Year 1 - Week 39: Breaking Point

Coming back yesterday was tiring as all hell. The two day trip to Vilanculos is always exhausting, but having both Sunday and Monday to recover makes the temporary exhaustion bearable. The only downside to coming home so quickly is that there is really nothing to do. I could be doing nothing in beautiful Vilanculos or I could do nothing in, um, Machanga.

Sunday proved to be rather productive. The house got a good tag-team cleaning and we rewarded ourselves with a short Frisbee session and lunch. But after that, I knew I had to get to work. Real work.

I have not looked forward to this day. I knew that I would have no problem and the only ceiling on my vocab score is my own vocabulary. But the writing section…this is going to take some practice. Along with the fact that I haven’t written an argumentative piece of writing in two years, the GRE requires two different specific types of writing. The first set of essays I wrote were a struggle to say the least. With a little bit of time, though, I should be okay.

Burnt out on writing, I gave my mind some time to unwind with an “Economist”. As my vocabulary has increased, courtesy of studying, those magazines have become easier to read. There is no shortage of GRE vocabulary in the economist and seeing the words in context really helps me retain the definitions.

We had our regular Sunday chili dinner, topped off with a bit of gin that I brought back Mambone. The plan was to go out with some colleagues and kill the bottle off, so we thought we’d get started early. Immediately after dinner, my grandmother called. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked with her, as she has had trouble getting through to my phone, so it was nice to talk with her again.

Before going out – and before the energy went out – we knocked out a couple episodes of “Dexter”. We are inching our way closer to the season finale. We have one more episode left before we move on to season two.

We left when the lights went out, but it wasn’t with our usual crowd, which was kind of disappointing. No more than a few beers in did we decide that it was time to leave. The scene wasn’t right and the crowd was even worse. We came home around 11 unfulfilled.

But alas, there was a fulfillment. It waited on Richie’s computer, which had just enough power left to survive the finale of “Dexter”. Beautiful. We watched the last episode amongst too many mosquitoes to count.

Monday was a holiday in the states and by strange coincidence, it was also a holiday here. Of course, there was some sort of celebration in the town plaza which, as always, I chose not to attend. Too much sun, too much waiting, too many other ways to waste a couple of hours. While Richie was out, I cleaned up the house and spent some quality time in my vocab book. I am achingly close to having this book finished.

By mid-afternoon, I was ready to give up. Napping was in the cards and it felt fantastic, good enough to make me thoroughly groggy when I woke up. Still slightly in the haze, I got to work on practice sets. I started out easy and built up to the most difficult level. I did just fine on the math, projecting to a 750 out of 800. The 620 on verbal was a little disappointing, but there is still plenty of time for practice.

As I finished up the last set, Richie gave me a call. He was in the villa with some colleagues. Done with my work, I went over there for a bit before the energy came on. Just before eating dinner, my aunt and grandfather called. Just as with my grandmother, I haven’t talked with each of them in a long time. After the calls, we ended our night with a couple episodes of “30 Rock”.

I was back to work with computers on Tuesday morning. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve done this, so it was good to get back in the game. I’ve wanted to teach Excel for these couple of weeks, but malaria and computer updates have interfered with my plans. But now we are back in the rhythm. I introduced my students to the magical world of Excel formulas. This is certainly a little more complicated than Word, but with time and experience, they will be fine. Richie dropped in toward the end of the class. Having him there was nice. He could keep his eyes on teacher while I worked with the other.

We returned back home around 11 to get lunch going. After lunch, the day was pretty boring. I had three classes instead of my regular five. Yesterday’s holiday screwed up my schedule pretty good. With the free time, I studied a little bit and threw the Frisbee with Richie.

By the late afternoon, we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. It’s too soon for chili, and we usually wait until Wednesday to crack open a can of turkey or chicken. I proposed a radical idea: soft tacos. We didn’t want to cook beans, so Richie ran to the market to buy canned beans. In comparison to having to soak the beans all day, then taking 90 minutes to cook them, reheating canned beans was a dream (albeit a relatively expensive one).

The tacos were better than we could have imagined. My homemade tortillas were pretty damn good. Most importantly, they didn’t fall apart when we ate. All that was missing was some guacamole and Corona. We capped the night with the first two episodes of season 2 of “Dexter”..

For the first time in a while, we had an English theatre meeting. It’s not that the students haven’t been meeting; they have actually been meeting on their own for a while. It’s good. And they’ve actually done a really nice job of getting the play together. They know their lines for the most part and they’ve added some nice little twists. Most importantly, though, the play is long enough to qualify for the competition in a couple weeks. Once it is cleaned up, it could win.

I had hoped that I could continue teaching Excel today, but theatre practice ran late and many of my teacher-students were busy. It was for the better. Having a bit of time in the morning allowed me to get back into my GRE vocab book. Out of about 400 words, I hit all but one definition. Now, it is just about mastering the techniques and I should be good to go on two of the three sections.
Classes went decently today. I was teaching the same class that I struggled with last Thursday. For some reason or another, the class went much better today. Included in the lesson was a review for my students’ last midterm with me. I’m sure they are thrilled that they are almost done with me.

I was left with a little time to myself to play Sudoku. After failing epically at Kakuro for the last couple weeks, it was a relief to play Sudoku, a game at which I have a far higher success rate. Sudoku preceded a delicious chicken sandwich dinner, followed by a couple of episodes of “30 Rock”.

Thursday
I had a remarkably busy morning Thursday. Aside from my regular market run, I had to write an exam for this afternoon. I prepared the questions last night, so all I had to do was write it on monster paper. This would be a five minute job for any normal person, but with someone like me with terrible writing, it’s a task.

As if my students don’t hate me enough already, this test was the final nail in the coffin. They were responsible for knowing three forms of past tense. And the truth of the matter is this should have been an easy test: memorize three tenses that are all used in Portuguese plus a grand total of sixteen new words. Apparently, it wasn’t so easy. A lot of students actually took the entire 90 minutes to finish. It could be a bloodbath.

I started correcting exams as soon as I got home. Results were mixed. It was feast or famine for these students. Those who studied for ten minutes did as well as they normally would. The ones who failed to study failed miserably. With a forty percent fail rate, though, I have little choice but to curve it.

A couple of students came over to practice typing. Afonso brought along one of his buddies who wanted to learn. Strangely, he brought over a keyboard that he had. We were really in no mood to teach typing tonight, so told Afonso to teach the other kid.

Richie was feeling ambitious tonight. He wanted to try to cook beans Mozambican-style. The problem is that neither of us knows how to do this. Our neighbor came over and gave us some help, and by all accounts, they turned out pretty good. We ended our night “Dexter”.

Having corrected one set of exams yesterday, I was left with only thirty exams to correct Friday morning. This set of exams was a little better. The average was about the same, but the scores were more disparate. As with the other class, the exam was feast or famine. With so many mistakes, it took a lot of time to correct all the exams. Almost the entire morning was committed to correcting that set of exams.


Today’s classes took just as long to finish the exams. The second group of students just about shit themselves when they saw it. “Todos vão chumbar” – “We’re all going to fail” – said one of my best students. She did. A lot of students though did just fine. As with yesterday’s classes, those exams will need a good curve. Now that I’ve pushed my students to their breaking point, I’m quite sure that they all hate me.

Richie thought it would be a good idea to buy shrimp this afternoon. I don’t know why. I have learned to tolerate shrimp here, but given the choice, I’d rather not eat it. And it’s nearly impossible for us to finish the twenty Mets of shrimp. With me eating my regular 5% of the group, Richie was in for a long night of shrimp eating. After dinner, we ended our night with a couple episodes of “30 Rock” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

We had a meeting on Saturday morning. Of course we had no obligation to go to this meeting, but we decided to go. We wanted to see what all of the hullabaloo was about. The 8:00 meeting started at 8:45 as usual. Most of the meeting was spent arguing over the color of t-shirts and how much money to contribute for a party. Big-time negotiations.

The only good part of the morning was that it took time. The rest of the morning was spent sitting around doing nothing of substance until lunch.

I thought I’d at least be a little productive and run to the market. I thought I had timed it perfectly. I got to the market at 2 o’clock, just when the shops should be re-opening for the afternoon. But nothing was open. Nothing. Even with that bad luck, there was still a silver lining: the market had bell peppers today, an always welcome addition to our meals.

The latter part of the afternoon was pretty quiet, just spent playing Kakuro. My book is just about filled out. I’ll have to resort to Sudoku or cryptograms before long.

Our night was pretty normal for the most part. We ate our dinner and watched a couple episodes of “30 Rock” before heading out to the villa for a beer or two. We were surprised by how calm it was. Tomorrow is the official start of election season. Should be interesting.