July 6, 2011
A belated Happy Independence Day to all of you Stateside. My sitemate, roommate and I celebrated together by making pizza and singing ridiculously loudly to all the cliched America songs you typically hear around the 4th. It was quite a night. Then both of them got sick to their stomachs from eating so much cheese (we rarely have dairy here). I was fine but they both missed a day of work. Oops. It was quite the experience overall.
A few of you have requested a kind of 'day in the life' type of update, and I think that's a great idea, so here is a 'typical' day for me in Mozambique (although I've found no day is really typical --haha).
5:15: Wake up with the sun
5:20: Take the puppy outside and then cook breakfast for him and myself
5:30: Eat breakfast, usually an egg and some vegetables
5:40: Heat up water to take my morning bucket bath
5:45: Take my bucket bath and do my hair/brush my teeth
6:00 Decide what to wear for the day and get ready for school
6:30 Make sure I have everything together and ready or school
6:40: Leave for school
6:45: Arrive at school in time for concentração (singing of the national anthem, announcements, etc).
12:10: Finish teaching for the day and head home
12:30: Cook lunch, usually something simple like some sauteed vegetables or a veggie sandwich or maybe a peanut butter and honey sandwich, it depends how much time I have
12:50: Eat lunch
1:00: Gather everything needed to teach at the Youth Center
1:30: Head down to the Youth Center with my roommate to set up for class
2:30-4: Intense English Class for 12th grade students at the Youth Center (Tuesday-Friday)
4:00-5:00: Answer any lingering questions from students and 'office hours' for students from school to come use books from the library or ask questions
5:00: Head home
5:15: Relax! Read & watch the sunset, write letters, type an email update, or play with the puppy. ☺
6:00 Cook dinner for myself and the puppy. This also varies quite a bit, but is often pasta and rarely includes meat. The only time I usually eat meat here is when we go to the restaurant in town and get chicken. (This happens once a week or less).
6:45: Eat dinner
7:25: Heat water for my second bucket bath
7:30: Take my second bucket bath
7:45: Prepare lessons, grade papers, etc.
8:45: Check that everything is ready for school the next day.
9:00: BEDTIME
So while they do vary, that's a general outline of my days here. On the weekends I have REDES and JOMA meetings as well as meetings with my computer club at school. Those usually take all of Saturday morning. Sunday is day to relax, go to the beach, and lesson plan for school. Monday I don't have school (lucky!) so the morning is spent cleaning the house and doing laundry and the afternoon is spent with my sitemate and roommate planning the youth center lessons for the week. We usually go out to dinner on Monday evenings to celebrate finishing our planning for the week and also because we usually finish kind of late and it takes awhile to cook things here.
Well that should give you a good idea of a typical day/week in my life in the Peace Corps in Mozambique. I am really excited for this coming weekend because my counterpart and I are taking four students to the regional science fair which should be really exciting. I organized (with my counterpart) a science fair for my town that happened last week, and the students with the best scores are going to represent Angoche this weekend in Nampula. It should be a lot of fun. We had 14 kids participate this year and I hope next year I can up that to closer to 25.
Well I'm off to cook dinner. I hope all is well with you and hope to hear from all of you about how your life is going!
So much love,
Alissa
