Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

After a 48 hour journey Eli and I arrived home late last night! For the last two weeks we' ve been helping out at the training for the new PCVs (a group of 55, mixed health and education volunteers, who have only been in the country for a month). I was pretty excited to go to the training, although in the end it was fairly boring for us; lots of downtime and we were there for TWO weeks! However, it was a lot of fun to meet the new volunteers, talk to them about Mozambique, and visit Boane.
Friday morning we left Maputo and flew to Lansing- of course it took 4 planes and many (many) delays to get there... Today is our first full day back home and it's wonderful! We'll spend 2 weeks (in Eli's case) and 3 weeks (in my case) in Michigan, and the rest of the time in NYC with Eli's sister. We fly back to Maputo on the 27th of November, and then we'll do this safari .
We'll get back into Mozambique in time to join the trainees for the directors conference- the time when they meet and talk with their new school directors. Since we'll be going to a new site we'll also meet our new director; it should be much better this time since I'll actually be able to speak to him in complete sentances :-)

Oh yeah,the 1st meal back: spiral cut honey baked ham and cheesy potatoes :-)

Today we cut off our water. It`s not as simple as it sounds, really. It had to be done since we`re leaving the apartment (and our stuff in it) until December and didn`t want to be charged for all the time when we weren`t living there. In the US that would be pretty easy, but here it was pretty complicated. The bills always arrive several months late (we had just paid for our water in July, for example) so we had to pay August and September as well. I don`t think they`re used to people trying to pay the extra months that remain before leaving (hence we received a 3 month bill when we moved in). Also the whole process of getting the water turned off required a special letter, carbon copies, and signatures. The red tape to be able to pay all of the months that we owe was impressive; we had to talk to someone official in another place to get approval. I don`t think they want to make it easy for people to pay.
Our schedule has changed a bit and we`re flying down to Maputo on Monday. Hope everyone is enjoying the last of the warm weather back home!


And just to keep interest in the blog up, here are some new photos. The first is a girafe pic that Lynn took in Kruger park, and the second is an oldy (almost a year old!) of Eli climbing during training in Boane.

Well, we finally did it. We got rid of the kibby. Temporarily, that is; yesterday I took him to Monapo, his original home. Eli´s sad because she didn´t really get to say goodbye, but we got a visit from the Peace Corps doctor, and I caught a ride with her back to Monapo so I could avoid taking the cat on a public chapa. I rather ingeniously got the cat into a plastic clothes hamper, then tied the lid on him so he couldn´t escape. Unfortunately, I disingeniously didn´t tie it tight enough so half way to Monapo he made enough space for himself to get out, and then he was free in the back of a land cruiser with 5 passangers- two of whom (both mozambican) were NOT very happy at all to have a loose cat in the car; i.e. `stop the car, I´m getting out`.
I ended up sitting in front with the kitty on my lap, and he was good until we got to Monapo. Getting him out of the car was a little harder, and I have all the scratches on my arm to prove it.
We plan (or at least Eli does) on getting him again mid-December when we return.

As for school, we´ve both graded and turned in all of the final exams. Now we´re just tying up loose ends before we go. We´re leaving the final grades with our mozambican counterparts, and they´ll have to do the rest of the work (sorry guys). A lot of kids have been asking us to give them higher grades, and it´s sad when you like the kids but you have to give them a failing grade. Most of my kids that failed are only failing because they tried to cheat several times, and I gave them a zero for it. Next time I won´t be so harsh- I thought the severe penalty would make kids cheat less but it didn´t.

Sunday morning we leave Nacala!

...fish and bananas, yum! Tired of the same old food, we asked Rosa to cook us a new mozambican dish. The result, a concoction of fish, bananas, onions and peppers was... let´s say interesting. And we asked her to take the left overs home. All of the left overs. But certainly, it was worth a try. How often are you going to get that wonderful flavour combination again?

Eli and I are spending our last 2 weeks in Nacala proctering and grading final exams, which is one of the most boring activities we´ve had to do yet. Kids taking final exams here are like kids taking final exams anywhere else- except that when it gets windy the tests here blow out of the classroom; although we both think the `teacher, my test just blew out the window, can I go get it?´ speel is just a ploy to go and look at a cheat sheet.

Hope all´s well back home!

Paul and Eli