Odds and ends in Mozambique

Teaching:

Life here is well.  There hasn't been a lot going on, but I have started teaching at the university.  It has been interesting teaching in Mozambique.  Things are much more relaxed and showing up to class on time is more of a suggestion, not a rule.  Teachers, teaching is another one of those suggestions.  I am hoping that when we get our new students in March, I will have more of a say in the way things are run here.  The current students will actually take their final exams and then they will graduate and start teaching students English in Mozambique.

I also had a riveting two day four hour experience of testing students to enter into the Teaching institution here.  I wanted to shoot myself!  I had to stand in the back, and watch people take a test for two hours one day and then two hours the next day.  After that we did an English placement interview with the students.  Some people spoke very good English, others not so well.  Some were just down right painful to listen to.

 

The Beach:

So I took my 8 year old host brother and 16 year old host brother to the beach on the second of January.  They live just an hour away from the beach, and yet they had never seen it before.  We went to Ponte D'oura.  It is a huge tourist location near South Africa.  We pitched a tent and camped really close to the beach.  They had also never done real camping before. 

We played on the beach for three or four days cooked American food and had a good time.

I wish that it wasn't such a tourist trap, because things cost a lot more money there, but it was still nice and it was fun spending time with the two of them.

 

 

 

 

The garden:

Okay, so I had this great idea of making a Garden.  The only problem is that I don't know how to make one, or what any of the plants look like as they are growing.  So we plant corn, Green peppers, carrots, onions and lettuce.  We wait and we we wait.  The corn starts to grow, no problem.  The other stuff, we had no idea as to what to look for, so a lot of things were growing, but we didn't know if they were weeds or if they were vegetables.  So we let them grow for a long time.  I finally asked my host mom to come and look at my garden.  She just laughed and told me that nothing was growing, that all I had successfully grown was weeds.  Woopi!  Big accomplishment!

So this week we tore up the garden, minus the corn and are trying again. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment!