Year 2 - Week 43: My Work Here Is Done (for the most part)

Sunday was a big day in our house. Not for us, of course. Sundays are usually boring, given that everyone in this town except us goes to church. But today, there was a bit of action around here before church started. Sunday was Sozinho's baptism day, which meant he was up and moving especially. Hey, just because he's being baptized today doesn't mean he's off the hook for his household responsibilities.

My responsibilities in the morning were rather limited. The last thing Sozinho asked me for in regards to his baptism (the list has been endless) was to tie his tie for him. One of the funny parts of Mozambican fashion is that guys like their ties really short, like barely past the their chest. With such a short tie, there was no way I could tie it on myself, take it off, and throw it on Sozinho. So I had to do what my dad used to do with me: stand in front of mirror, behind Sozinho, and tie it like that. Awkward? Yes. But it got the job done.

While everyone was at church, I made a run to the market. I've decided that Sunday mornings are a really good time to go to the market because I don't have to deal with anyone. All the drunkards are not drunk (yet) and there are no crowds to plow through. After the market run, the rest of the morning was spent reading "Lullaby", which is a waste of time.

I thought I was in for a quiet afternoon. Following lunch, I had planned to just relax. But shortly after we ate, one of our colleagues came over and invited us over to his house for a celebration lunch. Someone in his family was also baptized and he wanted us to be there to celebrate. This isn't strange at all. I don't say no when someone offers me free food and drink, so I went.

With a sufficient amount of wine, beer, and food in me, I returned home to do a bit of work. I had to print out my final exam, which I'm giving on Wednesday. I had hoped to print tonight and photocopy tomorrow so I don't have to stress when there is no paper or no toner on Tuesday.

We put together a pretty tasty meal for dinner: burritos. These burritos weren't as good as usual. No guacamole and no cheese really makes a huge difference. But throwing filet in the burritos made up for the loss. Our movie for the night was "The Book of Eli", which was pretty entertaining. By the time we finished the movie, I was back to sober and ready for bed.

That didn't mean I wasn't in for some punishment. I woke up at 2 in the morning with my stomach in a not. I knew I was going to be in for a long night. Two hours, four Peptos, and six trips to the bathroom later, I was back to better. I'm blaming the day-old beans we threw into the burritos.

Monday was a holiday in Mozambican -- shocking, I know. It was Peace and Reconciliation Day. At some point over the weekend, I had told someone that I would go to the plaza for the ceremony. But after a night of very little (and very poor) sleep, I wasn't up for it.

I was, however, able to stick to the far easier commitment of changing out someone's fluorescent light bulbs for standard light bulbs. She told me that her lights hadn't been working for four months. And just now, she decided that she'd had enough.

Instead of going to the plaza, I went to the market in search of some things for the house. One of our power outlets broke and a light switch is on the way to being busted. I want to have them fixed before we leave. The only thing impeding this is the fact that nobody in this village sells the right power outlet or switch. This place could really use a decent hardware store.

I knew that today was going to be a nap day, and after lunch, I did just that. It took about half a second for me to go from awake to asleep. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting through "Lullaby". It was the kind of book that was so bad I just wanted to have it finished, kind of like "All the King's Men". The only difference was this book was about a quarter of the length of "All the King's Men".

I wanted a simple dinner tonight and Richie actually proposed spaghetti. This should sit decently in my stomach. I didn't have any problems after 4 AM, but there was no sense in risking it. Tonight we watched Robin Williams's stand-up "Weapons of Self Destruction". It wasn't as funny as I anticipated but still had some good laughs.

Monday night's sleep went much better than Tuesday's. No waking up writhing in pain. And I woke up with the knowledge that today's class would be my last lesson. From here, I give my exam and return them and that's the show.

Before I could lesson plan, I needed to run to the market. Sozinho told me that he needed more detergent and I needed to buy a ream of paper. Apparently, when I said that I needed 400 sheets of paper, that was the school's cue to not go out and get a ream of paper. Fine. Once again, I realized that if you want something done right here, you better do it yourself.

So while I was at the market, I ran over to our colleague's photocopy shop. Sitting in the shop was a stack of paper reams. I told the kid that I wanted to buy a ream and he comes back with this nonsense: "I'm not authorized to sell this paper." This just about made my head explode. I told him "There's not an option here. I'm buying this paper. Elias (the colleague) knows about this." The fact that he didn't know about it -- that he was actually hundreds of kilometers away, in Beira -- made very little difference. I was getting this paper if I had to kill the kid. Luckily, it didn't come down to knives. He just gave me the paper. Success.

Back at home, paper in hand, I got to lesson planning. Today's lesson wasn't at all about English. It was all about the exam. I wanted to outline what the kids could expect on the exam, in terms of number of questions, distribution of questions, and types of questions. Yes, this would take 45 minutes.

Right after lunch, I went into school to give the lesson that I had prepared. It went shockingly well. The types of questions that I explained were kind of complicated -- having to do with word order, punctuation, and paragraph-making. We'll see how much sticks on the exam.

Oh yes, the exam. My master plan for this year was to give parts of National Exams for each of their three finals. For this last final, I wanted to give a complete exam that was given earlier in the year. This was especially masterful because 1) I wouldn't have to think of questions; 2) it would give the students a chance to take a full exam before actually taking it November; and 3) the closest place that a person could get this exam was more than a hundred miles away.

It goes without say that someone got their hands on the exam. So much for being masterful. The kid came over asking for some help with some questions. When I saw that he had the exam, I almost had a seizure. I couldn't let him have this. That would just be unfair. I told him that I needed some time with the exam. I'll hold on to it and help him tomorrow afternoon...after the exam. It was then that he may have realized that I'd be giving this exact exam for his final. Should be interesting.

After I dealt with this kid, Richie made a run to the market to buy a chicken and I ran to the office to make photocopies. The photocopies were the easy part. The computer full of viruses was more of a challenge. It turned on just fine, but the desktop never loaded. This is the second time I've seen this problem here, only this time, the stakes were higher. This computer was full of documents pertaining to National Exams. Okay. I threw thing in safe mode, grabbed my external hard drive, and saved everything, including the school's backside.

I came home just in time to cook dinner. For the first time in a while, we grilled the chicken. Sozinho cooked rice and made salad. It was all quiet delicious. After eating, we watched "State of Play", which will probably be the winning movie for this week. Very good. While we watched, I collated and stapled together all of the exams for tomorrow. And after the movie, I got into a new book, Dante's "Inferno". I am very poorly read when it comes to classics, and this one seems pretty good.

Wednesday was D-Day here. Final exam, emphasis on final. Two more hours of sitting in class, watching kids try to cheat, and it will all be over. In the meantime, my room had to be Fort Knox. There's no way Sozinho can get his hands on those exams. I'd like to say I trust him, but I only trust him about as far as I can throw him.

All said, it was a quiet morning. No lesson to plan, no market run to make. Richie had exams in the morning. He's in for a long day: exams all morning, plus more than half of the afternoon. I only added to his work load by having him help me proctor my exam late this afternoon.

My only job for the morning was getting my hands on the money that the students are supposed to put together for the exam. I have literally given them weeks to find five Meticais. That's it. Five. And yet, when I went to get money from one of the classes, only a third of the kids had given their money. How is that possible? I'm going to have to figure this out this afternoon.

Before I could give my exams, I had to watch over one of Richie's classes. It's really sad that the only people we can trust when it comes to this stuff are each other. But it's simple: we have higher cheating standards than everyone else here. This obviously frustrates the students, and yet, they keep on trying. Richie threw out his entire class because they were all acting like shitheads. My class eventually threw me out and got Richie instead, which was for the better because I wanted to kill most of those students.

In comparison, my kids were a breeze. Richie had one class and I had the other. I told them that if anyone cheats, Richie has full permission to give zeroes, and he is not in good mood. I think they got the point. Only one kid in his class had to be moved. When that final bell rang, the only thing I could think was, My work here is done. Sure, there's still some stuff to do, but for the most part, I'm finished.

With exams done, all I had to do was correct the suckers. There were about 100 exams to be corrected. I knew this wasn't a job for tonight -- it could wait until tomorrow -- but I did want to correct the exams of the students who help teachers here. It wasn't many, six or seven at most. Sozinho did shockingly well. If he does as well on the National Exam, he will easily pass.

Once word got out that I was correcting exams, students started coming in over in groups of three or four asking for their grades. So I graded on command. If the student showed up, they could have their grade. In all, about twenty students came over. It may have prevented me from eating my chicken dinner and watching "The Hangover", but it did make good dent in my corrections for tomorrow. As soon as the movie ended, I crawled into bed, dead exhausted.

I wasn't surprised that I slept well. Straight through the night until 6 in the morning. I figured that as long as I was awake, I could get corrections done. So I corrected all morning, right up until lunch time. Sozinho wasn't the only one to do well. In his class, 83 percent of the group passed. In the other class, a pathetic 55 percent passed. This from the letters/language group. Combine, they passed at a 72 percent rate, way better than the students from last year did on National Exams. Let's hope that everyone who passed this exam passes in November and some of the borderline kids can make the jump also. If that happens, I will feel really good about giving difficult exams.

There were only two things on my schedule for the afternoon lunch and napping, two of my favorite activities. It's amazing how tiring sitting and grading can be. More mind-numbing than strenuous. Regardless, by 2 o'clock, I was down for the count. The rest of the afternoon was spent working my way through some chapters of "Dante's Inferno". The descriptions of the circles of hell have been pretty sweet.

We broke back into our stash of filet for dinner, stir-frying it with some veggies. For our entertainment, we watched a pretty bad film called "Chloe". Won't be going back to that one any time soon. Knowing that we had a long day ahead of us, it was time for bed.

Richie and I were up and moving pretty early on Friday. Between our school schedules and financial needs, I feel like it's the first time in a while that we've traveled anywhere together. There aren't a lot more of these trips, two or three tops.

The travel day started out promising. We got to the river and instead of waiting for another person to get in the canoe with us, we paid an extra 5 Mets each to go now. From there, we thought we were golden. A Land Cruiser was just about to leave and was heading to Beira. That was fine by us: we'll take that to the crossroads. But all that glitters isn't gold. The dude screwed around in Mambone for an hour before we left. There goes our shot at breaking the record for getting to Vil.

In a strange way though, it may have been a blessing. I'd much rather wait in a Land Cruiser than at the crossroads, and the timing couldn't have been better. As soon as we got to the crossroads, we got a car that was heading to Maputo. And we didn't have to pay for it. Then, as soon as we got to the crossroads for Vilanculos, another car was heading to Vil. We happily paid to be in the sedan. We still managed to make it in under five hours. Funny how a five-hour travel day is an easy day now.

Once we arrived in town we had some time to spare. Another Volunteer wanted to meet us for lunch at New York Pizza, but she had to finish up at school. Sucker. We got some shopping done before heading over for delicious pizza lunch. It never fails to make us happy and full.

We had big plans for the evening, but before that, I needed a nap. I only fell asleep for fifteen or twenty minutes, but man did it help. In the hour or so that we had, four of us played "Phase 10", a great rummy-type game. We only got about half way through the game. If we have time, we'll finish tomorrow.

Our big plans for the night were watching rugby at Smugglers hotel. I know, kind of ridiculous. Besides it being an entertaining game, it was actually a good learning opportunity. One of our colleagues in Inhassoro (who was in town) played rugby at UCLA, so he was able to explain all the things that I hadn't picked up. Given America's love of violent, hard-hitting sports, it's kind of a surprise that more Americans don't like rugby.

After watching rugby, we split into two groups. One group, the tired group, heading home for the night. Meanwhile, a group of about six of us went out to a bar called Tropical to continue the party. And party we did. I knew exactly when I hit my breaking point, but another Volunteer (and one of my best friends here) didn't. By the end of the night, I ended up as babysitter, which was fine by me. I've been taken care of plenty of time in these situations. It all evens out. Once she was asleep, I fell asleep very quickly. And without the dreaded Spins.

I only got four hours of sleep Friday night, but at least it was good sleep. I woke up with a bit of a headache, but that should be expected. My friend, on the other hand, woke up unaware of what had happened for a good portion of the evening. We spent about an hour reconstructing her evening before she fell asleep.

On the other hand, I was up and moving. I knew at the other Vil house that there were plans for pancakes and ocean. I could definitely get on board with that. I got a sweet ride from one side of town to the other, saving me about twenty minutes of walking. One of the Volunteers made some pretty killer pancakes from scratch while we waited for the tide to go out.

A brief explanation. In most situations, one would wait for the tide to come in to go swimming. But on this section of beach, there isn't a lot of beach, just a lot of craggy rocks. There's not much point in fighting with the rocks. It's worth the wait to step on nice soft sand. Unfortunately, we waited a bit too long. The tide in Vil goes out forever. We had to walk almost a mile just to get to a decent patch of ocean. Once we got there, it was beautiful. The water isn't bathtub warm yet. And it was just cool enough to feel good under the hot heat of the sun.

Tired, sun burnt, and hungry, five of us went scavenging for food. We came across a take-away chicken place. In theory, take-away is Mozambican fast-food. In practice, not so much. We waited a good 90 minutes for our chicken. It was good chicken, but not worth the wait.

From there, Richie and I split off to head to the other Vil house. I had the keys and phone of the girl who I babysat for and we knew she would want these things back. But when we got to her house, she was nowhere to be found. We sat around for a while before finally getting in touch with her roommate. They didn't plan on coming back before dinner, which was fine because we had plans on meeting them for dinner.

The plan was to go to a place called Complexo Alemanha. We've been to this restaurant before, but just recently, they started serving pizza. We wanted to see how this pizza stacked up to New York Pizza. But by the time 7:00 rolled around, all of us were too tired and unmotivated to go anywhere. Instead, we ordered New York Pizza, which has free delivery. Don't judge me for eating pizza back-to-back days.

The rest of the night was, as expected, quiet. We drank socially, not gluttonously, and just talked while sitting in a tree house. It was a nice relaxing way to end the week.

Year 2 - Week 42: The Most Expensive Roach Motel

Did I do something wrong? Did I have a sign on my back asking for people to push my buttons? Whatever it was brought together many forces of evil -- drunk dudes, money requests, tailgaters, loud music -- which contributed to a fairly miserable day.

The day started out with a market run. Evening being on my own for the day, we didn't have enough food in the house for me to survive. As soon as I made it into the market, I was stopped by a clearly drunk man. My only questions was why he got started so late. After all, it was 8 o'clock in the morning. This guy starts speaking to me, in broken English no less, and starts asking me all sorts of questions. Eventually, he tells me that he's looking for friends. Quite frankly, I don't want any more friends here. I'm happy with the friends I have and I'm checking out in a couple weeks. Either way, I told him that he could come to my house to talk. He probably won't even remember the conversation.

The rest of the morning was blissfully quiet. I read a bit of "White Teeth" before preparing for lunch. After lunch, I needed to go back to the market to pick up some phone credit for our internet connection. 200 yards outside of the school, I was stopped by another clearly drunk man who also tried to speak English with me. He asked me if I wanted to walk to the market with him. "No, I really don't." And that was that.

Once again, I had no luck in the first moments of my market run. The first person I saw in the market asked me for money. Haven't people figured out, after two years, that the muzungus don't give money to people? Why even bother asking? I bought enough phone credit to survive a couple days and made my way home.

Whatever bad luck I had getting in the market decided to follow me out of the market. 100 yards out, I hear "blah blah muzungu blah muzungu". Of course, I turned my head to see who this was. I don't know why I bothered to look at these faces of evil. Instead of paying attention to them, I sped up my gait. Given that we Americans walk faster that any Mozambican, this should have been enough to ditch them. Then again, I didn't count on them literally running after me to walk with me. No problem, I'll just play The Ignoring Game until they leave.

Except they never left. Eight women and children followed me all the way to the school. I sped up, they sped up. I slowed down, they slowed down. All. The way. Back. Eventually, maybe 100 steps from my house, they said "Tchau". I didn't even bother paying attention.

Richie, meanwhile, spent the day hauling back to Machanga from Inhambane. He arrived home around 5:30. I had already started cooking dinner -- cheese steaks. It was a night for celebration: today, we are less than two months from being home. As usual, we celebrated with cake. We were so close to having the thing baked, then the power went out. No problem: I threw together a Dutch oven, which should be good enough to get the thing cooked. Naturally, as soon as it got hot, the energy got back on. At least we had cake. We finished the night with a couple episodes of "Sons of Anarchy".

Or so we thought we had finished the night. Apparently some other people had cause for celebration. The house behind ours decided that it would be a good night for a dance party. From 10 o'clock until at least 2 in the morning, music blared at wall-shaking volume. At 2, I gave in and grabbed the ear plugs I had in my bag. Ah, silence. I quickly fell asleep after that.

For the second week in a row, I was really happy not to have work on Monday. It would have been disastrous if I had to teach today. Even with the ear plugs, I didn't get a good night's sleep. They can stop the sounds beautiful, but they can't stop the early sunlight from seeping into the house. I stayed in bed for a couple hours reading "White Teeth".

By 9:00, I had been up for a few hours and I was hungry like no other. Obviously, I couldn't make eggs for breakfast, so I turned to our oldie but goodie -- French Toast. It should hold me over for the rest of the morning. While I waited until lunch, i kept on in the book.

I thought I had put yesterday's bad luck behind me, but apparently I was wrong. Evil manifested itself today in bad eggs. Of the dozen eggs that I bought yesterday, seven of them were rotten. Well that fuckin sucks. At least we had enough good ones for lunch.

The afternoon was wonderfully quiet. I spent a fair portion of it napping. I've never been so happy to have a power outage. It meant perfect silence. Once I awoke, I spent some solving cryptograms, at one point nailing ten in a row.

Other than the lack of cake, the night pretty much went the same way as last night. We made beans for dinner, and mercifully finished the season of "Sons of Anarchy". I have no idea how this show got a second season. I don't think I'll be watching it.

Not only was Monday night quiet, but it was also cold. After a few hot nights, I was so sure that we were done with cold weather that I put away my blanket. My bad. I pulled the blanket off my shelves and had a beautiful night of sleep.

The winter weather stuck around for most of the morning Tuesday. Beside the sound of rain falling on our roof, the only noise I heard all morning came from my parents on the other end of a phone call.

I spent a bit of the Tuesday morning lesson-planning. This is our last full week of school and there are still some things I need to get through. I've spent so much time on verbs this trimester that I've pretty much ignored other parts of speech. I wanted to at least cover prepositions before they take their exam. T

After two quick classes, I was free for the afternoon. So was Richie. And so was Ussene, one of our partners in crime. This never ends of well. I joked with Richie that we should go get tanked in the villa. He wholeheartedly agreed. We then roped in Ussene. They were ready to go immediately, but I wanted to finish the last chapter of "White Teeth" before leaving. Thirty minutes later, we were on the move.

The rest of the afternoon is mostly a blur. Over the course of the next couple hours, the three of us knocked off a case of beer. Just another Tuesday in Machanga.

We came home just in time for dinner. Before the drinking bonanza began, I bought a frozen chicken. While we drank, the chicken defrosted. We roasted it and it turned out okay. Not our best work, but given our state of sobriety, we didn't really care. We watched a movie which was so bad that I'm not going to bother mentioning its title, and went to bed.

Wednesday morning was once again quiet. And once again it was grey, cold, and rainy. It wasn't a good rain. This rain will make absolutely no difference in the level of our well, but at least it's not hot outside.


I prepared for class late in the morning, hoping that my students would come get me immediately after lunch. But after lunch, one hour became two and two became three and I was never rescued. Between classes, Richie came home and told me that my students were just sitting there. Fuckers. Whatever.

I later found out what was going on. They had some sort of meeting with the director and they were just waiting for him. The meeting -- as I should have expected -- ran late, which pushed back my class a little bit.

After class, one of the girls in that group told me that she had to go to Beira and would miss the exam. Nope, she's not. I gave her two options: she could take the test now or take it when she gets back. Shockingly, she opted for now. She spent the next two hours in my house taking the exam and didn't do too badly (by Mozambican standards). She still needs to improve a bit, but I think she can pass come November.

Once she was gone, Richie and I moved into dinner mode. We made spaghetti for dinner with a cheese sauce packet. For our entertainment, we watched "The Crazies". At least it wasn't the worst movie we've seen all week.

While I hung around Thursday morning, I was doing some stuff on the internet and listening to music. My computer was hurting. The sound wasn't good, it was processing slow. And then a small roach crawled out of one of the USB ports. This isn't the first time this has happened, but today I decided would be the last. I grabbed a screwdriver and went to work.

What I saw was only mildly disturbing. There were no fewer than ten little roaches inside of my computer. And one of the wires was pretty frayed. There was no putting it together. This computer is officially dead. It just couldn't hold out for these last six weeks.

I wasn't too stressed about it. I had everything backed up a couple weeks ago. All of my music and pictures are in tact. I only lost one document of value and I should be able to get all that information back.

It's funny. If this kind of week had happened last year, it might have thrown me over the edge. But being so close to the end, having had plenty of these weeks before, knowing that I can't have that many more, I can't be too worried.

Class went pretty well today. It was the same lesson as yesterday's -- prepositions of time. There have been at least two or three questions involving these prepositions on every national exam from the past few years. These should be free points.

Richie and I made a market run late in the afternoon. We weren't looking for much in particular. We mostly just wanted to kill an hour or so.

For dinner, we went with something new: cinnamon lentils. We have had lentils before and they're pretty tasty. I figured if lentils are good and cinnamon is good, then cinnamon lentils should be pretty tasty. They were mediocre. Eh, whatever.the night was saved with "Extraordinary Measures", pretty good (and PG) movie about a guy trying to find a cure for Pompe Disease.

The cold nights disappeared again, leaving us sweating at night. It didn't matter to us. We knew that when we woke up on Friday, we could say something for the first time in two years: "We're going home next month." Feels good. Feels right.

With a bounce in my step, I walked over to the market in search of beef. We wanted to celebrate. When I got to the butcher's, the kid working there told me the cow would be killed this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Wonderful -- honesty appreciated.


I came home and prepared my last lesson, once again on prepositions. I took a ball and can into the classroom and played "Where is the ball?" with my students. They caught on quickly, though they had a hard time differentiating "off" and "out of". I explained it at least three times. I think most of them eventually figured it out.

After class, Richie and I returned to the market, hoping that the cow would be dead. But no cow was to be found. As long as we were there, I talked to the butcher, telling him I wanted another two kilos of filet. No problem, said he, come back tomorrow around noon. No problem.

Good thing we still had some beef left over in the freezer. We defrosted our remaining filet and threw it in a very tasty (and easy to chew) stir fry. Our movie of the night was "From Paris With Love". I was skeptical, but it was really good. I spent the rest of the night in Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby", an easy-to-read novel.

Saturday picked up right where Friday left off: with my book and without filet. I had great hope on Satuday. Yesterday, I managed to turn on a different laptop that was in need of XP. I called one of my students from last year who had an XP disc. Great -- should be up and running in no time. I gathered my things and headed across the river to Mambone.

But some great force of evil decided to show itself once again. When I got to Mambone, the computer wouldn't turn on. Why? Why?! I came home with the discs, holding out hope that it would turn on eventually.

After lunch, Richie and I headed to the market. We got there at 12:40, keeping in mind The 40-Minutes-Late rule. When we arrived, the butcher was sitting around eating. "No cow, no meat. Come back later in the afternoon." Fine. As long as we were in the market -- and had a bunch of money with us -- Richie thought scotch would be a good idea tonight. I'm in.

The afternoon was spent trying to turn on this last laptop, but the thing wouldn't cooperate. At least there's still one functioning laptop in this house. Let's hope it holds out until we leave.

We put up beans late in the afternoon. I wasn't holding out much hope for filet, and we weren't going to eat it tonight anyway, given that we just had steak last night. Regardless, I went over to the market late in the afternoon and there it was: a dead cow. It was so freshly killed that the butchers were still pulling the hide off of it. I could have easily come back an hour later, but decided to watch.

There are a few things I learned from watching. One: A cow's stomach (or rather stomachs) is HUGE! Two: once you take its four stomachs out, there's not really a lot of cow left. Three: the steak that we so love comes right off the spine. And four: it was not as bloody as I expecting. Mind you, I missed the actual killing. I've seen that before, and the streets run red when a cow is killed. But once they get to the gutting and carving, it's a shockingly clean process.

Anyways, I came back home with another two kilos of filet. This should last us a good couple weeks. In the meantime, we had beans to eat tonight and they were tasty as usual.

While we cooked dinner, I got a call from my host mom. She has a new Trainee staying at her house. A Moz 15! Just another sign that we're almost done.

Then the scotch was opened. As soon as we opened the bottle, I got a call from a fellow scotch-lover in the states: one of my best friends Joe. It was an unexpected call, which are really the best the kind. We talked for a good while, which meant I had to play catch-up with Richie and Ussene.

After knocking off the bottle (and a beer), we came back home. Richie went right to bed. I knocked off the leftovers from dinner and quickly followed. Just another boring night in Machanga

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.