Year 1 - Week 38: Happiness is a Cheese Steak

For some reason, while we were out last night, Richie committed us to going to Mambone for the day. I was not happy about this. I didn’t just want to stay in Machanga: work all but forced me to stay here.

After reading for a little bit, Richie made his way out while I politely declined the invite. One of the beautiful things about being here is you can commit to do something, then bail on it, and it’s perfectly okay. “Sure, I’ll teach your math class next week.” “Of course I’ll go to Mambone tomorrow.” Haha, yea right.

Instead of making the journey, I spent a solid four hours – well into the afternoon – correcting the last set exams. I committed myself to finishing those damn exams before I ate, but I didn’t expect to take until 2:30. Had it been any other group of kids, it would have taken longer, but this particular group did a nice job.

With the rest of the afternoon to myself, I decided I should be productive. I gave the house a thorough cleaning and even put up a small addition to the house. Richie, who recently spent some time in Maputo and Beira, came back with some essential spices. Lacking the room to place said spices, I found a small shelf-like piece of wood, put a couple of nails into the concrete wall, and just like that, we had a third spice shelf.

Richie returned from Mambone absolutely tanked. The party they expected to go to never really happened (you see, you can even say you’ll have a party, and then not do it!). Nothing that a little food can’t help. We made our usual Sunday chili dinner, and with the addition of recently arrived cheese, it was more delicious than usual. Out of boredom, I made on of the boxes of cake that my parents sent and spent the rest of the night freaked out by “Dexter”. That is on creepy dude, but I like it.

Monday morning, like a lot of Sunday, was committed to work. Our journey through the past tense was to continue today. For this week, I had plans to delve into the world of past participles. As is the case with most things grammatical, this is a lot easier in Portuguese than it is in English. The trade-off, though, is that participles are rarely used in spoken Portuguese, so I will be doubly challenged teaching both new vocabulary and rarely used structure at the same time.

Richie made a morning market run while I prepared for classes. As he shopped, he sent the most beautiful two-word text message I’ve ever seen: “buying beef”. Glorious. In conjunction with Velveeta, we are in business for some beautiful meals. For lunch, we started simply, just fried up with veggies and potatoes. The game changes later tonight.

Classes went alright today. Sometimes I feel like my eleventh graders pick up the things more easily than my twelfth graders, but it may just be certain individuals. Classes today, though, were only standing in the way between me and a cheesesteak.

There are few things that can go wrong with cheesesteaks. Cheese, beef, vegetables and good bread are a pretty deadly combination. And especially when you haven’t had one of those suckers in a loooong time, it can be terrible and still be great. For tonight, there were no words spoken between us during dinner, only the occasional groan of utter satisfaction. With an Oreo or two and an episode of “Dexter”, this night will not soon be topped.

I woke up Tuesday hung over, but not hung over from beer. If it’s possible to have a food coma last over night, this must be what it feels like. I didn’t want to get out of bed for fear that this wonderful feeling would flee. By 9, though, I had to get up. Sadly, that hung over feeling left quickly and no magazine could replace that feeling. My classes already planned, I read for the better part of the morning.

The beef that Richie bought survived overnight without a fridge, but we wouldn’t dare try to stretch it out until the evening. Whatever we had left, it had to be finished by lunch. We cut up some veggies, cooked up some rice, and made a lovely beef stir fry.

Classes went swimmingly today, nothing special. What was special would be dinner. No, we didn’t have any beef, but surely we could find an apt substitute. We still had cheese and damn it, we were going to put it to use. And if we were going to make pizza, we would need some beer. I ran to the little stand behind out house, bought a couple of warm beers and we had another silent dinner. Satisfied by our dinner, we satiated our hunger for entertainment with a couple episodes of “Dexter” before bed.

Wednesday was largely normal. I made a bread run after a bit of reading. There was no need to plan lessons today: Wednesday is the day of repeats.

After two days of meat and cheese, it was difficult to go back to the regular rotation. The bread was fresh and we had just a little bit of cheese left to throw into the eggs. It will help ease the transition into normal food.

Normally, the lesson I give on Wednesday is given twice, once to one class and once to another. But fortune was on my side today. One of the teachers has not been around this week and his classes have been left open. A student said that there was no teacher and wanted to do classes together. Would I love to! Half the chalk, half the time, everyone wins.

I was free from classes by 2:00. Freedom! I could have napped. I should have napped. But I chose not to. Instead I just sat on the porch inundated by magazines. It was a beautiful thing, a rare day when Richie actually worked more hours than I did.

The night was alright. We ate dinner quickly so we could get in two episodes of “Dexter”. Tonight should be the night that the Larium kicks in. This asshole is probably going to give me some serious nightmares.

Well, I was right, plus some. I didn’t fall asleep until 1:00. Instead of bad dreams, I got the paranoia. Then when I finally got to sleep, I the bad dreams came. Fun fun.

There was no need to make the normal Thursday market run. Richie and I had plans to go to Chimoio for a bank run, shopping, and an epic Central party. Already with a general idea for a lesson plan, I was left with little to do. So I sat and read.

Classes were both better and worse than anticipated. They were better in that because so many teachers cancelled class, I was able to do classes together; they were worse in that the content was much more difficult that I anticipated. The first half went okay, but the second part will take another day of explanation. Eh, they can’t all be great.

Being done with classes by 2:00 was beautiful. Having the energy on when I came back was just glorious. We have some Peace Corps paperwork to take care of and this was a good time to take care of it. My neighbors, on the other hand, had other ideas. They had someone that they wanted me to meet: the new muzungu here. She’s a nice girl from Manitoba who is here on a year contract. It’s nice to have another muzungu here, but it’s kind of sad to know that she arrived here months after we did and she will be gone before we leave.

We spent a good part of the afternoon talking, jumping between Portuguese and English. She just arrived two weeks ago and we thought we’d show her around town for a bit. And we had the pleasure of introducing her to the glory that is Mambone bread.

Dinner was ordinary and “Dexter” was good as always. But we called it an early night. Going to Chimoio will mean we have to get up at 4:15 tomorrow for an intolerable chapa ride.

Hearing the phone alarm go off is depressing, but being awake for when it happened was just terrible. We packed our bags, closed up the house, and walked under a bright moon to the villa.

Unfortunately for us, we weren’t going to Beira, just the crossroads, so we would have the last priority for getting on. And as luck would have it, we got pinched out. Our day might as well have been over, but it was only 6:15. There was a car that was going to head out at 8, and we considered it. The problem, though, isn’t leaving Machanga, it’s getting back into Machanga.

Richie decided to give up. For some reason, I was ambitious. I decided that it would be a good time to go to Vilanculos. After all, it’s been a while since I’ve left town and I’m starting to run low on money. Plans changed. I crossed the river and actually had a stroke of good luck: a trucked was heading directly from Mambone to Vilanculos. Beautiful. Other than two lengthy stops in Maluvane and Inhassoro, it was smooth sailing.

My main concern once I got into town was to pick up a laptop. But first, there was food to be eaten. And when in Vil, it must be pizza. It doesn’t matter than I’ve had more cheese this week than I have had in the last year. If I’m in Vilanculos, I’m eating pizza. The timing was perfect. I got my pizza, did my shopping, and had the computer in my hands by later afternoon.

The girls in Vilanculos were gracious enough to let me stay with them on extraordinarily short notice. They had work to do and I was drop-dead exhausted so it proved to be a quiet night, a night I was welcome to have.

The Vilanculos girls made their way out early Saturday morning, but I stuck around for the Vil-Mambone 10:30 chapa. While I waited, I knocked out some last-minute shopping and secured my shotgun seat. The ride was largely uneventful, which is good. But by the time I got back to Mambone, I was drop-dead exhausted.

I returned to an empty house. Richie was out drinking in the villa with some teachers. Apparently, he started around 9:30 in the morning. Fortunately, he had the good sense to drop our keys off with the neighbor.

As soon as I sat down to eat a little something, Richie called. I needed to go to the villa immediately, to get in on the drinking. Hungry, dehydrated, and tired, I wanted no part of the villa. But when I got a call from a colleague called to say he wanted to celebrate his birthday with friends, I had no choice.

At a reasonable hour, and reasonably liquored up, we returned home to cook up dinner. Dinner, though, was just the preface to a glorious night of “Dexter”. In between episodes, I talked to my parents, the first time I’ve talked with them in a while.

Pizza, cheese steaks, Dexter…going to be tough to beat this week.