Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

As aulas começam amanha

Literally translated it means classes start tomorrow, but what it really means is ‘nobody knows when classes will start, but show up every day just in case.’ And that pretty much sums up the current situation- doing final grades for the second trimester still isn’t done (even though class was supposed to have started on Monday) and many students have not even returned from the holidays. It will make an already short last trimester (shortened by almost a month because of the national census) even shorter.

The next month will be pretty busy here. This weekend (or next, depending on if the students return or not!) we will be taking 4 kids from our JOMA group and Adolfo to Mocuba for a two day theater training. The Mocuba JOMA group will be planning and putting on the training and it should be a really experience, both for our kids to improve their theater and to share ideas with the Mocuba kids. Also the 15^th is the regional science fair in Nampula. We will be taking the three winners from our local fair to compete, and Nacala will also bring a group of students (we did a science fair there last year) which is exciting. For now those kids are working on refining and improving their experiments. (One of them is trying to run a light bulb off of a lemon, but is having some trouble, anyone have ideas?).

Following the science fair we have a COS (close of service) conference in Maputo, which we go to even if we extend. That means missing another week of school! (The trimester ends in mid October, and the last few weeks are final exams and grading so there really is not much time for classes!!).

The school received a chessboard (possibly two) and the other day I taught one of the other teachers how to play. I’m hoping to teach a small group of kids to play and then leave those chessboards in the library. We’ll see how it goes, but other PCVs have started chess clubs and been pretty successful.

The only other major news to report is that the school is starting to make mud bricks for a new peace corps house. That way there will be a place for us (and the new volunteer who will come to teach biology in December) will have a place to live when we leave the missionary housing. The fact that they are starting is really good news and I’m really hoping that they get it done before December!

# posted by Paul and Eli @ 1:45 AM