Thursday, February 02, 2006
School has Started!
Except not really. We had the opening ceremony for the school on Tuesday, where people made speaches and we got introduced by first name only :-) Following that was the real ´first day´of school, when classes were supposed (according to the director) start. I´m scheduled to teach at 6:45am on Wed. so I was up and ready and had all my teaching materials. Eli gave me a big hug and said good luck, call me after your first class. Sounds good, but when I arrived at school the teachers were all in the teachers lounge trying to get the schedule straightened out and the students were all looking for their names on the class lists to find out what classroom and class group they were in. So I sat for a while, eventually recieved some school matieral (chalk, 2 pens and a notebook) and then went home for the day. Eli went at noon, because thats her teaching time. We figured that classes might have gotten started by noon, so she was ready to teach.
There weren´t actually any classes in session, and Eli just got her chalk and paper and we were ready to leave. The other nice thing we got from that trip was a note from the school to take to the alfaiateria (tailor), so we went and got measured, and are going to have Batas (think lab coat) made for us. I kind of like the idea of having a bata to teach in, its really formal. We also go our pictures taken and we´ll get neat name tags- I think they´re actually pretty cool looking.
I also went to school today (Thurs) in case I had morning classes. But nobody was teaching, and everyone told me things wouldn´t start until Monday (actually a lot of students I´ve spoken too have said they thought school started next Monday period, so... most people never planned on starting this wed. or thurs!) Friday is a holiday so no school then. We´ll write again after Monday to tell you how our first classes go!
As for what we´re teaching- I have 3 turmas (classes) of 10th grade biology, which is Genetics, Evolution and Ecology, as well as 1 turma of 11th grade bio, which is all taxonomy. It means about 13hours in the classroom a week, but I´ll have about 80 kids a class for 10th and 50 for 11th. Eli has 4 turmas of 9th, and only works 2 days a week, with a total of 12 hours a week. Our nearest PCV neighbor said she was teaching 9 turmas! I think we´re lucky, but we haven´t started teaching yet, so we might get a surprise.
A few weeks ago on our trip to Pemba we met some American missionaries who live in Nacala. We´ve gotten together with them twice since, which has been a lot of fun. Once they had us to their place for pizza (the best I´ve had in the country) and some card games, and the other time we went to Bay Diving, a tourist place that we´d never been to before. They have good food though, I had some Mahi mahi fish (about $5 for the plate) and Eli had some South African sausages and a chocolate cake with ice cream. We eat a lot of rice and beans, so it was a good change of pace!
We have decided to name our cat Ptolemy. Eli really pushes for the ancient names, so my idea (Kermit or Dilbert) will have to wait for another pet. Not that it matters since he doesn´t respond to anything we say. Overall, he´s a great cat though, really fun to have in the house, and a good house cat in general. The only bad thing is that sometimes another cat comes onto our porch at night, and if our cat sees him he goes nuts! He starts making a horrible meow that sounds like a baby crying and he trys to attack our mirror. Its definetly weird, so now we take precautions against him seeing anything on the porch.
Hopefully we´ll get some more pictures posted up soon, maybe a better one of the apartment. Oh, we also officially recieved mail at our Nacala address, so if you want to send letters (large things will still probobly be safer going to the Maputo address) you can send them to us at:
Escola Secundaria de Nacala-Porto
C.P. 187
Nacala, Nampula
Moçambique
Thanks everyone!
There weren´t actually any classes in session, and Eli just got her chalk and paper and we were ready to leave. The other nice thing we got from that trip was a note from the school to take to the alfaiateria (tailor), so we went and got measured, and are going to have Batas (think lab coat) made for us. I kind of like the idea of having a bata to teach in, its really formal. We also go our pictures taken and we´ll get neat name tags- I think they´re actually pretty cool looking.
I also went to school today (Thurs) in case I had morning classes. But nobody was teaching, and everyone told me things wouldn´t start until Monday (actually a lot of students I´ve spoken too have said they thought school started next Monday period, so... most people never planned on starting this wed. or thurs!) Friday is a holiday so no school then. We´ll write again after Monday to tell you how our first classes go!
As for what we´re teaching- I have 3 turmas (classes) of 10th grade biology, which is Genetics, Evolution and Ecology, as well as 1 turma of 11th grade bio, which is all taxonomy. It means about 13hours in the classroom a week, but I´ll have about 80 kids a class for 10th and 50 for 11th. Eli has 4 turmas of 9th, and only works 2 days a week, with a total of 12 hours a week. Our nearest PCV neighbor said she was teaching 9 turmas! I think we´re lucky, but we haven´t started teaching yet, so we might get a surprise.
A few weeks ago on our trip to Pemba we met some American missionaries who live in Nacala. We´ve gotten together with them twice since, which has been a lot of fun. Once they had us to their place for pizza (the best I´ve had in the country) and some card games, and the other time we went to Bay Diving, a tourist place that we´d never been to before. They have good food though, I had some Mahi mahi fish (about $5 for the plate) and Eli had some South African sausages and a chocolate cake with ice cream. We eat a lot of rice and beans, so it was a good change of pace!
We have decided to name our cat Ptolemy. Eli really pushes for the ancient names, so my idea (Kermit or Dilbert) will have to wait for another pet. Not that it matters since he doesn´t respond to anything we say. Overall, he´s a great cat though, really fun to have in the house, and a good house cat in general. The only bad thing is that sometimes another cat comes onto our porch at night, and if our cat sees him he goes nuts! He starts making a horrible meow that sounds like a baby crying and he trys to attack our mirror. Its definetly weird, so now we take precautions against him seeing anything on the porch.
Hopefully we´ll get some more pictures posted up soon, maybe a better one of the apartment. Oh, we also officially recieved mail at our Nacala address, so if you want to send letters (large things will still probobly be safer going to the Maputo address) you can send them to us at:
Escola Secundaria de Nacala-Porto
C.P. 187
Nacala, Nampula
Moçambique
Thanks everyone!
# posted by Paul and Eli @ 5:31 AM 
