Monday, May 15, 2006

 

What a weekend

This weekend we were invited to church by our empregada, who goes to the baptist church which our missionary friends work at. We were pretty excited to go and get more involved with the community. I am very glad that we did go, because we had a great time. The church is small, one room with cement pews and a thatched roof. It did not remind me of a US church because 80% of the time here was spent singing (in portuguese and makua, and it sounded good). They also had a drum to spice it up! As part of the church ceremony they announce any guests that are there that day, so our empregada, Rosa, took us up to the front and announced us. This church is a little far from our house, but when Eli mentioned that we were teachers at the secondary school, someone in the front leaned over and whispered to her neighbor, `oh, he´s a biology teacher!´ It´s interesting how widely known, if not us at least our presence, is here! After being announced they started singing a song (the words were basically ´it´s a pleasure to meet you´and everyone in the church came up and shook our hands- it was fun). The majority of the service was then singing and announcements, followed by a sermon in portuguese that was also translated into Makua. We may try to go once a month or so because it´s very fun to see the people and hear the singing in Makua.

Last Friday I had decided that I hated teaching, because my new schedule is so bad and my students had just failed a test, tried their best to cheat during it, and then I had to sit through a long meeting which did not accomplish much, if anything. But then I went to school today and had a very good class, followed by 5 students who were telling me about their ideas for the science fair. I was really happy about that, and I only hope that they actually do the experiments. (Most of them seem to involve killing rats, and I´m trying to steer them away from that, as in, how about working on worms?) We have just 1 month to go, so the students will have to work pretty hard to get everything done by then. Hopefully it´s a success! And I´m not serious about hating teaching, that was just one day after a series of bad exams. Normally I really enjoy teaching, and so does Eli (she actually enjoys it a lot more than I do!)

On the 20th my basketball team has a game against Pemba!

Hope everything is going well. Nacala is actually starting to get kind of cool, at least in the mornings, when I now have to shut the windows the keep the cold breeze out.

-paul

----» extra news:: we have just found a store that sells Snickers bars for about 4o cents. This is very amazing.

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