Year 2 - Week 41: The Battle for Bucket Girl's Heart Is Won

I was optimistic early Sunday morning. Having thrown down almost two liters of water during the night, I thought I had beat the hang-over monster. Just in case, I threw down half a liter of Gatorade and popped some precautionary aspirin.

In addition to said measures, I thought some fresh air would help me out. I made a run to the bank to flush out my bank account, quickly followed by a trip to a gas station to buy some biscuits and drinks for my students.

Our ride appeared at the hotel just around 9 o'clock. If we move well, we would arrive in Machanga just around 4 in the afternoon. The students generously offered me one of the four seats inside, an offer I gladly accepted. It turned out to be extraordinarily helpful. As soon as the car got going, I felt sick, and not driving-down-17-to-Santa-Cruz-as-a-child sick. I finished another bottle of Gatorade and quickly fell asleep.

I slept almost until Muxungue, where I knew we would be taking a break for lunch. I went on the hunt for the egg sandwich lady from Friday, but she was nowhere to be found. Eventually, I ran into someone who brought me to a random lady's house. She said she could make me egg sandwiches. I paid a premium for service – double the price of Friday's, but didn't have to wait particularly long. The sandwiches were okay; it's hard to fuck up a fried egg and bread. But it wasn't nearly as good as Friday's. Just goes to show that anyone can make an egg sandwich in Muxungue, but not everyone in Muxungue can make The Muxungue Egg Sandwich.

I felt much better once I had some food in my system. I was awake, tragically, for the rest of the ride, including the miserable sixty kilometers of dirt path to Machanga. With a good truck, the ride was almost tolerable. All said, though, we made good time: we were two minutes before 4 o'clock.

When I got home, I was tired to say the least, but I was also feeling somewhat inspired. I wanted to bang out some work before eating dinner. I knew I would have some time. As follows our unspoken deal, since I traveled all day, Richie was in charge of dinner. While he cooked spaghetti, I wrote up my final exam, which is a copy of the most recent National Exams. The kids are going to hate me for giving them 60 questions, but it will be good practice for them.

I finished typing just as the spaghetti and sauce came off the stove. Richie and I ate quickly, then moved into “Sons of Anarchy”. We've seen some bad movies here, and we've seen some bad television shows, but “Sons of Anarchy” might have won the distinction of being the worst of them all. And yet, we will continue to watch.

For the first time in at least a few weeks, I managed to sleep through the night. Not a single wake-up. Clearly the trick to a good night's sleep is a night of excessive drinking followed by an eight-hour travel day.

Never have I been so grateful to have Mondays off. I didn't want to do much of anything today. That's how most of my morning was spent – doing nothing productive. These days, Monday's have taken on new meaning for us. With football season upon us, we now have reason to go online every Monday morning – to check football scores. I spent a good part of the morning reading game recaps and catching up on some writing (this thing doesn't write itself, ya know).

After lunch, I became a productive member of the workforce again. We have but a few weeks of school to go, and I still have two exams to give. I spent a bit of time in the afternoon planning on my remaining classes. From there, I was able to write up the midterm that I'll be giving at the end of the week. All said, it was a very productive afternoon.

And I wasn't even done for the day. Having soaked beans in the morning, I was in charge of cooking beans in the afternoon. Actually, the real reason I'm in charge of beans is because my beans are so much better than Sozinho's. Go figure. Around 4 o'clock, I lit up the carvao and got cooking.

While the beans sat on the stove, I ran over to the director's office to print out the exam that I typed up yesterday. With some formatting tricks and printing two sheets per page (still readable), I cut down the exam from seven to three pages. It will save the kids eight Mets a piece, money they can spend on, well, other exams.

The beans and rice finished cooking around 6:30. We devoured our food. For some reason, Sozinho chose not to eat beans. Always a terrible decision. But it was good news for us: we'll make burritos tomorrow. We continued with the misery that is “Sons of Anarchy” after eating. Just before bed, I started a new book, Zadie Smith's “White Teeth”. So far, it's very funny.

I slept well Monday night, but I'm fearing that the days of not sweating through the sheets at night will be coming to an end very soon. It's definitely getting hotter at night, the sun is up earlier, and as such, so are we – on both counts.

There were rumblings Tuesday morning about classes being canceled for the day. The governor of Sofala is in town, and whenever a government official is in town, he (and it's almost always a “he”) draws the attention of all the teachers. By late morning, classes were officially canceled. Lots of important business, I'm sure.

I kept myself busy around the house. There was plenty of cleaning to be done, and is as usually the case, once I get started cleaning, I usually go for hours on end. I started with the kitchen table, which is become a cemetery for, well, everything. From there I took on my own room, which wasn't all that much work. That's one of the nice upsides of living in a room not much larger than a jail cell. When Richie got back from class, we got to work on the book shelves. All said, it was a productive morning.

The cleaning took us right up until lunch. It was a perfect afternoon for a nap. The breeze was blowing the right way, nobody was here to bother us. I wasn't horizontal for more than five minutes before I fell asleep.

Once I woke up, I took care of some school business. With class canceled today, I had to reassess my lesson plans for the rest of the year. The lesson will be pushed to later in the week, which is fine. It'll be a little rough for one of the groups – to learn a lesson one day, then have it on the test the next day – but I suspect they'll be just fine.

Late in the afternoon, my parents gave me a ring. I was wondering where they had been, since they normally call on Sundays. Who could believe that mCel would have problems?

We had a bounty of beans left over from last night, but it wasn't enough to be its own meal. They would play a fine supporting role in burritos. We defrosted some (a very little bit) of our precious filet, cooked some rice and tortillas, made some salsa, and ate delicious Mexican food.

The rest of the night was a repeat of last night: two horrible episodes of “Sons of Anarchy” followed by some time in bed with “White Teeth”.

I should say that the rest of the night while I was awake was the same, because the sleeping was definitely different. Whatever breeze there was in the afternoon dissipated. It was hot, muggy, in a word – miserable. It wasn't sweat-through-the-sheets hot, but it was hot enough to keep me awake until almost 2 in the morning. Pleasant.

And because it was so damn hot at night, it only got hotter in the morning that much faster. I didn't get more than a few hours of decent sleep. I should probably get used to this. The nights for next nine weeks could be like this.

I was treated to a phone call from my brother Wednesday morning. This was the second consecutive time that he has called at an insane hour – 11:30 PM his time. It's a great time for me (8:30 in the morning) and I'm always happy to talk to my brother whatever the hour is. We chatted for almost an hour, which was nice, because the last time we talked, my sister kept stealing from the phone from him.

The rest of the morning was pretty quiet. It was crazy windy for most of the morning, which knocked out the electricity on our side of the river. I would have liked to have done some writing, but instead I gave myself a haircut and powered on with “White Teeth” until lunch.

My students came by early in the afternoon, asking me to use up a time slot from another teacher. It seems like most of the teachers have checked out. I'm not totally there yet. Three more weeks and I'll be done. After my lesson, I told the students the scheduled date of their final. I had hoped to give them their exam on a Friday, so I could give the exam to them and the other class on the same day. For some reason, all of the students of twelfth grade are heading to Beira the Thursday before the slated date. They said Wednesday would be better. That's fine by me – just need to talk to a couple teachers to see if I can use their class time.

That shouldn't be much of a problem. It's not like the teachers here need a reason to not go to class. I was giving them a gift. The only torturous part of this was that the teachers with whom I needed to speak were the director and the assistant director. I try to keep involvement with them to a minimal, but they were both fine with it.

Richie and Sozinho were in the mood for fish tonight. I guess it's spaghetti for me. With powdered milk, some butter that was in the house, and sauce packet, I had some pretty tasty alfredo sauce – a nice change from tomato sauce. After eating, we continued with “Sons of Anarchy” and I marched on with “White Teeth”.

I was thrilled that the night wasn't nearly as hot as the night before. All I had to contend with tonight were crazy Larium dreams, one after another until I woke up.

Shortly after I woke up, I heard a small rumbling in my room. I thought I had heard it last night, but it could have easily been the Larium doing its thing. This time, I was certain of it. I started going through my room, wondering what it could be. I finally got to our suitcases when it heard it again. Out go the suit cases, time to crack em open.

And that's when I saw it. Well not all of it. But enough of it that I knew what I was. A rodent had taken apparently taken residence in my room yesterday. With the help of some bug spray and peanut butter, we induced the sucker. This wasn't some ugly rat: just a little field mouse, probably trying to avoid hawks, owls, and snakes. We liberated him into the wild again. We'll let nature take its course.

As long as I had the suitcases outside, I figured it would be a good opportunity to do a massive clean-up. I went through my bag and tossed out some ancient, unnecessary things. I swept, mopped, flipped my mattress, simply made my room a nicer place. It was a good way to spend the morning.

I had class immediately after lunch, just the way I like it. I had a repeat of the lesson I taught yesterday, followed by a brief preparation for their midterm. I'm praying to whatever deities are out there that these kids do better the second time around with this content.

Following class, I made a run to the market in search of beef. Sure, we still have filet sitting in the freezer, but we want to use that for special occasions. For regular meals, we'll take low-grade stuff. Even this cut of beef, though, wasn't terrible. It goes without say that we've had a lot worse. With the beef, I made a tasty stir fry for the three of us. And like the rest of the week, I ended my night with “Sons of Anarchy” and “White Teeth”.

Friday morning appeared to be a normal morning. I went to the market to pick up some eggs, swung to the other side of town to buy bread – nothing special. But then, as I walked into the house, I was called over to someone's house. I thought I had heard my name. It's just the source that surprised me. After almost two years, I have finally won the heart of Bucket Girl.

A brief history is necessary here. In the first few months we were here, Richie and I were sitting on our porch (as we tend to do), staring blankly out into open. It was then that we saw Gida, the nine-month-old daughter of one our colleagues, nearly go head over heals into a bucket. With reason, we found this hilarious and in a very Seinfeldian way, we dubbed her “Bucket Girl”.

Now, over the course of our stay, Gida has gone through many stages with us. At first, it was utter fear. We couldn't get within 50 feet of her without her crying. Then she moved into the ignoring stage: we were dead to her. After a few months of that, there was embarrassment. We'd get little smiles, but she'd always shy away. All the while, I've been trying to win her over with cookies and other various sweets. If she ends up diabetic, it's me who is to blame.

And then today, as I walked into my ho use, we hit the friendship stage. The following is my first conversation with two-and-a-half year old Bucket Girl.

B.G. “Lee. Estou a pedir bolacha”. I am asking for a cookie.
Me “de chocolate?”
B.G – (nods).
Me – “Okay, espera.” Wait. I go to my house and grab two Girl Scout Thin Mints, then hand 'em over to Bucket Girl.
Mother of B.G. – “Diz obrigado”. Say thank you. Goes to show that no matter where you go, certain things are constant.
B.G. – “Obrigado”.

My heart is aflutter. I have won over Bucket Girl. I can call my Peace Corps Service a success.

The rest of the day could be a complete disaster – it might be, with an exam coming up – and I'd still declare this day a victory.

I squeezed in a shower while Richie was cooking lunch. I was due. My feet we a disturbing shade of brown. Cleaned and, after lunch, full, I went over to the school to give my last ever midterm in this country. Shed a tear I will not.

Three hours of standing around, by in large uneventful. I no longer look for cheaters. The kids' eyes can wander all they want. Now that I'm printing multiple versions of the same exam, I no longer have to catch cheaters. The test will do it for me. Most of the kids seem to have figured this out, but there will surely be a few who don't realize what I'm up to.

As soon as I finished in the school, I came over to correct the exams. I want to have these suckers finished before dinner. As it turns out, only one girl cheated. She ended up with a 15%, only because I didn't change the order of the answers on three of the questions. It's a tough road to passing this trimester for her after that performance. Aside from her and a couple other non-cheaters, the students did very well. There were at least five perfect scores over the ninety-some students.

I was on my own for the rest of the students. Richie crossed the river to Mambone and will continue south to Inhambane tomorrow. After talking to my grandfather for a bit, I cooked up some spaghetti for myself. There would be no “Sons of Anarchy tonight” – watching this alone would be like drinking a bottle of scotch alone, a sure sign of depression or at least boredom – so I skipped right to “White Teeth”.

The night was strangely – blissfully – cold. I knew I had slept well when the first thing I heard in the morning was Sozinho asking me to unlike the door.

Saturday was yet another holiday in the Mozambican calendar, this time Armed Forces Day. I was in bed, reading, when I got a text message from Priscilla, the Brazilian volunteer who replaced Alexis. “Are you coming to the celebration?” I gave her my standard answer – “No need to go, they're all the same”. She would later tell me that moments after I sent that message, one of the dance groups that danced a couple weeks ago came out to the dance to the exact same song. I feel redeemed.

I did, however, tell her that I'd meet her over at Madinha's late in the morning. When I went over, I was met by six colleagues sitting outside drinking beer. 11 o'clock is an appropriate hour to drink, right? Shortly after I arrived, Priscilla and a colleague of hers arrived. After talking for a bit, we fell into stereotypical Mozambican roles – the girls went to cook, and I joined my colleagues, throwing down glass after glass of beer.

There was a payoff for sticking around almost four hours at Madinha's. She and the girls prepared lunch and I was apparently included on this. Nice. I will always take free food, especially beef. I ate two plates of food, then jumped on my bike, heading for home.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet. I think everyone – including myself – was resting up for the big night ahead.

I had fully intended to go out again in the evening. I prepared myself as best as I could – water, Gatorade, food – but by 8:45, I was exhausted. There was no way I'd make it to 11, just to s

Year 2 - Week 40: Top Cuts

With English theater taking place this weekend and my boss heading to Mambone early in the week, I knew that I'd be busy. I just didn't know how busy I would be.

The work began Sunday morning with preparations for English theater. One of the scenes of the play takes place in South African diamond mines. It's not really enough to have a sign that says “South Africa Mining Co.”; we needed props. I went on the hunt for some thin tree branches to make pick axes. The picks were secured with wire and covered with black plastic bags and packing tape to make them look metallic. Considering the resources, they turned out well.

That little task kept me busy all the well until lunch. A little after lunch, we got a visit from the new Brazilian volunteer here. She is the person who replaced Alexis. She's here for a year which means – finally – we'll be leaving before someone else here. We told her the same thing as Alexis – our house is open if she ever just needs to get away from the orphanage.

I spent a little bit of the afternoon continuing in “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”. Unlike Richie, I think the book – for the most part – is pretty good. It has some painfully slow parts, but otherwise it's enjoyable. Later in the afternoon, I fired up the carvao and cooked beans.

Wedged in between phone calls from my grandmother and parents, Richie and I had dinner. I don't know what I did right this time, but these beans were probably the best beans I've cooked here. People are quick to knock rice and beans as a meal, but it's probably the healthiest and tastiest thing we eat here. It's not like it's just rice and beans with nothing added. It requires no oil, is high in protein and fiber and uses lots of veggies.

For our entertainment tonight, we watched “The Hurt Locker”. It was good, but not Oscar-worthy. I haven't seen “Avatar” yet, but from what I heard, it sounds amazing. As for other movies that came out last year, I liked “Up in the Air” and “The Blind Side” more than “The Hurt Locker”. In my humble opinion, “The Hurt Locker” winning Best Picture was as much of an anti-war political statement as Obama winning the Nobel having accomplished nothing as president.

I didn't sleep particularly well on Sunday night, but what else is new? This time, it was a combination of the beans getting to my stomach and the Larium getting to my head. Good thing I had a crazy busy day ahead.

I was scheduled to go into English theater practice on Monday morning, but the timing interfered with a higher priority: a quick trip to Mambone. My boss was in town to check out a couple of houses for the soon-to-arrive Moz 15s. He brought some meds up for me. In exchange, I passed off some paperwork and Peace Corps books to him. The trip, maybe four or five kilometers in total, took up the entire morning.

As long as I was in the sun and sweaty, I figured I'd knock out two more tasks. I went to buy bread but there was no bread. I would have bought it in Mambone, but I had almost no money left after paying our energy bill and shopping. The second task was much more successful. I figured that while I was paying my bill, I could bring back bills for the other teachers here. Before rewarding myself with lunch, I handed the bills out too all the teachers.

All of that work should have earned me a nap, but there was more work to be done. While I was in Mambone, Sozinho went out to find me some bamboo to hold up some English theater signs. I spent the next couple hours cutting down and taping up bamboo to paper. They're far from perfect, but they'll do.

I took a brief break from sign-making to go hunting. Yes, hunting. For the last couple of days, there has been a rat in our bathroom. I have yet to see it, so as far as I'm concerned, ignorance is bliss. But everyone else has seen it. We tried to bait it with chicken bones and peanut butter, but the little guy wouldn't come out. We sat waiting for a couple hours, but he never appeared. Good thing we have the time to waste.

Late in the afternoon, I got back to sign-making. I had one last sign to draw and secure with bamboo. It was maybe an hour of work. I though that I was done for the day, but just after dinner, my English theater counterpart came over to write up a permission slip for our actors and actresses. There are plenty of things I can do in Portuguese, but formal letter writing is not among those skills.

Being busy all day was clearly the solution for getting a good night's sleep. For the first time in weeks, I managed to sleep through the night.

I continued riding the wave of business into Tuesday morning. The little shop that sells bread finally got a shipment in from Mambone. After the bread run, I took a couple minutes to write up a summary of our play for the people who will be judging the plays. My productive morning finished up with lesson planning for the day.

Class went alright today. I had two quick classes, back to back. The lesson was on phrasal verbs with “look”. I think it went well because I was able to make fun of some students to get across the point. One girl came in really late. Normally she has hair extensions, but today, she came in with a head shaved perfectly smooth. So I got to write on the board “It looks like Albertina lost her hair”. Everyone in the class laughed, but her. Mind you, she looked beautiful. She didn't laugh because she didn't understand what I wrote because she wasn't in class. Eventually, someone explained it to her. You'd think you wouldn't be able to see people so dark-skinned blush, but this girl's cheeks turned bright pink. In the other class, I had Sozinho to pick on: “Sozinho looks like a monkey.” Once again, everyone appreciated this except for the target.

Upon my return from class, I got stopped by a teacher who needed some help solving some math problems. Good thing he's teaching math, huh? They were actually pretty tough problems. All of them involved logarithms and substitution, from which I am years removed. I got a brief review of how logarithms work, then got cracking on the problems. I got the answers for all three, but was only able to truly solve one. One of them, I knew I couldn't resolve. The third one, however, I knew could be solved but just wasn't sure how. This was going to kill me.

I tried to solve that problem for thirty minutes, but came away empty-handed. Maybe a nap would help. At least I got myself a bit of rest. Once awake, I dove into “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. A wanted to read this before “A.H.W.O.S.G.” but got caught up into the Eggers book. I read until the energy came on, at which time I ran over to the office to print out the permission slips for the kids.

The night was way longer than I wanted it to be. We had a pretty good stir fry for dinner and watched “Up” afterward. “Up” was way better than “The Hurt Locker” from last week. One of these days, an animated film is going to win Best Picture. It probably should have been this one. After the movie, I crawled into bed to do some more reading until about 10 o'clock. When I turned the lights out, I was wide awake. The nap from earlier did me in. I rolled around for two hours before I decided to make myself useful. At midnight, I grabbed the math problem I had been working on and solved it in about five minutes. Maybe that was on my mind because within a couple minutes of solving the problem, I was sound asleep.

Wednesday started with an English theater that lasted all morning. This was our last day of practice before we head to Chimoio on Friday, so my colleague and I wanted to make sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible. We ran through the play maybe seven or eight times, until we were satisfied. We both believe that it's a top-three play. We'll see this weekend.

Theater practice brought me right up to lunch, which was convenient because I was starving. Even though Richie and I both teach late – he begins third period, I begin fifth – we both wanted to be done eating by 12:30 because of the huge possibility that our students want us to teach early. While I waited, prayed that my students would come to get me early, I typed up a document that a student had asked me to type.

Finally, around third period, the student who asked me to type the document came by – both to see if the document had been typed and if I could come into class to teach. Yes and yes. We're marching on with phrasal verbs, at least through next week. Today's phrasal verbs all involved the verb “take”. There are only about a thousand phrasal verbs with “take”. I could already the hear the “Teacher! Enough!” complaints, so I chose eight common, easy ones.

I wanted to get out of the house after class, so I ran to the market looking for nothing in particular. We needed some things, but nothing that couldn't wait. I walked over to the butchery to see if they had any beef and I hit the jackpot. The butcher had been saving filet for someone, but he was running hours late (go figure) and the butcher wanted money now. Really? Filet? I'll take two kilos of that.

I did a bit of reading before getting dinner ready. This was going to be a glorious night of eating. Sozinho told me he wanted to cook the meat. I laughed at him. He would probably live up to his nickname and ruin it. I wasn't going to let him to do that. Not to my glorious filet mignon. I cut, seasoned and barbecued. It was the best meat we've had in this country. I'm really happy I bought two kilos of it. Most of it is still sitting in our friend's freezer.

Richie crashed shortly after dinner. I did a bit of reading before following suit.

It was a pretty quiet morning on Thursday. I read for a little bit before realizing that I still hadn't resolved the issue of how we would be getting to Chimoio. A school car from Mangunde is supposed to take us, but we've heard nothing about it. I talked to the person responsible for arranging these things. It took a bit of teeth-pulling, but by lunchtime, I had an answer. The car would arrive sometime tomorrow morning and we'd be on our way.

I had class immediately after lunch. This was the same lesson as yesterday, but for the other class. They seemed to pick it up as easily as the first group. As anticipated, I got one “Teacher! Enough!” complaint. “How are we going to pass the midterm? There are thirty verbs to remember!” Clearly, he was not around for my diatribe a couple weeks ago, when I told them that they should all be studying maybe fifteen minutes every night.

I ran to the market after class to pick up some supplies for dinner. We're doing beans, but we were missing onions, a vital ingredient, and needed eggs for tomorrow. I only had to wait an hour between returning home and starting the fire to get cooking.

While the beans cooked, I ran over to the school office to print out a document for one of my students. I told him to come by in the morning to pick it up, but I wouldn't be around. I'm sure he'll be happy to get his hands on it from whomever.

The beans, as usual, we're delicious. I would eat rice and beans every night, but too much beans can actually lead to blindness. It's a shame because aside from this, it is a perfect meal. For our entertainment tonight, we watched “Sons of Anarchy”. It's a pretty shitty show – bad plot lines, really bad writing, and worse yet acting – but we're probably going to suffer through the entire season.

I woke up on the early end Friday morning. It's not that I was anticipating the car arriving early – I thought it would be here between 8:30 and 9; I just had some things I needed to do before getting out of here, like showering and packing. I was wrong with my estimation. The car rolled up at 9:07. Can't complain about that. Also can't complain about the fact that all of my students were already at school when the car arrived. It's all about anticipation: I told them to be at school at 8:00. My guess is that most of them arrived around 8:45.

There were ten of us going up to Chimoio, with only four seats in the truck. The other six of us piled into the back of the truck. The first 60 kilometers down the dirt road was pretty miserable. Once we hit pavement, it was smooth sailing. We stopped in Muxungue for some delicious egg sandwiches. It was here that we were told that we'd have to go into Mangunde to swap drivers.

Whatever. It set us back two hours and we had to endure another fifty kilometers of dirt road, but it was fine. If there was any upside, it's that I was able to check my email, thanks to Mangunde's wifi connection and my iTouch.

From Mangunde, things went by quickly. We had maybe another three hours in the car before we arrived in Chimoio. We got the kids settled into their rooms. Naturally, they were all glued to the televisions. There was no rest for me, though. After taking a shower, I got right back to work.

For at least a couple hours, we were busy hounding the staff of the hotel to get dinner going. The didn't realize that people were on the road all day and we wanted to eat at a normal hour. The first of two groups ended up eating at 8:00. The kitchen staff was moving ineffectively. Three people were working on putting together a food of plate: one person serving, one person holding the plate, one person running the plate outside. I decided to take over this operation, putting together an assembly line. This newly-found efficiency prompted a marriage proposal from one of the women working in the kitchen. I told her that she just wanted me for my kitchen skills.

The second shift ran much smoother. While the first group finished up, I helped wash dishes and put the next round of plates together. The second group had no wait time, which is how it should be.

The fight continued after dinner. The hotel was really screwing us on price. We were not really receiving what we were paying for. And they just dropped the price increase on us without warning. We yelled and negotiated for half an hour, eventually getting half of the plates at a reduced price.

The last thing we had to do was put together small sandwiches for the students for breakfast. It was a stressful day to say the least, and I wasn't even the one most stressed. Bryan, our colleague in Mangunde, was in charge of the whole event. You could only imagine the stress he was under. Once everyone was fed and in bed, I took him out for a beer or two as a reward.

The big day finally arrived for our students. Everybody was up and out of the hotel around 7 o'clock. We walked over to the theater, about 20 minutes away. I think all of the students were overwhelmed by how big the place was. By around 8:30, we got the show started. Machanga would be performing second, which was nice for us. We'd get it done right away, the kids wouldn't have to think about what they were doing, and I could be of help to Bryan for the rest of the afternoon.

Our kids did really well. We had two minor mistakes, but otherwise things went very well. I couldn't have asked for it to run much smoother. And yet, as is human nature, the kids were all worried about the mistakes they made.

After our students went, I wasn't able to watch any of the plays. First I was busy organizing – then cleaning – snack. Following snack, I ran into town to find Bryan to help him with lunch. We got lunch to the students around 12:45, then I got all the lunch stuff cleaned up.

The timing worked out pretty well. I got everything squared away right when the plays ended. The judges took their sweet time determining the places. Amazingly, the judges started at last place. We were all blown away by this. As the judges read the school names, Machanga was never mentioned. There's a chance that we could actually win. We got to the top three without being mentioned. “Number three – New Horizons School”. Crap, we could actually win. “Number two – Machanga”.

The students were happy. Really happy. They were probably a little disappointed that they didn't win – and that they were so close to winning – but it's hard to be sad about it. They placed second out of 14 schools. And when you take into account that so many of the schools have so many good (Zimbabwean) English speakers, it's even more amazing. Whatever disappointment our students had was quickly erased when the judges announced that one of our students (deservedly) won best actor.

I had planned on taking care of some shopping, but that plan was quickly erased when someone proposed getting a drink. Of course, the situation quickly devolved. A bottle of Jameson was brought out, more beers rolled out. Eight hours later, we were all pretty toasted. I ate dinner around midnight. I had to wait almost an hour for my chicken, but I can't complain. It was too good of a week to end on a bad note.

Year 2 - Week 39: Sprawl (Flatland)

Buzzing, warm, and flat. Machanga is taking its sweet time transitioning to the hot season, and I couldn't be happier about it. The days have been noticeably warmer, but the nights are perfect for sleeping. The only thing impeding me from a perfect night's sleep -- other than my sad excuses for a mattress -- is the buzzing of mosquitoes. This isn't small thing. The mosquitoes have invaded and they love to make plenty of noise. Something had to be done about this.

I walked over to the market before the sun got too high overhead to buy some bug spray. As I walked over, I couldn't help but notice how flat Machanga has become over the last couple of weeks. The soil has yielded everything it can for this growing season. Now, everyone is preparing for the next rainy season. That means controlled burns and sending the animals out to the fields. Goats and cows are fattening themselves up on dying corn stalks. (they're happy now. If only they knew their final destination...). Nebraska-on-Rio-Save is rapidly being reduced into a sprawl of dirt paths.

While at the market, I bought a toothbrush for the first time in two years. That's not to say that I haven't been changing my brushes on a regular basis. I came here armed with ten brushes, using one every ten weeks. Now, 100 weeks in, I was out of toothbrushes. This is the first and only toothbrush I'll buy here.

Before I could commence the mosquito genocide, I cleaned up my room. The last thing I need is a pile dead mosquitoes on top of my shoes and laundry bag. With a nice graveyard prepared, I shut the door and went crazy. The bug spray smells awful -- I may have increased my chances at some sort of cancer -- but man, it does the job.

Spraying was just the first of three phases in the mosquito slaughter. The second and more important of this task required a needle and thread. The mesh covering my windows has been badly torn. The opening provided a perfect entry-point/getaway for those bloodsucking creatures. Using a piece of my mosquito net and a piece of capulana, Richie and I began patching up the window. I don't know how effective it will be, but it can't be worse than what has been.

We managed to finish about half the job when we realized that it was already 1 o'clock. Damn. We lit carvao and got some lunch in.

Richie disappeared for a little in the afternoon. I think he ran to the market, but I'm never sure where he vanishes to when he decides to walk around. I roped Sozinho into helping me out with the second half of my window. The job was finished around 3 o'clock.

On a normal day, all of this progress would have earned me a nap, but there was still more to do. Around 4:30, I lit carvao once again to make beans. I failed on this front today -- completely forgot to add garlic, a truly vital ingredient. After eating we watched "She's Out of Your League". We had slightly elevated hopes for this movie -- we figured there had to be a hot girl in it -- but it was a pretty shitty film. I ended my night with a bit of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius".

I definitely slept better Sunday night. Maybe that had to do with the death of 100 or so mosquitoes. I woke up refreshed, motivated, ready for work. Unfortunately, the work that I had to do would be utterly depressing. Another stack of exams sat waiting for my red pen. After two hours of work, the results were clear: the science students, as usual, dominated the languages students. They scored about 4% higher than the languages kids and had a passing rate that was doubly better. Still, less than half the kids passed. This is going to require a speech later in the week.

The price of bread went up today, from 5 Mets per roll to 6. It's not a huge hit for us. The truth is, we'll probably just eat less bread. But coupled with other price increases, it's going to be a huge hit for a lot of Mozambicans. I don't know how they're going to handle it.

Because of a holiday tomorrow, Richie was able to cancel class this morning, but he couldn't avoid class in the afternoon. While he was in class, I kept myself busy with some small tasks. I had to punch grades into a spreadsheet and I also fixed up another window that had some holes. Satisfied with my work, I settled back into "A.H.W.O.S.G" (the title is just way too long to type out every time).

When Richie came back from the market, we did our regular "what should we do for dinner" dance. We were hoping for beef in the market, and decided on chicken as a back-up. The only problem: there was neither beef nor chicken in the market. Thank goodness we still had frozen chicken breast in our neighbor's freezer. We defrosted the chicken, through it in tomato sauce for pasta and had a tasty dinner. While watching "Shutter Island" -- which was one fucked up movie -- we made a cake, a celebration for not having to work tomorrow.

Tuesday was a national holiday in Mozambique: Lusaka Accord Day. For some reason, I decided to go to the town plaza for the ceremony. About half way through, I remembered why I never come to these things – they're always exactly the same. After the ceremony a government official gave a speech. I'm convinced that it's a standard speech with the date and holiday name changed. Following the speech was some dancing by the same groups that always danced. Ten minutes into the dancing, Richie and I had had enough.

On the way back to the house, something incredible happened. My glorious Rainbow sandals broke. In six years of wearing Rainbows, I have never had a sandal break. Sure, they get worn down, but the strap on these actually snapped. It was amazing. And depressing. My day is ruined. Only a post-lunch nap could make me feel better.

After my nap, I went over to the market to buy a new pair of sandals. These sandals are definitely not as comfortable as my Rainbows (R.I.P), and they are certainly not appropriate for the classroom. Still, I refuse to wear socks in this country and thankfully, I have another pair of sandals that are classroom appropriate. While at the market, I also bought some chicken cocktail sausages to be used for dinner.

Once I got back, Richie declared that he wanted fish together. Looks like I'm on my own with those chicken sausages. I made some rice, stir-fried some veggies and had a delicious dinner. After dinner, we watched “Up in the Air”, the best movie we've seen this week.

I had an English theater meeting on Wednesday morning. It's official: I should never show up on time for these meetings. I was there at 8:30 as usual, but none of my students were there. I came back to the house to pick up some work and went back. By that time, two students had arrived. We didn't get going until 9:30.

It's a good thing the kids have pretty much nailed their lines because I would have gone nuts otherwise. The timing of the play is also perfect. Now we just have to put together the proper clothing and we'll be good to go for next weekend.

When I came back from theater, I decided to prepare a lesson for class in the afternoon. I still wasn't sure if I was going to actually give the lesson. It depends on how long test correction takes and how demoralized the students are.

Shortly after lunch, a students came by my house to ask me to give class early. Naturally I said okay. I went over to the room and posted the answers on the blackboard. The kids were a little confused that I had posted for answer sheets. Then they realized that there were four different exams. Oops. They were probably wondering why I was so lax on wandering eyes. Now they knew.

It took an hour to go over the exam, and then I gave my spiel. I asked how many of them studied for the exam; no hands went up. Nice. Maybe that has something to do with everyone failing. They were defeated. They had mentally checked out for the day. A lesson would be of no use.

I came back from class at the perfect time to cook beans. I salvaged a bit of carvao from lunch to restart carvao. These beans were much better than Sunday's edition. Small victories. For our entertainment, we watched “The invention of Lying”. Back to shitty movies. I saved the night with a bit of “A.H.W.O.S.G”.

For most of the week, I haven't been able to sleep through the night. I've been waking up at 2:00 or so, dehydrated. Tonight was no different. Up at 2:08 AM. Lovely. I threw down a glass of water and slept until 7:30, with a brief wake-up around 5:00. It's not a sustainable schedule.

While I sat around the house in the morning, my phone rang. It was a strange hour for a phone call: 9:30. It was especially strange since that call was coming from California, just past midnight there. On the other end of the line were my brother and sister, fumbling around on speaker phone. I don't know how much ground we covered over the course of the conversation, but I do know that I probably remember the conversation a little more clearly than they do.

I spent the rest of the morning doing some English theater work. Signs needed to be designed and colored in. Richie said I was just bored. This was somewhat true. But it also had to be done. It kept me busy until lunch time.

I was scheduled for class right after lunch, at 12:30. I had the same gameplan as yesterday: just returning exams. I know these kids are going to be to frustrated by their grades to power through with a lesson. I gave the same speech as I did yesterday? “Who studied? More than 15 minutes? More than 30 minutes?” There was no need to go beyond that; nobody studied more than a half-hour for my exam. And they wonder why they failed.

After class, Richie and I headed to the market to make some dinner purchases. Word had gone around town that a cow would be slaughtered at some point in the afternoon. When we got there, the cow was all cut up, decapitated, meat sitting on it's hide. Yummy. It looked like there was a lot of good beef left so I asked for two kilos instead of our standard one. Ah, the power of having access to a freezer.

When I got home, I got to work on the meat, cutting it up into meal-sized chunks. The meat cut like butter, a good sign. There was no sense in discussing what we would do with this beef. Invariably, we just dance around the subject, leaving it to the other person to decide. I made the executive decision tonight: stir fry.

The beef was absolutely delicious. Tender, easy to chew, went down easy. It's the first time in a while that we've had a good cut of beef. I was especially happy with my decision to buy two kilos. We didn't want to wreck this night with a shitty movie. We looked through the reviews of the movies we had and found a movie with a good review – “Defendor”. We were skeptical, but it was actually pretty good.

Friday morning meant English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right on time at 8:30. Of course, no one was a round. At least I came prepared: I brought a book with me this time. We didn't get started until almost 10:00. This is getting frustrating, especially since we only have a week until the competition.

While I was at theater practice, Richie was on the road to Inhassoro. He was all but out of money. And with me going to Chimoio next weekend, he definitely would not have survived until our next payday.

The only upside to starting practice so late was that we finished right in time to make lunch. I had a full afternoon in front of me after lunch. Four classes, one right after the other. Or so they were scheduled to be that way. The first two went off as scheduled, but my when I went in for my third hour, another teacher was giving a test. And after that, another teacher wanted to give a lesson. Fine, whatever. I told a student to come get me when they were ready.

It was almost 4 o'clock by the time they came to get me. Apparently, plenty of students thought Friday meant weekend. Of the fifty students that were supposed to be in that class, exactly fifteen stuck around for English. I say again: and they wonder why they fail my exams. I had to reward these students. I gave each of them an extra ten percent on their exams. For at least five of them, this was the difference between failing and passing.

Richie was back at home by the time I got out of class around 5:15. He was tired, sunburnt, and covered in dirt. I knew I would be in charge of dinner tonight. We dug into our neighbor's freezer and pulled out some of our remaining beef. He needed a victory. I needed a victory. We went with cheese steaks. Victory! After dinner tonight, we watched “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”. It wasn't terrible, but there are certainly better movies out, I'm sure (I hope...).

Another night, another 2 AM wake-up. I'm over this.

We were supposed to have English theater practice this morning at 8:30, but I had forgotten about some teachers meeting at 8. Of course, this meant 8:40, and naturally, I wouldn't be attending the meeting. But it did mean English theater practice would have to be pushed to the afternoon.

I kept myself busy making some props for the play. In the play, there are a couple of scenes with some miners. To make it look good, we wanted to give them some tools. As such, my morning was spent with a Leatherman (way better than a Swiss Army Knife) making some mining tools. Considering the complete lack of resources, I think they came out well.

We rescheduled practice for 1:30 which in all likelihood meant 2 o'clock. This gave me plenty of time to eat lunch before heading over to the school – book in hand – at 1:30.

Then the waiting began. I waited. A couple more students arrived. We waited. A few more arrived. We waited. By 2:30, seven out of eight students were there. It took the last student another hour to get there. New record for tardiness.

The worst of it was, once everyone was there, they weren't taking it seriously. This with six days until we had to Chimoio. My counterpart on eye let them know our displeasure. We gave some directions on how we wanted things and they eventually got it together.

The evening was quieter than usual. Richie was locked away in his room well past our normal dinner time. I figured I was on my own for dinner. I didn't want to put together anything special, so I used one of my boxes of Mac and Cheese. Always good to have something easy on reserve. A bit later, a colleague came over wanting some information on physics. He didn't realize that the internet doesn't just give answers to problems. Yes, the internet may have tons of information, but it's not a substitute for thinking.

By 9 o'clock he was gone, just in time for me to go to bed.

Year 2 - Week 38: Great Expectations (I should know better by now...)

Something bad was bound to happen.

After an absolutely perfect day yesterday, there was no way that I could have a good day on Sunday. It started almost as soon as I woke up. In coming down to Vilanculos, I had hoped that I could update anti-virus on my laptop. When I took my laptop outside though, it wouldn't turn on. It turned on just fine when it was plugged in, but now it won't turn on. Great. Battery is shot. Again. There was a time - about six weeks ago - that I seriously considered bringing this computer home. It had been working decently. Then the video playback got choppy. Now this. Looks like this computer might meet another broomstick.

To clear my head, I made a run to the market to pick up some food for lunch. There was no need for epic negotiation today. I know the price of vegetables and at this point, most of the market people recognize me. I came back prepared to make some egg sandwiches for lunch.

Even though I slept well last night, I still felt tired. Maybe it was the heat. Hot season is officially in full swing here. Maybe it was just the frustration of dealing with a busted computer. Either way, after lunch, I was ready for a nap. It didn't take long. As soon as I hit the mattress, I was out cold for a solid two hours.

My day was almost salvaged late in the afternoon. I ran over to my tailor's shop to pick up a new shirt. He did a beautiful job on it and in just one day. Nice job, Alexandre. I came back to the girls' house looking forward to a conversation with my parents and pizza. The phone call, as usual, was lovely. Right in the middle of it, the pizza man came, but with only one pizza. Where's my pizza? They didn't have my toppings. Fine, bring a different pizza. Thirty minutes later, my new pizza arrived. I devoured it as we watched dinosaurs on "Jurrasic Park" devour people. Considering when that movie was made, the dinosaurs look shockingly good. Imagine what they could do with CGI today.

The silver lining to a bad day is that the next day is usually better. I wanted to hit to an internet cafe to try to update my anti-virus and read email. There were two options: do my shopping, then head to Inhassoro to hit the awesome internet cafe there; or hit the internet cafe here, get my shopping done, then take the chapa back to Mambone. Lucky for me, the internet cafe in Vil was open. Unluckily, the internet wasn't fast enough to update anti-virus. Either way, I was happy. I got everything else done and I was able to chat with some night-owl friends.

With a little time to kill before the chapa left, I got my shopping done. I needed to by big paper for Richie so he could give his exams. Then I dipped into the market to see if there was anything special and -- wait, what is that? Avocado?! Yes! Yes! Yes! Avocado season continues! Looks like we're doing Mexican food tonight.

The chapa ride to Mambone was largely uneventful. As more people piled in, the cobrador had the audacity to propose sitting five people. The other people in my row expressed their displeasure about this, but the cobrador was adamant. Then I did something I have barely done in this country: I spoke up. "I'm the biggest person in this chapa," -- which was true -- "there's no way a fifth person is sitting back here". With that, we sat "comfortably" four to a row.

I had no wait time at the river, which was fortunate considering I was the only person there. Once I arrived on the other side, the river was so low and the shore so slick with mud that I couldn't get to the path that leads back to our house. I had to scale a small cliff just to get to another path. Awesome.

I was absolutely exhausted and hungry when I got back to the house around 3 o'clock. Richie had made extra food for lunch. I don't know if he planned on eating it later, but I didn't care. I was hungry, and when I see food, no one is going to stop me. When he came back from class, he wasn't sad to see his food again.

The food fest continued after a short respite. We went with full-on Mexican food: rice, salsa, beans (from a can), meat, tortillas, and of course guacamole! Following dinner, we watched a couple episodes of "Glee" before crashing.

After a good night's sleep, I took a look at what I had planned on teaching, and wasn't at all happy with my plans. The phrasal verbs that I wanted to teach today not only had very narrow usage, but also didn't have good Portuguese equivalents. My gut said that this would be a disaster of a lesson, so I decided to change it.

That decision proved to be brilliant once I got in the classroom. The kids did a pretty good job of picking up on the six phrasal verbs I give them. I shudder at the thought of what would have happened had I gone with my original lesson plan.

Following class, I realized it was time to get back on the workout train. Having been gone the whole weekend, I didn't have the chance to work out. I know that the longer I put it off, the more difficult it is to get back into. After the workout, I was outside drinking my protein shake when one of our colleagues called me over. He needed help solving a math problem. I knew how to solve it but for some reason, I kept getting stuck. Finally, after a couple of minutes, it hit me and I had the answer. Victory.

For the first time in a while, we had shrimp for dinner. I don't know if shrimp are officially out of season, but we haven't seen them for a while. And it seems that we didn't get nearly as much as we have in the past. Regardless, we were happy to have shrimp because if we didn't have them, we would have eaten couvi, a meal we generally struggle through, then regret after. Thrown in with some pasta, it made for a tasty meal. After eating, we sat back for a couple of episodes of "Glee". Before falling asleep, I then started on another mammoth book, Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". RIchie gave it a not-so-positive review. I figure it can't be worse than "All the King's Men".

I woke up Wednesday morning to the sound of my phone ringing, ready for another day of English theater practice. As usual, I showed up right at 8:30. I don't know why I even bother when I know everyone else is going to be late. We know the 40-minute rule applies to just about everything here. Whenever something is scheduled for a certain time, add 40 minutes to it, and that will be the actually start time. This worked almost perfectly today. We got started at 9:08, 38 minutes after our scheduled start time.

Practice lasted for about 90 minutes. Most of the kids are doing a really good job. Seven out of eight of them have their lines memorized, but one girl is still bumbling along. I'm hoping she gets it together in the next couple weeks. Aside from that little issue, the play seems to be coming along. If they can speak loudly, I believe they have a chance to win.

Wednesday proved to be a very busy day. I'm giving the first midterm of this trimester on Friday, and it wasn't going to write itself. Of the thirty phrasal verbs I have taught these first few weeks, almost all of them will appear on the exam. This is a test of study skills. If they reviewed their notes for maybe thirty minutes, they'll do just fine. If not, it's going to be a bloodbath. This will also be the first time that I'll be giving the students a "bubble sheet" to fill out. I figure it's better to have them practice now than go into the National Exam cold. The only problem with the bubble sheet is that it will be remarkably easy to cheat. In the end, it will be their funeral: I'll be giving four different forms of the test. Looking at a neighbor's sheet will certainly lead to failure.

I was slated to teach the last two periods of the afternoon, but I had a feeling that I wouldn't have to wait that long. I think that I have taught early almost every Wednesday. There was no reason to believe that I would have to wait until 4:00 today. My assumption was proved right around 3:00. Two students came by asking for me to come in to teach. Absolutely. Class I guess went okay. I asked my students if they did their difficult (and rarely given) homework assignment of writing two sentences. Three students did it. Looks like they'll be getting extra credit on the midterm.

While I was in class, a pot of beans sat on the stove. We wanted a delicious meal tonight. After all, there was cause for celebration. With this day in the past, we have only one more full month in Mozambique. Of course, we still have twenty-nine days this month and twenty-three in November, buy ya know, we take our victories when we can get them. The beans were delicious, and to top it off, we made some chocolate cake. While the cake sat in the oven, we watched "Grown Ups", a film with a whole bunch of funny people. I bought it in Vil, thinking it would be okay. After we watched it, we agreed that it probably went straight to DVD.

After such a productive Wednesday, I had a shockingly quiet Thursday morning. I didn't have any preparation for class to do. I didn't have any exams to write. So I sat around reading an old magazine in the morning.

It was nice to have that bit of down time because the afternoon would be a little busier. I went into class first period of the afternoon to give my lesson. The students were relieved to hear that this lesson wouldn't be on the exam. It wouldn't be particulary fair to them. I gave the same lesson as yesterday, including a small bit on how to fill out their answer sheet.

I was on the receiving end of some good fortune late in the afternoon. Somebody was working on the energy in the school, which allowed me to print and photocopy my exams in the afternoon instead of at night. While I was in the office, I handed over a copy of the answer sheet to the school director and left a copy on the computer. Now all of the teachers can wreak havoc on their students with long, boring multiple choice exams.

Our evening was slightly depressing. We have come to the end of the season of "Glee". We watched thirteen episodes in four days. Very sad. At least we know that the next time we see glee, we'll be in America. After dinner and "Glee", I continued on the newest book. It has a huge introduction, which I finally got through. Maybe this weekend, I'll get to start on the actual book.

Friday was a busy day all around. As I've come to expect, English theater practice started late. Still, I went in at 8:30. I can always hope. One of the students had to go the hospital before practice, which made things interesting. My counterpart went to Beira yesterday -- why, I don't know -- so I was on my own with the students. Someone had to fill in for the student, so ended up reading his lines. I think all the students, especially the girls, got really timid when we had scenes together. It was pretty funny.

I managed to get a workout in before cooking lunch. I'm in for a busy afternoon, so I knew working out then wouldn't be possible. Following lunch, it was off to the classroom.

This was an interesting test, for a lot of reasons. First, the content is not the easiest stuff in the world. Still, no one came to my house to ask questions about the content, so I'm under the assumption that they basically understand. Second, as mentioned early, it's the first time that they'll be using an answer sheet for a multiple choice exam. And third, I'm going to be very lax when it comes to controlling this exam. I don't care if a student looks at his or her neighbor's paper because the exams are different. I really feel sorry for the poor saps who depend on their neighbors for answers. It's going to be a rough exam for them.

I wanted to get the exams corrected as soon as possible. With an answer sheet, it shouldn't take so long. I was wrong. Painfully wrong. The students did miserably. There were plenty of students who received less than 25 percent low even by Mozambican education standards. And yet, the test was fair. Two students received 18 out of 20. It's pretty clear who studied.

I got through the first class and had to stop. It was just too depressing. In the first class, 22 percent passed the exam, and the average score was failing. I cringed thinking about how bad it would have been had those two students not received 18.

There was only one thing that could get me out of this depression: scotch. After dinner, Richie, another colleague and I headed out to the villa to do some drinking. Some colleagues were already there when we arrived. I bought the bottle of scotch and we got to work. In two hours, the thing was gone and my head was spinning badly. At least I wasn't thinking about the exam anymore.

I woke up Saturday morning feeeling miserable, as expected. There was more than just a hangover though. My head and neck were invaded by mosquitoes last night. I guess that's what I get for passing out on my floor for a couple hours.

Even though I was far from 100%, I still had some responsibilities to take care of on Saturday. I had an English theater meeting at 8:30, which naturally started at 9. I had the kids practice outside today. They need to start using louder voices. And as a bonus, it felt a lot better to be outside than trapped in a tiny classroom.

Once practice ended, it was right back to bed until 12:30. Finally, I felt like I had recovered. Richie decided to go with potato pancakes to fill our empty stomachs and I could not have agreed more with that decision. After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. I read a bit of an "Economist" and caught up on some real news, but other than that, I can't say we did much.

Late in the afternoon, we sent Sozinho to the market to buy beef. We knew this was a gamble. If there was no beef in the market, we'd have to pull out something magical for dinner. Of course, there was no beef today. So we opened our last can of turkey and made stirfry. With no more episodes of "Glee" to watch, we watched a movie called "She's Out of Your League". It was okay. We had higher expectations, but it came up well short.

Story of my week.

Year 2 - Week 37: No Free Points (and The Perfect Day in Mozambique)

A late night and a lot of work done appears to be the ticket for getting a good, uninterrupted sleep. Six solid hours of English theater work yesterday knocked me out but good, but I woke up Sunday morning refreshed and ready to have a relaxing day. Once Richie rolled out of his room, we finished watching "The Blind Side", one of the better films we've watched here.

We had the movie finished by 9:00, and that's just about when I realized that we were in dire need of a market run. Things here have become a little more active on Sundays. Now that energy has been fairly well established, shop-owners have realized that Sunday is just another day to make money.

All said, it was a very quiet day in Machanga. After all that work yesterday, I was happy to have a day to sit back, relax and read old "Newsweek" magazines. Most of the afternoon was spent between the patio and bed, reading "news" about the oil spill or Supreme Court nominations.

Richie made another run to the market in the afternoon. He went to take care of our dinner problem by buying meat. He appeared to have purchased a decent cut; there was no major fighting with it, a welcome surprise. I decided to cook it Mozambican/Sozinho style, in the tomato broth. Everything tasted just fine, but the meat was tough. Our high hopes were dashed in a single rubbery bite. Richie went to bed right after dinner. I stayed up to read for a little while longer before crashing.

The end of my weekend on Monday was shockingly productive, even though I did very little. Late in the morning, I made a run to the market to stock up on potatoes, onions, and eggs. Lunch quickly followed the market run.

After eating, I was sitting around for a bit reading when a colleague came by with some computer problems. He had typed up a physics exam for his students -- impressive since he's only had his computer for a couple months -- but needed to add some little graphs. These, admittedly, are tough. They do require a fairly intimate understanding of Word. He explained what he wanted and I threw them into his document in just a couple minutes.

Richie came back from his afternoon classes and both of us just sort of shook our heads. For a while now, Sozinho has been pissing us off. At first it was little things, but now we are simply annoyed. After washing dishes, he's not drying them off or putting anything back. I can't tell you how many times some of my food has tasted like dish soap. Today's action, or lack thereof, is what finally broke us. We put our laundry out on Saturday to be done. He blew it off yesterday and today, and since Richie was out of clean clothes, this created a bit of a problem. We decided he needed a talking-to.

It wasn't long before it was dinner - just a Newsweek or two away. I went over to our neighbor's house to pull out the remaining meat from his fridge. We made a stir-fry, which had the same problem as yesterday's meal. Once we finished, we decided it was time to talk to Sozinho. I calmly outlined exactly what we wanted everyday. Even though I was careful not to be an asshole about it, Sozinho still walked away like a dog with his tail between his legs.

I guess we could register it as a victory because right after that talk, he washed, dried, and arranged the dishes, then quietly left. In his absence, we watched a couple episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" before going to sleep.

Tuesday meant getting back to work, for everyone. Sozinho was over earlier than usual to sweep and mop because he had a busy day ahead of him. The longer he waited to wash clothes, the bigger the pile grew. The washing took up most of his morning.

I had my own things to do in the morning. I was prepared to cook beans tonight, which meant sorting and soaking. It's amazing how many little twigs, how many rocks, and how much dirt gets into a sack of beans. What's more amazing is that we haven't cracked any of our teeth on said rocks. After cleaning the beans, I went to the bigger project of my room. I rearranged some things, swept the floors and hands-down/ass-up Mozambican-style mopped the room.

Around lunch time, a very strange thing happened (and I don't mean our laundry being done): the skies gently split open and drizzled all over our clothing. Wonderful -- I guess our clothes won't be completely dry by the end of the afternoon. This bit of rain also thwarted my lunch efforts because we couldn't put the charcoal outside to get going. After a while, and a lot of fanning, the fire finally got going.

Full from lunch, I went over to school to give my classes for the day. Today's set of phrasal verbs were verbs with "give" and "drop". For the most part, these phrasal verbs are straight-forward. A couple of them, like drop out, required a little extra explanation, but the kids seemed to get it. I walked around class, checking on the students' work, when I saw that a couple smartasses had written a perfect and perfectly true sentence: "Mr. Lee does not give away points on the ACS (the midterm)". That is beautiful. Maybe it was just the first day that was especially difficult.

Riding a bit of a high after class and with some time on my hands, I decided to get a workout in. I figure that I'm never going to be this thin again and I've lost a ton of muscle in my time here. This is as good a time as ever to put it back on. Forty-five minutes later, I was sweaty, tired and in need of a shower and shave. I relit the charcoal from earlier, heated some water for my shower, then threw the beans on the stove to cook.

While the beans finished cooking, my parents called. A lot of the discussion centered around how quickly my time here is coming to an end. It's very funny how these conversations have changed over the course of almost two years. For a while, it was about planning their trip out here. Then, after their trip, we couldn't stop talking about the trip. And now, with less than 100 days to go, the conversation is about coming home. Crazy.

The beans came out wonderfully -- cooked thoroughly and the texture of the sauce was perfect. With our bellies full, we finished up season five of "How I Met Your Mother". There may be one more season that's already out, but I'm not sure. Still, it was cool to hear them drop "Avatar" into one of the scripts -- not because I'm a fan of the movie (haven't seen it actually) but because it came out while we were here, so it can't be that old.

Wednesday started with the sound of my alarm, a truly dreadful sound. I had to go to English around 8:30. The kids have had a couple days to read through the script. My counterpart had hoped that they would have the lines already memorized. I thought that was a little ambitious, but not entirely impossible. The day with the kids proved to be a lot more stressful than I had anticipated. At least three kids of the eight kids misunderstood their parts and went about changing line assignments. Frustrating? You bet, especially since they don't fully understand what the script says. Aside from having copies for everyone, one of the reasons I wantd to type up the script was to work out all of the kinks. In one fell swoop, these kids threw a couple wrenches into the machinery. After an hour, we finally had everything straightened out. So much for this day being productive.

My afternoon started out productive. I filled out some paperwork for Peace Corps, an always fun activity. At least I could do it with a smile on my face knowing that it would be the last set of paper work I'd have to complete. I also worked out and showered before going over to class. Even after showering, I still felt filthy. I understood why this time. The well that we usually use has been busted, so Sozinho has been using a different well. When I looked in the buckets, there was a distubing smog-colored tint. I'm supposed to use this water to get clean.

Neither of us had much luck in the afternoon. My class dealt with phrasal verbs with "cut". I can't honestly say that this class was as successful as the classes from last week. At least I made it through my class. Richie had four classes this afternoon. The first time, it tanked. The second time, it tanked and he realized it was worthless. So he just canceled the other two classes. "This shit's not important anyway". Ah, the advantage to teaching a non-National Exam year. There's only one solution to make a day like this better: cake. It's been a long time since we've had cake. After dinner, we busted out a box of Betty Crocker and had us some chocolate cake. It was as delicious as we remembered. We also started watching "Law Abiding Citizen", until my computer decided it wasn't going to work. Nice. It'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Richie had a pair of classes Thursday morning, but once he returned, we jumped back into the movie. It was everything we enjoy in a non-comedy, and by that, I mean lots of death. After a magazine or two, it was time to cook lunch.

I had the first class of the afternoon, a repeat of yesterday's class. This class was a little more cooperative in acting out some of the examples and as such, the class went much smoother than yesterday. Or maybe this class is just that much smarter than the other class. I came back from class feeling better than yesterday. No cake would be necessary today.

In the middle of the afternoon, a got an unexpected text message: a friend with whom I went to Ghana and who is now in Cameroon as a Volunteer, sent me an email. Even though we are on opposite sides of the continent, it seems like things are pretty much the same there. Same school issues, same gripes with the people in charge. He has one big advantage though -- he's in a biggish city, one that has restaurants. The coolest thing is one of those restaurants serves viper. Am I jealous? Absolutely.

It was every man for himself for dinner tonight. Richie didn't have any brilliant ideas when it came to dinner. All he was willing to do was eliminate rice, spaghetti, and xima as potential bases. Well, that's seventy-five percent of what's available. I was fine with rice, so I cooked up some stirfry. Richie did potatoes with something, and I think Sozinho just ate bread. Whatever. Richie, who is heading to Vil tomorrow, went to bed early. I stayed up replying to my buddy in Cameroon and reading a bit more of "All the King's Men" before crashing.

Richie was up and at it at 5 o'clock. I was up, but certainly not at it. I had to be up at 8:15 for English theater practice, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be on my feet a minute before. When the alarm finally went off, I felt refreshed and ready to go.

Friday's English theater practice could not have been more different than Wednesday's disaster. A couple of the kids had already memorized their lines. Things were looking good...until we timed the play. It turned out to be fourteen minutes, two minutes more than we have been allowed. A second over twelve minutes means disqualification. If these kids could just speak a little faster, know their lines a little better, then I thought it could be under twelve minutes. The second time they read through it was 11:22. Third time was 10:55. Satisfied with their work, my counterpart and I dismissed the students for the day.

I made myself some lunch before heading to school, hopeful that I could combine my classes again. For at least the second week in a row, the school director wasn't around, which meant I was free to join my classes together. Success! Today's lesson was on phrasal verbs with "go". There are so many phrasal verbs with "go" that teaching all of them, even over multiple lessons, would be impossible. I chose eight good ones and went from there. The results were pretty good. One kid wrote "I will go on to university and find a girlfriend because Machanga does not have good girls". Gotta love these kids sometimes.

I celebrated the end of the week with a brief nap before starting the charcoal for beans. I was resigned to eating something boring tonight, but Sozinho wanted to have beans, which I'm always happy to eat. With Richie gone, my only entertainment was the last chapter of "All the King's Men". Mercifully, this book came to an end. I'll give credit where credit is due: the last two chapters were better than the rest of book. That said, those chapters don't make up for the rest of the book.

For one reason or another, I could not fall asleep for the life of me. I almost popped a Benadryl to knock me out, but finally, around 1 in the morning, I finally fell asleep.

I've had plenty of good days in Mozambique and I've had a few really good days. But in almost two years here, I can't say that I've had a perfect day in Mozambique. Until Saturday. I was up and moving at 6:30, packed my backpack, and hit the the road at exactly 7:00. I walked to the river, where plenty of people of people were waiting to head to Mambone. Because of this, I had no wait time at the river. The twenty thirty minutes of waiting in Mambone was the only time I wasn't on the move. The chapa ride from Mambone to Maluvane was painfully slow. I knew ten minutes into that ride that I wouldn't be breaking 3 hours and 56 minutes.

Even so, I couldn't complain. We were at least moving. Once I got to Maluvane, things started going really well. I jumped into the back of a truck heading toward Vilanculos. The sun beat down pretty hard, but I was happy to work on my tan a bit. When we got toward Vilanculos, I offered to pay, but the driver wouldn't take my money. Awesome! One short truck ride later, and I was in Vilanculos, just breaking the 5-hour mark.

I had a significant-sized list of things to accomplish in Vilanculos and I wanted to get them all done in the afternoon. First, I took some cloth up to my tailor to have a shirt made, which will be ready tomorrow. I stopped next store to arrange my delicious dinner plans. With that done, I dropped off my things at the Vil girls' house so I wouldn't have to carry around all my stuff while I shopped.

Today's mission in the market was huge. With Sozinho's 900 Meticais, I was on the hunt for clothes for his baptism. I knew this would be a challenge when I found out that one store sold shoes for 600 Mets. That's okay -- I'm always up for a challenge at the market. I may be the exception to the rule in that I love going to the market to negotiate. I feel like I'm going into battle, with stubbornness as my best weapon. The first part was easy. I got the shirt, tie, and pants for 430. I didn't even bother to negotiate -- I knew the prices were reasonable.

I hoped, given the price I saw earlier, that I'd have just enough for shoes and the belt. That's when the battle royale began. I told the guy that I needed black leather shoes in size 42 (European, of course). He presented me a beautiful pair of shoes that cost 850 Mets. That's just a wee bit out of budget, but that wasn't going to stop me. I said that the price was too much, and he immediately sliced the price to 600. I told him I'd pay 350. The price came down to 500, but I wouldn't budge. It dropped to 450, then 400. I thought about paying 400. I got my fifty percent. But I decided to push it. Finally, he said 380. I considered it for a moment and then agreed. "This guy, he knows his money". Yes. Yes I do. Finally, I went on the hunt for a decent belt. The first one I found was 95 Mets. It was nice enough and I didn't want to negotiate anymore.

After all my purchases were made, I totaled everything up: 905. That doesn't count as being overbudget. That's a rounding error. Satisfied with my work, and hungry, I treated myself to a delicious cheeseburger.

The rest of the day, went absolutely beautifully. I ran over to the other side of town to some food shopping. I didn't find everything I wanted, but found something I wasn't expecting, so that was a bonus. By the time I got back to the house, it was already late afternoon. I hung out with the girls for a bit before heading over to Muhammad's for dinner. Even though he raised the price by 50 Meticais, it was still delicious and worth it.

So there it was: the perfect day in Mozambique. A heavily discounted ride, market domination, did all of my tasks, ate delicious food. I should just quit now. Something bad is bound to happen.

Year 2 - Week 36: The Last Return, The First Scene

When I finally made it outside of the house Sunday morning, I saw the damage that I had done to the broomstick -- destroyed in three major chunks with a bunch of little splinters strewn across the yard. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was almost salvageable. I considered super-gluing it, but realized that the first time someone would sweep, it would snap into, well, three major chunks. So I was left with the choice of buying a new broomstick or turning a thin tree branch into a new handle. Which option do you think I went with?

Of course I wasn't going to buy something that nature provides for free. It's a stick! The work wasn't that difficult: strip the branch of its bark, reduce the size on one end so the screw top would fit in, voila! New broom stick, just like that.

Normally, accomplishing a task like that would have earned me a nap, but there was much to do today. I tried to make a market run immediately afternoon. I went to buy bread, but the man who runs the bread place told me that fresh bread would be arriving in a couple hours. Fresh Mambone bread makes everyone happy, so I decided to wait. I also tried to beef in the market, but the cow hadn't been killed yet. The guy working at the butchery told me it would be killed at 4:00, which meant 5:30, so that meant no beef tonight.

Going out for two items and failing on both fronts is disappointing. A nap would certainly have resolved it, but there was more to do. I needed to get a workout in, and a workout meant a shower. Just as I was about to jump in the shower, Richie walked up to the house, exhausted from his week in Beira. He was fairly satisfied with the Science Fair in Beira and rightfully tired.

I eventually got my shower, which brought me right up to about 4:00. Time to check on bread. I don't know why I went at 4:00. That's when he told me it would be there, so why the hell would I go then. Naturally, the store was closed. I returned home and started charcoal for beans. I know, we had beans just two nights ago, but Sozinho wanted them and I'm always happy to eat.

Just as the beans were finishing, I went back to the bread place and, finally, they had bread. The wait was worth it: the bread was so soft. I came back home with nine rolls and started cooking the rice. Just about that time, Richie woke up from his nap and looked like death. He was still in bed and clearly hungry, so I threw him some bread like a SeaWorld employee throws fish to Shamu.

With the rice finished, we sat down for dinner. It was clear from the onset that Richie wasn't going to be eating much. I knew that I would be finishing his food, and it would be the vast majority of his plate. I killed off mine before he finished a quarter of his, and that's when he gave up. I knew it wasn't the beans -- they got a rave review from Sozinho -- he just wasn't hungry. Good thing I was. He went t bed and I finished his food, making me feel sick. How American.

I spent part of Monday morning trudging through another miserable chapter of "All the King's Men". It's a wonder to me how this book won a Pulitzer Prize. The entire 60-something page chapter was, thus far, completely irrelevant. I asked Richie if it came into play later in the book and he said not really. This is why literature drives me crazy.

Late in the morning, I was back on tech duty. Our photocopier-owning colleague wanted me to try to repair his copier. I've had some good luck with it prior to this, but this problem was way beyond me. I knew it was beyond my capabilities when I looked in the manual, saw the error message, and the proper course of action: call assistance. Well, that settles that. Of course, I tried to fix it, but it was not cooperating with me.

While I was in the villa, I went over to the butcher's store to buy some beef. When I showed up, all he had to say was "You came late". What? The American in me wanted to say "Uh, no, it is you who decided to kill this cow 12 hours after you said you were going to do. I was right on time, thank you very much." But that wouldn't fly, so I just said "Yea, I know". There was still some decent beef left and I wasn't going to pass it up.

This afternoon was my last day off, so I soaked it in. I spent a little more time reading "All the King's Men". I'm hoping for a decent ending because that is the only thing that can salvage this book. I ran through my now regular afternoon workout and showered shortly after. And late in the afternoon, we ran over to the villa to make some purchases -- most importantly another 10-kilo sack of rice.

Upon our return, we started cooking dinner. I wanted to learn how to cook beef the way Sozinho cooks it, except I wanted to improve it. He has not learned that glory that is seasoning. It's a pretty basic stew. It could probably use even more seasoning, but for tonight it was pretty good. After dining, we finally got back into "How I Met Your Mother". It's been a long time. Way too long. We watched two episodes before calling it a night.

Tuesday was the official start of our English Theater preparation. In the name of sustainability, I'm really hoping to pass this project off to a colleague. It's not that I don't want to do it. I'm happy to run the project, but there is going to be a day when there won't be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Machanga. It would be a shame to have a project like that go to waste. Luckily, my colleague is pretty geeked about the project. His students seem equally excited. We can bring only eight people this year, and one of them is definitely going to one of my twelfth graders. So that left seven spots for the twenty kids from tenth and eleventh grade who tried out. They ran the gamut from wonderful to miserable. By the time we got through it, we had narrowed down the list from twenty to ten.

Listening to those kids read a paragraph as a tryout took almost ninety minutes. I had but a little time between finishing the first day of English Theater and preparing for lunch.

And then after lunch, it began. School. It turns out that about half of my students have returned from holidays. Apparently, four weeks wasn't enough for some people. Those who didn't show up today were spared the first lesson of phrasal verbs. I knew this series of lessons was going to suck; I just didn't know how much. Today, I only gave four phrasal verbs, all using the verb "break": break up, break down, break in, break out. They should have known the verb "break", but when I asked, all I got were blank stares. Oh, yes, it's going to be a fun eight weeks.

The only good news that came out of the class was that it used up the entire time. It's truly amazing: teaching four verbs required 45 minutes. It's going to be like this all trimester. The rest of the afternoon, I spent trying to finish a chapter of "All the King's Men", but every time I started reading, I realized how much it sucked. Still, I'm going to power through it. I've come too far not to finish it.

I was in charge of dinner tonight. We had a little meat left over to use for stir fry. I chopped up some pineapple to sweeten it up a bit. It, along with the rice, cooked way too slowly. All said, we had the stove on for about two hours. We finally ate around 8:00, and followed our food with a pair of episodes of "How I Met Your Mother". Richie, having a 7:00 class, went right to bed. I, on the other hand, continued in the book, eventually giving up around 10:30.

The nighttime weather has been very strange the last couple of days. When we go to bed, the weather is absolutely perfect, but by 3 or 4 o'clock, it's absolutely freezing. I've been waking up shivering. And today was no different. Around 3:30, I was up, looking for sweatpants and a sweatshirt. It took a little while to warm up, but I eventually fell asleep for a couple more hours.

I lazed around in bed for a little while, finishing the seventh chapter of "All the King's Men". I can't wait to be done with this book. No matter what I read after will be better than this. Having finished the chapter, I got up and welcomed the day.

It was a particularly slow day, and I knew it would be with my only class being at 4 in the afternoon. There was some talk of school being canceled today because the the provincial government party leader came down to Machanga. At least two big truckloads of students went to greet him. It looked promising for a while, but the school bells kept ringing, so we assumed school was in.

And yet, school wasn't really happening. The students were around but a lot of teachers had to go to the meeting with the government official. The teachers' absences gave me an opening. Around 2 o'clock, a couple of my students came by to ask if I could give class early. I would love to.

After yesterday's disaster, I didn't high hopes. Today's lesson was more of the same -- phrasal verbs, this time with "fall". For some reason, this lesson clicked a lot more today. Maybe it's because so many of the phrasal verbs with "fall" actually involve falling. Whatever it was, the students were writing better sentences today, and when I asked if it was easier today, they gave me a resounding "Muito!"

With class over for the day around 3:30, I came back home to try to resolve a computer problem for a colleague. He had this really strange problem: his computer was plugged in but it wasn't charging. I did some research on the problem and as usual, there were many reasons for the problem. I tried a couple of them, but none of them worked. There wasn't a lot more I could do except tell him that he could still use his computer, but it would have to be plugged in.

The rest of the afternoon was slow for everyone. Late in the day, Richie and I started watching some episodes of "How I Met Your Mother". This led right into dinner. Sozinho cooked up couvi, a leafy green. If it's prepared right, it can be good, but Sozinho doesn't know how to cook. Even after I seasoned it, it was still bland. And by the time I found my way into bed, it wasn't settling well.

Following another 3 AM wake-up to warm up, I slept in late, lost in dreams, until I realized that I had an English Theater meeting at 9. Thank goodness for Mozambican sense of time. I showed up at 9:15 and only half of the students had arrived. By 9:30, the rest of the people were there and we were ready to get going.

The meeting last for about 90 minutes and was shockingly productive. We put together a basic plan of how the play is going to run and who will perform what rolls. There will be another meeting tomorrow to begin writing and hopefully we start reading through the play by Saturday.

I returned from the meeting right around the time we start preparing for lunch. Richie didn't want to do potatoes and eggs, complaining of their price. I don't really see why today was different than any of the other 600 days we've had potatoes and eggs, but whatever. I was happy to make my own omelet and he could figure out what he wanted later.

I had class during the first period of the day today, far more convenient than the last class of the day. I was teaching the same lesson as yesterday, but to another group of kids. Even though I was giving the same lesson, these kids just did not get it as easily. Or maybe they were just more willing to say that they weren't getting it. Either way, I tried to explain "fall down" three times and even then, they could not understand. Undeterred, I made myself fall down, dirtying myself, but it got the message across. The kids looked stunned when I fell to the ground; I don't think there is another teacher in this school that would go to that length to explain something. When I asked them "Claro?", they came back with "Claro!" Nice.

Upon returning from class, I jumped online to check email and read news. One of the stories that popped up was about twenty-somethings. I thought, "Hey, that's about me!" And after a read it, I realized, wow, it really is about me. I won't go into all the details, but it explained how there is this middle phase between adolescence and adulthood. It made mention of how many people in their twenties return home after school to live with their parents (see: future me, post-Mozambique) and how we are in this period of huge uncertainty but unlimited opportunities. I can't say I disagree with what was said.

Richie wasn't home when I came back from class, but when he returned, he came with a package in hand. Hello, beautiful. I think this is the last package I'll be getting here. Then end really is almost here. This package was full of essentials -- mac and cheese, some cans of turkey, but most importantly, it had oodles of magazines. We didn't even bother to wait until they were all out of the box. Almost immediately, we both had magazines in hand.

The night was pretty timid. After dinner, we powered through a couple episodes of "How I Met Your Mother". Richie turned in for the night and I curled up in bed with an ESPN magazine.

I woke up on Friday fifteen minutes before a scheduled English theater meeting, which is more than enough time for me to get my teeth brushed, get myself dressed, and get out of the house. I showed up to the classroom exactly at 8:30. No one was there naturally, so I waited. Within fifteen minutes, everyone else had arrived. Lovely. I'll consider that early for them.

The other English teachers and I were really hoping that we could have the script written by the end of the day. It became quickly apparent, however, that there was no way this would happen. I tried to follow last year's successful formula -- break them into small groups to write scenes -- but something wasn't coming across well. Yes, they had figured out the story, but there was no dialogue. An hour and a half later, we were no closer to having a script than we were at the beginning of the day. I guess we'll just have to try again tomorrow.

The failures from the morning didn't bleed over into the afternoon. In fact, the afternoon could easily be called a huge success. I went into school hoping to combine my classes. I knew that the school director wasn't around, which helped my cause -- not because he wouldn't permit it, but because he is supposed to teach a class before mine. When I went over, the kids were all waiting outside and confirmed that they wouldn't be having class. Beautiful.

After class, I came home with a list of things to do. I needed a workout and, more than that, I really needed to shave. Of course, my nine-month old goatee wouldn't be leaving (sorry, Sach), but everything else needed to go. And I had a new toy to help me out with this. Enclosed in the package my mom sent were a bunch of Gillette Fusion razors. I thought five-bladed razors were mythological things, like unicorns or dragons or Mozambican timeliness. I had heard of these things, but never actually had one. I was skeptical. Seriously - five blades. My head and face get plenty smooth with my Mach 3's. Of course, this was a huge step up, given my current use of disposable two-blade razors. But at the end of the day, my head wasn't any smoother. It was like upgrading from a Mustang to a Corvette. I'm still going really fast. Regardless, I was happy to have a clean-shaven dome again.

As usual, it was a quiet evening here. We had beans for dinner, watched some "How I Met Your Mother", and read a bit of "Newsweek" before heading to sleep.

The difference between yesterday's English theater session and today's was night and day. For the most part, the kids showed up on time and they figured out that they needed to use dialogue. The story started to come together. Roles became more defined. Put simply, things got done. It took nearly four hours and a bit of poking and prodding, but by 12:30, we had a script, typed and ready for editing.

Following a quick lunch break, I jumped write back into the script. If I'm that close to having something complete, there's no way I'm going to put it off until later. I cleaned up some lines, made the thing a bit more readable, and added some stage instruction. It was 4:00 by the time I finished all of that. As we had hoped, we we're good to print during the evening.

For all this success, I rewarded myself with a beer run with Richie. We walked over to the villa, had our beers, and returned in time for dinner. For the first time, the three of us had three different dinners. Sozinho wanted to eat couvi again. I wanted no part of that. Richie was eating these tiny fish that looked like anchovies. I'm still new to fish, but I'm definitely not doing anything that looks like an anchovy, especially with the heads and tails still on there.

So I went to spaghetti, as usual. While my pasta cooked, I ran over to the office to print out the play script for all of the students. The timing worked out perfectly -- as soon as I was done in the office, the pasta was ready to come off the stove. After eating, Richie and I started watching "The Blind Side". We only got half-way through it before one of my best friends from home called. Even so, two things could definitely be determined: 1) Sandra Bullock is smokin'; and 2) it's very easy to see why she won an Oscar for her role in this. I guess we'll finish it tomorrow, when a new week starts.

Year 2 - Week 35: Working Things Out

With our Close of Service conference behind us, all we had to do was, well, close our service. We may only have a couple more months left, but there is still plenty to be done. Richie will be out for most of the week preparing for Science Fair in Beira. In the meantime, I'm holding down the fort, keeping things in order here.

In theory, our last trimester here begins tomorrow, but we know better than that. In practice, students will begin walking back to school today, maybe arriving tomorrow, but in all likelihood, they won't be here until Tuesday or Wednesday. School won't really start until next week, which is all fine and good. If I don't have school to keep me busy, I'll find other things to occupy my time.

And there was no shortage of things to keep me busy on Sunday. There were two small pieces of electrical work that needed to be done in the house. The simpler of the two tasks was getting a new light bulb for my room. The more difficult was adding a plug to the electric wire I have going out to the patio. Until now, the wire has been going directly into the outlet. This situation was just begging for an electrocution of massive proportion. With a piece I purchased in Vilanculos, I fixed up the wire so it would be electrocution-proof.

My third task for the day involved my beleaguered pan handle. The third time was apparently not the charm for my whittled handiwork. Leave it to Sozinho, the person we so endearingly call "The Ruiner", to ruin my work. He didn't realize that since the handle was made from wood, he probably shouldn't put it directly over an open fire. Sometimes, I just have to wonder what goes on in that mind of his. I put on a new handle and Sozinho-proofed it by wrapping most of it in aluminum foil.

The last of my jobs today was to hand out a laptop to one of the teachers here. I would have done it early, but the computer needed an adapter. What good would a laptop be if you couldn't recharge it? I showed him the basics -- turning on, turning off, opening a document -- and told him to come by tomorrow a quick typing lesson. He had been anxious to receive a computer, so when it finally happened, he was very happy.

For all that hard work, I think I deserved a good dinner. Sozinho got his hands on some gazela -- bushmeat -- and we Americanized it: cut up some veggies, through some cheese on it, and made gazela sandwiches. The meat was as lean as any beef we've had, so we were pretty content. Making the night even better, we began the fifth season of "How I Met Your Mother". I don't know how many seasons there are, but we're happy that we're catching up.

Richie was right back on the road Monday morning, leaving me alone for the week. But even though he was gone, it's really hard to be alone here. People here are always coming by. The first two people came by around 8:30. They came strapped with their computers, eager for a quick typing lesson. If they can figure out how to touch-type, they'll be miles ahead of me because, despite my almost twenty years of working on a computer, I still cannot properly touch-type, and I don't think I'll be learning how any time soon. It was a little frustrating at first for them, using their hands and minds in a way that they never have, but I think they'll pick it up pretty quickly. If Mozambicans can do one thing well, it's memorization; they'll be able to put that skill to use in remembering where they keys are.

Late in the morning, I made a run to the market to buy some rice. Sozinho, naturally, plowed through all the rice we had while we were gone. I'm done buying things in bulk, because Richie and I are both sure that he gives away our food when we're gone. No normal human being can eat that much food in so little time. It's just another example of the Mozambican/African mentality discussed in the book I read a couple weeks ago. We buy things in bulk because it's convenient, because we don't want to walk to the market every day. But when Sozinho sees that we have ten kilos of rice, he thinks it gives him permission to distribute that rice as he sees fit. And that drives us crazy. He costs enough as it is.

After lunch, I started reading "The Kite Runner". Yea, I know, I'm a couple years behind on getting to this book, but better late than never. I've heard nothing but good things about it, and the first hundred or so pages certainly have lived up to expectations. Given the lack of work this week, I'm sure this book will not make it to the end of the week.

There was one last computer to be distributed after lunch. Well, at least until we leave. It looks like Richie and I are both going to leave our computers behind. Though still functional, they are not in particularly good shape. They'll be put to good use here. At least they will last long enough for someone to save up enough money for a new one. I went through the same basic lesson as I did yesterday and, once again, the recipient was elated.

I started preparing beans late in the afternoon. They had been soaking all day, meaning they should have taken less time to cook. Still, it took a solid two hours to get them cooked all the way through. They weren't the best beans I've ever cooked, but they were good enough. The saving grace was an avocado. That's right -- we managed to get our hands on a couple of avocados Vilanculos. Huge victory does not begin to describe that purchase. Avocado season should have been done a long time ago.

Following dinner, I was preparing for a night in bed with "The Kite Runner", when one of my colleagues asked me if I could go out for a couple drinks. Could I? Of course I can. The two teachers who received computers this week wanted to thank me with a couple beers. They couldn't think of a better way to thank me and, quite frankly, neither could I. We stayed out for a little bit. Strangely, I was the only one drinking beer. Everyone else was drinking Fanta. Odd. Didn't stop me from having a few before heading home.

Tuesday had the look and feel of winter. A sheet of grey clouds covered the sky, occasionally letting through pockets of bright blue. A strong wind made the trees lean to one side. It looked like it could rain at any moment. You could practically hear the dusty roads begging for some rain, but the clouds had nothing to offer.

The bells rang in school today, though I'm not really sure why. Students are still on their way back here, as are teachers for that matter. I asked Sozinho how many students were in his class today. He didn't even bother to verbalize it. He didn't have to: he just stuck a hand up with all fingers extended. Out of 55 students, literally a handful have shown up. It seems there's an unwritten contract between the teachers and students that says, "Let's push vacation on for one more week" and everyone is happy to comply. So be it.

Around 10:30, I decided it was time to work out again. I have been exceptionally lazy this year and it doesn't feel particularly good. I could feel it last week as we played ultimate frisbee in the sand. I was sore for the entire week after. The first workout after a long layoff always sucks, but I suspect the motivation will come easier after that first one.

After lunch, I kept myself busy with "The Kite Runner". My assumption that this book wouldn't last the week looked good. It was really a matter of whether it would survive the day. The only thing working against me was the lack of light. As the wind grew steady, the lights went out, leaving Machanga without electricity for the better part of the afternoon. Nobody stopped what they were doing. After all, this was the old normal. When the house became to dark to read, I lit a candle and read by candlelight.

Late in the afternoon, with the school generator pumping, I went over to the school to help one of the assistant directors in making a school form. The form he needed to make wasn't particularly difficult -- a header with a table below -- but he couldn't get the table to fit on the page. I tried to throw it in a header, but it wasn't really working. Finally, I just took out the margins and made the table fit. He asked me how I did it, so I showed him. I was about to show him how I did the table, but he interrupted me. "That part I know how to do." That's the kind of moment that can't be measured. It's a little thing that made my day. Then it only got better. "It's a lot more difficult in Microsoft 2007", he said. "In 2003, I could do it". I couldn't agree more. And couldn't stop laughing under my breath at the absurdity of it all. Last year, he didn't know how to turn on a computer. This year, he's griping about Microsoft Office 2007.

Finally, just after 6:00, the electricity came on for good. The timing was perfect. I cooked some rice, whipped up some guacamole and salsa and had some Mexican food. As the rice cooked, I finished "The Kite Runner". By the time I was finished with dinner, it was nearly bed time. I crawled into bed with a new book, "All the King's Men", and hoped that this one would last more than a day.

For the second day in a row, the electricity was not working as well as it should be. The wind has picked up a notch or two. We're not talking about a tropical breeze here. This was a seriously cold wind. And it was wreaking havoc with everything. It knocked out the electricity for most of the morning and kicked up a ton of dust. I overheard someone saying they "took refuge" in a shop for a little while to keep the dust from landing in their eyes. Everyone was decked out in their winter gear -- beanies, sweaters, pants -- except for our favorite two-year old, the famous "Bucket Girl", who was just fine running around with no pants on.

The school is still quiet. A couple more teachers have shown up and some have even tried to teach this week. I think the people who are trying are the ones who are new this year. They still haven't quite figured things out. But those of us who know what's up haven't even tried to teach. I figure as long as long as the school director and all of the assistant directors aren't teaching, I can't be accused of not doing my job.

I kept busy in the morning with a workout. I was sore all morning from yesterday's workout -- I guess I earned that for not exercising for months -- so I did some legwork. I'm sure I'll be sore again tomorrow, but hopefully my arms will have recovered.

After lunch, I snuck in a little nap. No commitments -- might as well sleep. I woke up hungry. Conveniently, I had half an avocado left over from last night. I mashed it up into guacamole and used it as a dip for bread. It hit the spot. How could it not?

I tried to do some more reading in "All the King's Men", but I'm having trouble getting into it. I should like it, being a political book and all. But unlike "The Kite Runner," the writing in this book is, I don't know, fluffy. It's very adjective-heavy, very repetitive. Oh, and the first chapter goes on for-fuckin-ever. No chapter in any book should last seventy-seven pages. Even biblical chapters don't last that long. I suffered through that chapter. I can only hope that the next chapters are shorter, but I have my doubts.

I was banking on eating spaghetti for dinner tonight. It's been a couple nights, so you know, I'm due. Sozinho wanted to eat rice and I figured that as long has he's cooking it, I might as well eat it. I pulled some chicken breast out of our friends freezer, defrosted it, and cooked it up on our stove. By the time we ate, it was already 8:00 or so. The rest of the night was quiet. I wrote out an email or two and went to sleep.

I woke up early Thursday morning to the ping-ping-ping of raindrops on our tin roof. It wasn't a heavy rainy-season rain, but still heavy enough as to not dissipate before hitting the ground. This rain wouldn't bring on any mud or fill our wells, but it will be good enough to water the lettuce and onions growing behind the houses. I looked at the clock and saw it was 5:45, laughed, and went right back to bed for a little while.

The morning was surprisingly busy. I caught up with a friend from home, then did a grocery run. Sozinho was out of the house preparing his potential science fair project, leaving me to go the market. That was fine by me -- I was happy to kill an hour or so. After the market run, I came back home for my workout. It's funny. I only took two days for me to crave that feeling again, the feeling that you need to work out. By the time I was done, it was lunch time already.

I ate my lunch and showered, with no big plans for the afternoon. One of our colleagues came over asking for information about the regional Science Fair in Beira. He'll be chaperoning the kids up to Beira, which shouldn't be too difficult. It's not going to cost him anything -- Science Fair will cover all the costs -- but in the meantime, I'm covering their food and transportation tomorrow, at a hit of 1800 Meticais, about thirty percent of my salary for the month. I'll have it back by Monday, so it's no big deal. Still, I think it pissed off Sozinho, knowing that I had that kind of cash, but am not willing to fork out for his baptism clothing. What he doesn't realize is that all that money has to last me through the month.

Late in the afternoon, two trucks rolled into the school, the big mack-type trucks that can carry fifty goats. In this case, though, the trucks weren't filled with goats but with students singing at the top of their lungs as they approached school. They've plotted their return perfectly -- show up late enough in the week that the teachers won't come to class for the remainder of the week. I still can't understand why anyone would be so excited to coming back here -- to Machanga, to school, to finding firewood so they can eat the same crappy food day in and day out. Whatever. I won't rain on their parade.

Whatever excitement existed in the school was non-existent in the teacher's bairro. My neighbor came over with his usual smile and "Boa Tarde" then told me that his brother died this morning. He said it like he was just reporting the news: it's windy and cold outside, the students have returned, and my brother died. He said that he had been "doente" -- sick -- which is kind of a code. If it were TB, he would have said TB. If it were malaria, he would have said malaria. But if it's AIDS, then he's "sick". I asked how old he was: forty. Another life ended early, even by Mozambican's standard for life expectancy.

That pretty much killed whatever good vibes I was feeling. In a lot of ways, we've become very accustomed to a lot of things. We're used to taking shitty chapas and power outages and nothing running on time. But I don't think I'll ever get used to someone telling me that their brother or cousin or daughter died because of a disease that was preventable, whether that disease be AIDS or malaria or diarrhea.

Uninspired, the night was nothing special: spaghetti and some more of "All the King's Men" before going to sleep.

The early part of Friday morning was filled with a colleague's first computer crisis. His battery had drained all the way to zero and wasn't charging. I thought he just left it on, killing it off. But when I plugged the computer in, it still wouldn't charge. Curious. I tried using a different battery and it still wouldn't charge. Even more curious. My last guess was the charger itself. Earlier in the year, I had given a non-functioning charger to another colleague; maybe this was the same one. I tried a different charger and it worked. Excellent -- problem solved.

The rest of the morning looked a lot like the mornings from the rest of the week. I ran over to the market to buy eggs, then to the other side of town to buy bread. When I got back, it was already time to cook.

I kept myself busy after lunch plotting out what these last few months will look like, both in terms of school and personal life. I drew out a little calendar, which was a shockingly visual way of how little time we have left here. We have only two complete months left -- amazing. On the travel side, I'm going to be a road a lot these last few months. Bank runs, English Theater, and good-bye parties will have us running between Chimoio, Vilanculos, and Machanga.

This last school trimester is going to be an interesting one. Taking out this week, there are only eight full weeks of school between next Monday and October 12th -- Teacher's Day, the unofficial end of the school year. I have a feeling it's going to be a confusing trimester. I'm going to be spending a lot of time on phrasal verbs. Students here are used to translating sentences word for word. With phrasal verbs, that won't work. It's going to take some getting used to; thankfully, we have eight weeks.

Mcel went down again sometime during the afternoon. I'm hoping this is just a day problem instead of a weeks long problem like last time. After repairing the network faster than expected, I'm trying to think positive

Once I finished planning, I started cooking dinner. The beans had been soaking in water all day, so they only needed about ninety minutes to cook. My beans got the approval of Sozinho, a rare occasion. I guess when I really want to, I can cook up Mozambican beans as well as any Mozambican. I spent the rest of the night getting through chapter two of "All the King's Men". As I thought, the chapters aren't getting any shorter. This second one was ninety pages. Craziness.

I lazed around Saturday morning for a good while. I kept on with the book, making it half way through chapter three before rolling out of bed. Once up and at it, I continued planning out this last trimester. I tried to decide the best the way to teach phrasal verbs -- by root verb or meaning, -- eventually deciding to keep all phrasal verbs with the same root together. For example, in one lesson, students will learn phrasal verbs with break: break in, break up, break out, break down, break something down, and so on.

Sozinho took care of cooking lunch, then found his way to Mambone for the afternoon. I stuck around the house, getting in a workout after lunch. I was on call for tech duty in the afternoon. The photocopier owned by one of the teachers hasn't been working and he wanted me to repair it. Little did I know that the copier was the least of his problems. The computer that I just gave him wasn't charging or turning on. Gotta love Dell products. The rest of my afternoon was spent trying to solve this problem.

I did a little online research, plugging in the "symptoms", and found out that the problem this computer had confused even the best fix-it geeks on the web. Some people said to take out RAM chips, others said to press F7 sand F8 together while turning the computer on, others said to pop the hard drive in and out. I tried all of these things and failed.

So I went to Plan B -- or C or D, depending on if all those "solutions" were separate plan. I had another computer just like the one he got, except the screen was completely shattered. I knew that it turned on okay, but was unusable. I jumped back onto Google -- seriously, what did we do before Google? -- and learned how to replace the monitor on this type of Dell. Once I had that, the fix was easy -- six screws out, pull a cable, six screws in. Just like that, I had a fully functional computer.

I rewarded myself by completely doing in the busted monitor. I took our broom stick and decided to beat the living hell out of the already broken screen. On the third thwack, the broom stick busted in three pieces. Lame. It's okay -- I felt better.

All that work pushed dinner back until 8:30. That's how committed I was to working this problem out. I ate my dinner, finished chapter three of "All the King's Men" and went to sleep.

I was out cold when, around midnight, I received a text message. It was from hours before, but it finally came through. Mcel was back up. I didn't even bother reading it – it will be there in morning. I rolled over and went back to sleep for good.