
-Paul
# posted by Paul and Eli @ 6:56 AM 
