Falo portugues!

PICS
Xmas at the beach and New Years with Jenna and Clancy






I’ve gotten really bad at keeping up on my blog- sorry but it’s been pretty busy and things have just kept piling up. Talk about a change from my first few weeks here! So I’ve been grading papers and make-up tests for a week now- I finally finished this morning with the last class so at least I have a two week break before my next test. And I’ve cut my hours back to 24 a week now so that’s good.
Valentines day was great! I got together with a bunch of other volunteers, about 16 other Moz 14rs and Moz 13rs. It was wonderfully to finally get to sit and talk to some people that have been doing this for over a year now. It’s not that I still have questions, it’s just nice to be reassured about some of the stuff that’s going on here.
Today has been a good day for teaching. My lesson wasn’t very hard so they seemed to understand pretty quickly, which made me feel like we accomplished something during class. Granted I almost guarantee that tomorrow when I check homework I’ll have about a 45 percent rate of understanding, if not less. But hey, one student at a time. We have all year.
I’ve cut back on the running- I’m currently nursing an ingrown toenail back to health- so the women in the town keep asking me where I’ve been whenever I see them at the market. It’s pretty cute- we typically don’t actually use words to communicate because I don’t speak Changana and they don’t speak Portuguese, so it’s a lot of actions and laughing and high-five/ hand shakes. Man they love their hand shakes here. You don’t even have to do anything- you just kinda hold out your hand and someone will slap it then hold it. Oh the hand holding! I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet- Mozambicans LOVE to hold hands. I’m getting a bit more used to it, and most times I actually really like it because other than that there’s really not much human contact happening, but it was awkward to get used to at first. It’s very normal for guys to hold hands with each other, walking down the road or just standing talking. It’s actually more common to see guys holding hands than girls, and even less likely to see a guy and a girl holding hands.