You ever have that feeling when you're lying in bed that there are bugs crawling all over you? It's a terrible feeling, isn't it? Except here's the thing: the bugs that are imaginary for you are real for me. It doesn't really that I have a bug net. Those sneaky bastards always find a way to get in. The proof is all over my ankles. And on my sheets that are speckled in perfectly straight lines of dried blood, crystal clear evidence of bed bugs. I'd like to think that I've adjusted to it, but I still find myself boxing myself when some six-legged freak has found it's way in my ears.
Last night was especially bad. The fan helped, but good god, I think I was up every hour from something buzzing in my ear. Needless to say, I didn't sleep particularly well. Good thing I had absolutely nothing to do on Sunday. I killed some time making a run to the market. Market runs on Sundays are tough because so few of the stores are open. And we were out of beans. It took me three shots, but I finally found beans.
It was an otherwise slow day. I found myself buried in "The Tortilla Curtain", a book my grandmother sent me a couple months ago. It's a pretty good read about two couples in LA -- one Mexican, one American -- and how their lives run together. I'm usually not one for novels, but this one is alright.
Alexis came over in the afternoon. One of her colleagues from Tete (a long ways away) was visiting. I don't know what brought him down here, but this isn't exactly a tourist destination. So while he was here, Alexis dragged him over to our place. He's doing some food security/irrigation project in Tete and Manica, which seems pretty cool. They chilled here for an hour and left before the sun started making its descent.
I was in charge of beans tonight, as this is my job. The beans turned out delicious, as usual. While the beans cooked, we watched a couple episodes of "30 Rock". Then it was back to my bug-filled world.
I got a couple phone calls from family members, first from my parents then from my brother. It's been a good while since I talked to my brother so it was nice to catch up with him.
Normally, my Mondays are slow and uneventful. Today was anything but. Alexis and her colleague, John, went to the market for coffee and they invited me to join them. This was a shockingly good way to kill the morning. I was in the market all the way up until lunch time.
Richie had already started lunch by the time I got home. He had prepped, so it was only fair that I took over the cooking duty. With no classes in the afternoon, I thought I was going to be in for a relaxing afternoon with my book. I was wrong. The physics teacher came over asking me for some help typing an exam. Or I should say, two exams. This wasn't really a problem. If I'm not going to be teaching, I might as well be helpful some other way.
I was able to bang out one and a half exams before my battery gave out. Having nothing else to do, and wanting to get away from words, I folded myself into a Kakuro book. I then spent the remaining part of the afternoon failing miserably at putting numbers into boxes. After a nice run of success, I am back to sucking at it.
When the energy came on, I went right back to work on the exams. I really wanted to get these things knocked out. Usually, typing up physics or chemistry exams sucks because there are so many words with accents, subscripts, and superscripts, but these exams were shockingly devoid of these frustrations. After a pasta dinner (in which I ate my dinner, along with 75% of Richie's -- he just can't eat pasta anymore), we settled in to some "30 Rock".
I committed myself to finishing "The Tortilla Curtain" oon Tuesday. I had no obligations until 12:30 in the afternoon and only 150 pages to knock out. So far, it's been a very fast read. As long as I can avoid distractions, I'll be on easy street. I sat myself on the patio, plugged in my iPod -- making it clear that I didn't want to talk to anyone -- and went to work.
By mid-afternoon, after lunch and following two quick classes on the future tense, I succeeded in my task. What do I do now? I pulled out the kakuro book once again and, with the exception of one puzzle, failed horribly again. It's really frustrating to mess up on these puzzles because it's just basic addition and logic, and yet it has a way of seriously fucking with my head.
Just before the energy came on, the new philosophy teacher came over with a request for a typed test. I was sitting in my house, listen to the angry rhymes of Immortal Technique. When he came to the house, his ears perked up. He said "Is this Immortal Technique?" Yea man, it is. And then he said something I wasn't quite expecting: "Yea, Immortal Technique! I love this motherfucker!" I can't say I'm responsible for teaching him that nice piece of American vocabulary, but man, it was funny.
Having another test to type in front of me, there was no way I could really pay to attention to anything that we were watching. Richie wanted a break from comedy, se he turned to "Blow", the Johnny Depp flick about drug hustling. It's a movie I had seen before a couple times, so I could go in and out of it with little trouble.
With all of the failure I'd had with kakuro in the first part of the week, I didn't have expectations of myself for Wednesday morning. But shockingly, my mind was working decently and I was able to knock out three puzzles in an hour. Great success! As I sat on the patio, one of Richie's students from last year came over for some English help. He needed some help writing a composition. I knew this was going to be trouble. He had already written the passage in Portuguese and just wanted help translating. This is a bit frustrating for me, because I believe that you should at least try to write the thing in English. I passed him a dictionary and told him to look up the words, try to write the paragraph, then we'll mold it into something readable.
The hits kept coming throughout the morning and into the afternoon. One of the English teachers from the secondary school came over for the 12th grade curriculum, a math teacher came over for some help in his university studies -- complex numbers, which I could help with, and some advanced calculus, which I couldn't really help with. It's been too many years since I've studied calc. Then a physics teacher came over requesting help with differential equations. I almost laughed at this request. If I can't do basic calc, I'm fucked on differential equations. And then another student came over for help on writing a composition. Like the other student, this student came without having attempted to write in English. I gave him the dictionary, and told him he could come back when he had at least tried to write something. And on top of that, I had a class to give. Wow.
When the energy came on, I had one important job, and it wasn't cooking (Richie wanted to take a crack at cooking beans tonight). I had a whole line-up of documents to print out: two physics tests, a philosophy test, a letter for science fair, and a letter from our school director to Peace Corps. While I was in the director's office printing these documents, another teacher came in wanting to print his exam. This thing was an absolute formatting disaster spread over two pages. I spent 20 minutes cleaning it up, making it beautiful. He laughed, and told me that what took me 20 minutes would have taken him days to figure out. It's nice to be helpful.
This was by far the busiest, and not coincidentally, the fastest day I've had here in a while. I can't say that I'm mad that I have a light teaching load this year. 25 hours all in the afternoon is not easy. But a busy afternoon makes for a fast afternoon.
Richie's beans were okay, but he wasn't particularly satisfied with how they came out. He told me that the job is officially mine. We turned to one of our old favorites for entertainment: "How I Met Your Mother". We watched three episodes when we realized that we could easily blow through the entire disc in one sitting. Showing remarkable restraint, we transitioned into "30 Rock" before heading to bed.
Thursday was back to the regular slow pace of life in Machanga. Richie had a couple classes in the morning, so I was on duty for the market run. Generously, Richie paid for groceries today. I needed the help. I'm running low cash. We can't get to Chimoio fast enough.
Following a helpful, busy, fast Wednesday, Thursday dragged on and on. Nobody came over for help. Nobody came with a request to have a test typed. The most we had was a request or two for the bike.
Adding to the slowness of the day, I only had one class to give, and I didn't even have to lesson-plan for it. This was the same lesson that I gave to my other students yesterday -- on first conditional. I got through the lesson, and told the students what they needed to know for their exam. After a 20 minute review, they claimed to be ready. We'll see. After the first round of exams, I have my doubts, but I'll be happy if they prove me wrong.
After a boring afternoon of sitting on the patio, failing again at kakuro and starting another book, "Somebody Knows My Name", we ate dinner. Richie and Sozinho ate fish and xima, two foods I choose to avoid on a regular basis, so I made myself some spaghetti. We went away from comedy again and watched "Good Will Hunting". This was another movie that I had seen previously, so I didn't really pay attention. I tried to play catch-up with some people with whom I've fallen out of touch. The movie ended just after the energy went out.
I was back to being busy on Friday. I wanted to give an exam before heading out for the weekend and Friday is the day that I have both classes for two periods. Most of the morning was spent writing the exam. This is a two step process: first I need the questions, then I need to write them on oversize paper so I dont have to write them on the board twice. Usually this is taken care of on the patio, where the morning light is good and the breeze keeps me a little cool. However, as we have Sozinho around the house, I had to write the exam in the dark, sweaty confines of my room. Writing an exam should not qualify as an activity that requires a shower after it.
Alexis swang over just as I was preparing myself for a full cleaning -- head shave plus shower. She got to witness the full transformation. While she was here, we also cooked lunch. We offered her our monotony of potatoes and eggs in place of her monotony of rice and tiny shrimp, but she denied it. Strange, but it just means more food for Richie and me.
We all know how much I love exam days here. In all honesty, though, today's weren't so bad. I had to move a couple people around because of wandering eyes or blabbering mouths, but other than that, there were no "indisciplinados". There was only one student who particular pissed me off today. I know I'm not supposed to hold grudges, but this girl has earned it. Twice I have taken phone credit from her because I've caught her using her phone in class, which drives me up a fucking wall. She has a record of not putting in any effort whatsoever. She has missed multiple exams (she missed the first one from this year, as well as bunch last year) and the ones she has taken, she usually fails.
What she did today, however, topped everything. She walked into the classroom just as I was putting up the big sheets of paper, grabbed her things, and left. If she thought she went unnoticed, she was wrong: the bright yellow shirt she was wearing did not help her cause. And here's where the story gets good. Half way through the exam, she has the audacity to enter my classroom, sit down in the front row, and then...do work for another class. All I could think was "Are you out of your fucking mind?!" I already know what is going to happen. When I see her on Tuesday, she is going to say "Mr Lee, I didn't take the test on Friday". And I'll say "Why not?" but in my head, I'll be thinking, "no shit you didn't take it, and now you'll be getting zeroes for both exams". Then she will give some bullshit excuse, I'll call her out, tell her she's getting zeroes, and she probably won't even fight it. She knows she's screwed.
After that event, I had no motivation to correct exams, but I did find the little energy I needed to put the exams in alphabetical order, making my job of correcting and grade-inputting significantly easier. Aside from that, I relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, recounting the story of the yellow-shirted girl to Richie.
Sozinho and Richie wanted to do fish tonight, so I was on my own for food tonight, which means spaghetti. Richie always gives me shit for not eating fish here. Quite frankly, I'm not interested in starting at an entire fish -- and having the fish stare back on me. Tonight, my pickiness was vindicated. The fish that they bought was terrible. Richie got two bites into it before he threw it out. Meanwhile, I sat there happily enjoying my spaghetti and "30 Rock".
We knew what we were in for come Saturday morning. Richie, Alexis and I were all heading out of town. Alexis was taking care of some business outside of Machanga (AKA getting out of Machanga because it's starting to make her crazy). Richie and I were headed to Chimoio just to go to a party. Richie actually was going to stick around because he had a meeting that required him to go to Beira later in the week, and there's no sense of traveling north twice. I, however, would be coming immediately back to Machanga.
We got to chapa stand around 5:00, anticipating a 6:00 leave. By 7:00, the chapa was still not moving and we were done with it. We collected our stuff and headed for Mambone. Once again, Mambone proved itself to be far superior to Machanga. We didn't even make it to the villa before we had a car to the crossroads. And once we got to the crossroads, we only had to wait about fifteen minutes for a ride half-way to Chimoio that ended up being free. From there, we only had to wait about thirty seconds to get a car continuing north. All said, we got to Chimoio around 3:30, eight and a half hours after starting to move. Not too bad.
Needless to say, we were exhausted. And hungry. After doing a bit of shopping for the evening's festivities, four of us went for pizza. Chimoio probably has the best pizza place in all of the south and central of Mozambique. Real crust, real sauce, real mozzerella. This is happiness.
Then the evening really began. Having missed the first Central party of the year, I had a lot of people to meet. While our departed Moz 12 friends are truly irreplaceable, this group of Central Moz 14s proved to be pretty good. Everybody seemed to be having a good time, and we were just getting started.
Following dinner, we were conned into participated a ridiculous scavenger hunt. Among other things on this scavenger hunt, we had to chug a beer with a Mozambican while not wearing shirts. At some point, I licked someone's face. But the highlight of the evening was walking a chicken on a leash that happened to be my belt. Seriously, this scavenger hunt was fucked up, but really fun. The drinking continued until late into the evening, and by the wee hours of Sunday morning, we were at the disco. This should make for an interesting ride home tomorrow.
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