Paul and Eli Blog in Moz

We're not exactly painting by numbers, but it feels like it with our world map project. We are painting a giant 6ft by 12 foot map at school, and painting the countries according to the HIV AIDS rate (we are getting funding from PEPFAR). It's really a fun project, and the kids are enjoying it, although it's a lot of work, after scraping the area and painting it all ocean blue, we've drawn a grid of 7cm by 7cm squares in pencil, and used these as guides to draw the countries. Some of the kids are really good at it, doing an excellent job of drawing in all of asia, australia and the phillipines almost perfectly.

We are almost done with school, we have 1 more week of class and then final exams, and then school is over! And next friday is a holiday- teachers days! To celebrate there is no class (also, TODAY was international teachers day so there was no class, and yesterday was a holiday as well, also no class... you get the idea). But next friday will be a huge party for us teachers, it should be interesting! (Some teachers have already promised that they will not drink a drop of water the whole day... we expect a lot of hangovers).

The next group of volunteers has arrived (moz 12), there are 69 new volunteers! A large number of them will be coming up here to zambezia. One will come to Ile, a bio teacher, so that after I leave Eli will not be living alone. We will find out who lives with us in November.

Today we had a monitoring visit from the branch of the government that fights HIV AIDS. It's a really good way for them to get familiar with our group and projects, and they will most likely fund our group for next year.

The school is currently working on building a new house for us. (Actually, they are making the mud bricks to build the house, but it's all the same thing). The house is on school grounds, in fact, it is incredibly close to the school, but it should be fine. It will lack privacy, although we will have a fence, which should help, and it will give us easy access to kids, school, and visitors, which is our lifeblood in mozambique anyways. It will probobly not be done until late November, and we will be sharing the house with the new volunteer for the first six months (until I leave).

Overall, things are going really well. Eli's parents visited and we had a great time. I only spent 3 full days with them because I was later coming back from our COS (close of service) conference in Maputo, which was nice by the way. Lyn was very interested in the rotary club project which is funding our library rehabilitation. I brought books up with me from Maputo- about $800 worth, although thats not as much as you might think, books are very expensive here. One book, a complete illustrated dictionary of portuguese, was $100. Eli's parents mostly stayed in Ile, although we made a day trip to Gurue to see the waterfalls, the same as my parents (who still have not written on the blog!) After leaving Mozambique they did a safari in Zambia and went to vic falls.

Sorry for the lack of blog entries, when I have more time I will make another newsletter to email. Take care everyone,