the LOST post

hey yall here’s the post that got lost so enjoy, but i also just got to my new house! it’s actually really cute and dillon’s house wasn’t ready so she’s staying with us for the first week, which in mozambican time means a month… hahaha we got to our house around 11:30 by limo service aka private chapa and then we were so hungry that we just kinda plopped our stuff down and walked out to find a place to eat. we found a bar across the street that’s super cute and ordered lunch, but it took 2 hours for the food to come out! so then we ate and walked back and decided to check out the internet place and they have 3 computers with internet and AIR CONDITIONING! oh it’s going to be glorious! Ok so I took a few pictures so I’ll put em up on facebook and I’ll definitely put up more once we get settled and clean the place up. Ok we’re dying of tiredness so enough for now but EEEEEEEEEEEE we’re HERE!!!!
we’re not even gonna do any cleaning or organizing tonite, we’re just going to make the beds kinda and then watch pulpfiction and ELF to kick off our holiday movie marathon! we’re gonna watch a christmas movie everyday til christmas! okok now i’m really done! love, me!

OHHHHHHHHHHH MANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!
it’s week 9/10 already and we have our site placements!!!!!
i’m moving to monapo, nampula!!!! it’s in northern mozambique and one hour from the beach and not just any beach, but ilha da mozambique!!!
oh man oh man oh man!! and i’m going to be living with this chick vonnie, who’s friggin sweeeeeet, and dillon’s only gonna be living 10 min away from us!!!! not to mention the other 6-7 awesome volunteers who’re gonna live within a 3-5 hour radius around us! oh man oh man oh man~ and vonnie loves playing games as much as i do and man it’s seriously going to be amazing!
as my sister has been saying… “i’m not convinced you’re in the peace corps and/or living in africa.”
it’s been a pretty incredible past couple of weeks as well. i’m sorry i haven’t been able to update more often, but the only place where we get reliable internet was down for the past two weeks! boooooooooooo i know… wow i feel like i’ve forgotten how to type… it’s actually really difficult. site visits were friggin amazing!!!! i visited tete with two other health volunteers and it was quite the trip. we got to ride on an airplane instead of a day long chapa ride, and eat airplane food (and i never thought i’d ever be looking forward to airplane food so much!) tete city was dry and dusty and desert like, but we stayed with friends of the volunteers there and it was friggin sweeeeeet. the family is from brazil and the dad works for a pretty big company and they have this amazing house with AIR CONDITIONING and the most unreal shower i’ve ever seen! it literally looked like a u.f.o!! and then they also made one of the most amazing dinners everrr! we started the night with caipirhinhas and then we had brazillian bbq’d steak, pork and chicken that’s been roasting over this fire pit and amazing garlic bread and uhhhhhhhhh it was delicious. the next day we left for zobue and man is it beautiful! it’s right on the border of malawi and surrounded by mountains. angie had to go to school during the day to grade exams, but i just walked around and hung out with the neighborhood kids. it was crazy how i was only there for 4 days and i had absolutely fallen in love with the kids there even though i could barely communicate with them! anyway then it was back to namaacha and model school started. oh model school… what to say about model school. it was an experience to say the least, but it was really fun. basically the kids at the secondary school are on break here, but they come in for an additional two weeks to learn from us. it’s set up to be very very similar to what our experiences will be like in our real schools, and that both scares and excites the crap out of me. i only had 20 kids max in my classes and it was already hard to manage sometimes. i’m apparently going to be teaching to class sizes of 90ish or more and with kids not having enough desks! YIKES! but at the same time i had so much fun teaching. i just need to get creative with how i present really really boring grammar points and find activities in which everyone can participate. so 2 years of teaching here i come!! oh and thanksgiving came a day early for us cuz we’re in mozambique and we can do whatever we want, but it was a great day. we found out where we were gong to be placed and then we had a glorious thanksgiving dinner! turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green beans and the most glorious dessert spread everrrr including my pineapple upside-down cake which was really really yummy! it was unreal to see the types of dishes ppl cranked out with the limited resources! oh and my cake… it turned out really well this time yay, but i forgot to tell you about the first time i attempted to bake this thing… i cooked a korean feast for my family on my brother’s birthday. i made bulgogi, chicken with gochujang and a fake cucumber kimchi and rice. it was really good considering the circumstances and like my friends said, never thought i’d be cooking a korean feast in mozambique and they never dreamed they’d be eating one! oh side note about the meal… i finally did the deed! i bought three chickens from my neighbor and she brought them over, and by brought them over i mean still alive and flapping around violently! so i invited tim and colin over and we each killed one and wow was it an experience. i won’t go into details but i’m glad i did it cuz now i know how it’s done and especially here in mozambique because you don’t know how fresh frozen chicken is, it’s safest to eat a fresh killed chicken so now when we get to site i’ll be able to do it. but yeah so i also tried to bake the cake and the caramel on the bottom totally burned and when it came out of the pan looked like someone had poured motor oil or tar on top of the cake. fortunately the cake part still tasted really good and burnt or not the rest of the cake also got eaten! my friends are troopers and know the key to my heart by eating all my food and telling me it was good even if it wasn’t~ and then for my brother’s birthday i had brought with me a small 2g flash mp3 player that i was gonna use incase i needed a battery operated mp3 player, but now that i know that i will have pretty regular access to power i don’t really need it and he loves music and i had already burned him a few cds and so i loaded it up with a bunch of rap and hip hop and oh man his face when he saw what it was?!?!?! it was priceless~ i’m really going to miss him!
man trying to fit 5 weeks into one blog is really challenging… esp since so much has happened… oh so pretty much all of our free time has been devoted to playing games! i’ve never played so many games in my life and i love games, but we’ve been playing cards(spades, hearts, pinachle, skipbo, uno, p&a yeah pretty much everything), liar’s dice, settlers, catchphrase, telephone pictionary (which is one of the funniest things i’ve ever encountered), ping pang pong and really the list goes on and on!! it’s been a really fun time just getting to know everyone here and i’m really sad to have to leave training and all the awesome friends i made here, but at the same time i am sooooooo excited to go to site and start what i really came here to do! swearing in ceremony is on tuesday and then we leave for nampula on wednesday so this will definitely be my last update from namaacha! oh yeah word on the street is that there’s an internet place right across the street from my new place so hopefully i’ll be updating more regularly and maybe even be able to skype too! i leave yall with my new address just in time for the upcoming holiday season!

PCV Esther Gweon
Corpo do Paz
Avenida rua dos Continuadores no 24a
C.P 526
Nampula, Mozambique

but if you are going to send me stuff some rules to remember… packages get lost, and by lost i mean stolen, all the time, so on the packing list/insurance thing you never want to write what you really put in the package or the real price. so for example if you’re sending me movies and candy, you can write teaching aids and spices and dumb down the price to like less than 5 dollars each… also they say it helps when you write religious remarks all over the package! no joke! for example write “jesus saves” and “god loves you” all over the package and they usually leave it alone. hahaha it’s funny just even writing about that. it’s even funnier when you see the packages arrive here and some parents over do it, but they made it here right?? ok that should do it - i love and miss everyone so much!!

HERE I GO!!!
Panda

YAY I'M NOT A TRAINEE ANYMORE!!!

so i had this great blog written and ready to go, but the computer is not cooperating and won't read my flash so i can't upload it now, but i still wanted to blog one last time from namaacha!! today we had our swearing in ceremony at the us ambassador’s house and it was really great. we're finally really volunteers and not just trainees!! yayyyyyyy!!! anyway so tomorrow i'll be leaving for nampula where we'll have a 2 day conference meeting with out supervisors and whatnot and then off to my new house in monapo!! more details to come on that whole thing soon i promise, but i love and miss everyone so much and there's gonna be an internet cafe just across the street from my house so i'll be updating WAYYYYY more once i'm settled in!!

love,
me ^_^

ps. my new address just in time for the holidays!!!
you know what to do!! = ]

Esther Gweon, PCV
Corpo da Paz
Ave Rua dos Continuadores no 24a
CP 526
Nampula, Mozambique

a few pointers, never write the real price of anything you're sending and never write what you're really sending cuz then they will get stolen... boo... so if you send dvd's for example, you can say they are 'teaching aids' or if you send candy you can say 'spices'! oh and i guess if you write religious sayings on the outside of the box they have a better chance of making it! haha i know how funny right?? so "Jesus saves" or "i love God" or something...
kk gotta go but seriously send me stuff! haha!

Rain, rain go away come again… after I’ve left Mozambique!

So rainy season definitely started and it sucks. I think I’ve been spoiled by the perfect California weather, so it’s super hard to adjust to cold, rainy, muddy, gloomy, windy weather. Ok that part is actually not that bad because I have an awesome rain jacket, rain boots and an umbrella, so the part that really gets me is when I’m sleeping, or not sleeping. As you may have seen in my pictures, I have a tin roof and a giant tree that hangs over that roof. Well when it rains, I pretty much hear every single raindrop and it wouldn’t be all that bad if they were normal small raindrops that fall softly on the roof and make light pitter patter, but no they are monster golf ball sized drops that thud against the tin and they are loud! And then when the rain gathers on the tree and falls on my roof it’s like a land mind blowing up and it wakes me up and scares the crap out of me because I was probably dreaming about the landmines here and getting limbs blown off... So when it’s raining I’ve had to start putting ear plugs in just to get some peace and quiet during the night. And anyone who’s ever lived with me knows that I am the heaviest sleeper in the world. There’s a reason why nick calls me the hibernating panda bear because I can sleep through California earthquakes, new york city trash collectors and sirens!! So you know if I’m complaining that I can’t sleep because of how loud it is, it really is loud. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon enough seeing as that I’m just now starting to tune out the lil wayne blasting at 5am and the roosters and dogs barking at all insane hours.

So we finally got our site visit arrangements, and I’m heading up north to zobue, tete! It’s a city that’s up in the mountains of tete and right on the border of Malawi. It’s supposed to be absolutely gorgeous and you’re supposed to be able to see all sorts of cool things in the “sky night.” My friend Dillon and pretty much everyone here is slowly starting to lose their English skills… yikes! The other day I was trying to tell Miray something and wow I just could not get the words out and I think in the end I made up my own word! I think I’m getting so used to making up my own words in Portuguese that I’m just doing the same now for English! Oh and speaking of the “sky night,” I’m sorry but we definitely don’t sleep under the same sky! I know that people always say that even when you’re far away you’re all sleeping under the same sky, but dude my sky is wayyyyyyy better than your sky!! When it’s a clear night here, which is rare these days with all the rain clouds, but when it’s clear, the stars are friggin ridiculous! There are so many and they’re so bright that I feel like I’m standing in a simulation room starting at a fake poster or something. And if it’s that beautiful here I can’t imagine just how beautiful it’s going to be in tete! I wish I could take pictures of just how amazing it is, but it’s the one thing that won’t capture on my camera!

I leave u with one last story about my brother Eduardo. I was doing my laundry the other day and after arguing with him for about 15 minutes that he wasn’t allowed to help me cuz I needed to learn how to do laundry on my own, he settled on just sitting next to me so we could conversar. Well let me back up and tell you a little about the Mozambican culture of “dating.” Mozambique is very accepting of polygamy, and many men have multiple wives and girlfriends and it’s completely legit. We hear of men with multiple wives and guys with several girlfriends and everyone is “seemingly” happy. Well during my laundry sesh, which sucked by the way thanks for asking, I asked Eduardo why he didn’t have a girlfriend and he said because he was still a child and because he wanted to focus on studying and become a teacher first before finding a girlfriend! He’s 19 by the way and a good lookin kid cuz our neighbor totally wants to jump his bones! I almost want to believe in santa clause and the easter bunny again! He then proceeded to laugh and tell me that none of my clothes were clean…

With lots of love,
Esther

Ps. Today during our exams, it was like christmas because about 40 letters and packages arrived for everyone and shocking none of them were for me… ahem ahem hint hint!!!!!!!! Here’s my address again just incase you missed it the last time = ]
Esther Gweon, PCV
c/o U. S. Peace Corps Mozambique
AVENIDA ZIMBABWE 345
MAPUTO
MOZAMBIQUE

mama's cookin~

so i’ve figured out the key to african women’s cooking! it’s having hands like leather! my mae’s got the toughest hands known to man kind! and not like calluses, but she could probably stop a bullet with them!! she doesn’t need pot holders, peelers, or cutting boards (i’m sorry miray, you would never survive here, nor would they ever let you in with any of your cutting boards! i’m pretty sure they’re illegal here because i’ve yet to see them being sold anywhere. they probably confiscate them at customs along with land mines! cutting boards are mozambican enemy numero uno! so don’t bring any! but ps will you send me some?? the thin plastic ones from bbb would be awesome~). anyway yeah my mae’s got this giant knife that’s as dull as a butter knife and yet she can cut a tomato perfectly with it. it’s ludicrous! i mean she dices tomatoes and onions into perfect little cubes in her hands! take that hubert keller!! if my mae was on top chef doing the prep work relay race she would woop everyone’s butt at dicing vegetables!! and the no potholders thing drives me crazy!! last week she was boiling water in a kettle, and mind you none of the pots, pans, kettles have oxo heat proof silicon handles, everything is metal, and pouring out the water, she was trying to put the kettle back on the stove, but it lost balance and fell to the floor. i’m all like trying to use my shirt to pick up the kettle, but she just grabs the dang thing and puts it back on the stove with her bare hands!!!! IT WAS BOILING SECONDS AGO!!! even using my shirt sometimes it feels like its going to melt the skin right off my bones and she does it with her bare hands! it’s crazy!

anyway a month has now gone by since we’ve been here which is the craziest feeling ever! honestly being able to survive here makes me think i could do anything! ok so that’s a bit of a reach but u get the idea~ but i feel like i haven’t really written about what i’ve actually been doing here… for the most part we’re in “class” from 7:30 to about 4-5. so i get up at 6am every morning! and it doesn’t hurt! haha i never thought this day would come, but yeah i’m in bed these days by like 10pm! i mean it helps that there’s absolutely nothing to do here, and that we have 7pm curfews, but still its just so not me! anyway so yeah classes consist of portuguese, how to teach, and cross culture training. so yeah that’s the day-to-day stuff, and my portuguese is really coming along, to the point where i can argue in portuguese! haha confrontation seems to follow me around everywhere i go! man i love it! haha im jk i really don’t but yeah i’m excited that i’ll soon be able to tell off the random mozambican men that make fun of my rainboots in portuguese! this past week we also had two days of agriculture training! it was actually the most interesting training we’ve gotten here! i’m totally a gardening expert now! i can’t wait to get to my site and make a garden! it’s unreal how easy it is, and how much they can actually do! a small ¼ acre of permanent agriculture gardening can feed a whole mozambican family! i mean it’s friggin mind blowing! this system can seriously solve the worlds hunger issues and maybe even world peace at the same time! i’ll write about it more next time maybe once i make my own permagarden at site but yeah more americans need to garden more. it could save this planet!

yesterday was halloween, oh americans and our holidays, and we of course also celebrated! we got permission to throw a mini halloween party that was actually really fun! we invited all of our host siblings just so that they could kinda see what halloween is like, and we had jack-o-lanterns and candy and music and games and it was pretty great. and the costumes! i’ve seen some of the best in my life and we’re in friggin mozambique! i mean even me! i’m so not into the whole halloween thing and yall know i just don’t try that hard, and i still didn’t this time, but the costume pretty much found me! my friend ann found this sweet traditional chinese shirt at the market here and so i wore that and went as chun li from street fighter! i mean i looked legit! the hair was the hardest part but i think i got it just right. i’ll put up pics soon! it was so much fun and then we got our curfew extended to midnight so we all went to this sweet bar and had a few brewskis and danced and it was a good break away from our new hard to get used to mozambican lifestyle.

k i think that’s about it~ next weekend we go on site visits so i prob won’t update for a few weeks but you’ll get to hear all about what my future site here may be like! miss everyone so much!!

panda

ps. oh candace... you ask me that as if i could change that at will... don't u know that i'm like the worst writer on this planet? it's just not my style i'm sorry... but for you i suppose i could make an effort!

pps. also putting pictures up on here takes WAYYYYYY too much time, so i've decided to make albums on my facebook page instead! it was so much quicker so please view there, but for some reason you can't find me or the album let me know!

all things liquid are better

so i’ve pretty much determined that all things in liquid form are better (even meals… sigh). i’m really trying hard to embrace non liquids but it’s just really hard… i mean water! water is so good! i’m not really talking about water specifically here but water is the base for it all so yes i love and miss water so much. drinking as much water as i want, running water to wash my hands with, running water to shower with, water is great. don’t take your water for granted! ok so anyway i’ll start with conditioner. i purchased solid conditioner from lush and it’s just ridiculously hard to use. and i don’t even know if its good cuz the couple times i’v used it i don’t think it really worked out. it’s hard when you’re standing stark naked in your outhouse shivering from the cold and keeping an eye out for uninvited guests (frogs, cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes) in your bathing area, to get some in your hand and try to get it into a lather. so i said to myself ‘yeah dude i’m in africa i can rough it and not use conditioner… that lasted about a week because when i didn’t use conditioner my hair wasn’t soft and got tangled and it was dirtier quicker! i was feeling like i needed to wash my hair everyday! that’s just not possible! i mean i don’t even do that when i do have running water showers! so yeah i caved and bought wayyyy overpriced conditioner and it is seriously a universe of a difference… oh conditioner how i love thee. my hair is silky smooth again and lasts for like 3 days~ the less time i have to spend in my bathroom the better! the next is liquid soap. hand and body. bar soaps SUCK. SUCK SUCK SUCK. and i use it up so quickly! and again the whole lathering thing… so hard when there’s not running water over it. trying to balance soap and the water cup and still trying to get everything to lather? yeah totally awesome. the other totally annoying thing about bar soap and not having a real bathroom is that you have to let the soaps dry before you can store them again… which is easier said than done… yeah when we went to maputo to buy phones we were in a department store and using the bathroom and washing your hands with running water? GLORIOUS!!! i went to my friend donna’s the other day for lunch(who made us awesome mexican food with tortillas from scratch) and she bought liquid soap so i got to wash my hands twice with her pouring water on both my hands!!! oh the simple things in life~ next? laundry detergent… blue liquid fresh scented tide in the orange containers. why oh why do you not live in mozambique? i brought a few ‘sink packs’ and i washed my undies in that, but everything else? you guessed it – bar soap. they do have powder laundry detergent here, but my family said that it’s too harsh for clothing so to use bar soap instead, but i think i may have to switch to the powder even if it ruins my clothes cuz my ‘clean’ clothes just don’t smell or feel clean. as this is my ode to liquids, i won’t mention the washer and dryer, but you get the point… so yeah all my laundered clothes are stiff with soap still left in it because getting all the soap out of it would just require so much clean water and it’s just not practical… so yeah i’m trying to not think about how nice clothes feel when they come out of the dryer… the warm soft fresh smelling awesomeness of freshly laundered clothes… yeah maybe just one last moment of silence for the death of my clothes………………..

ps. My family will tell you, but quite contrary to my ranting in this entry, I’m actually super happy and absolutely loving it here!! Every single one of my family members has mentioned that I sound surprisingly upbeat so don’t worry!! Haha

pps. As I said earlier I did buy a phone so call me if you can afford it!! Skype is pretty cheap and there’s also a website called www.nobelcom.com that sells really cheap phone cards! So call me anytime!!! The country code here is 258, and my number is 822.948.194!!!

ppps. The elections are this coming Wednesday here in Moz, and the cell service has been really horrible, where we don’t have any kind of service for like entire days, so if you call in the next week and you don’t get through “it’s not you it’s me!” haha

love,
panda

as promised more pictures~

all the moms greeting us as we arrive to namaacha


i couldnt turn the picture over but this is my room... not a great picture sorry ill try to get more but yeah u get the idea~ = ]

BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

namaaaaaaaacha

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!

greetingsh americanosh from namaacha(best said with a newyakuh accent), mozambique! i’ve now been away from home for 3 weeksh and in namaacha for 2 weeksh! so far it hash been an unreal experiensh. let me introdush you to my family firsht! i live with minha mae (my mom) essineta, and my brother (technically he’sh my mae’sh step grandshon, but i just call him my brother ash to uncomplicate my already very complicated mind) eduardo. they’re both super chill, laid back and are unbelievably warm and welcoming. portuguesh has been going great. luckily my spanish really ish helping a lot and after jusht 2 weeksh already feel like i can form sentenshesh fairly well, but i still have a long way to go before i can be stranded in a small village all by myshelf! ash you have probably notished i’ve mishpelled a lot of wordsh by adding ‘sh.’ that ish becaush here in mozambique when the ‘s’ ish in the middle or end of a word and not between vowelsh, you say it with a ‘sh.’ it’sh pretty aweshome. speaking of aweshome, i have the besht language group everrrr! it’sh made up of our professor, nelson, and then my fellow trainees, camille, tim, allison, amanda, timotheo(we had two tim’sh so we had to change one of their namesh, but he lovesh it! he’sh also my soulmate here~(sorry colin ur just the p2) cuz tim was the other madagascan that got relocated here and his phone number is one digit off from mine, AND his birthday is the day before mine! crazy freaky coincidencesh plush we’re both aweshome!) and me! we pretty much spend half our lessonsh laughing becaush our teacher is the MAN, someone will do something ridiculous, or in my case, the most ridiculoush thingsh happen to me. (yeah ok quick side story… i’ve had a kid come up to me and point a plastic gun to my head and shoot, a man selling stuff in maputo come up to me and make fun of me being asian first, and then make fun of my rain boots, which are aweshome by the way thanksh migum = ], and then call me ridiculoush asian obshcenities, and then try to sell me stuff, ash my friendsh were dying laughing, and then some random middleshchool girl came up from behind me to hug me and tell me she loved me… but it was all made better when a random kid that’s like 3yo charged towards me, but then just stops right at my legs and then held my hand and passeared the rest of the way with me. it was pretty aweshome~) we alsho already have the most amazing side group project in the worksh so be on the lookout for that! besides language we alsho have a lot of group seshionsh where we learn more about the culture here, teaching skillsh, and about HIV/AIDSh. the food has been pretty great! i really wash expecting to have to do a lot of adjushting, but i mainly eat eggs, bread, rice, chicken, potatoes and this amazing cucumber, tomato, and onion salad. i’ve had a few specialty dishesh here and there with local produce, but yeah it’sh been great! oh and i know you’re thinking wow that’sh a lot of carbsh, and yeah it really ish, but i alsho walk what feelsh like 5 milesh a day. they LOVE LOVE LOVE to passear here, which basically means to wonder. so even for some of our language classesh, we’ll passear down to the mercado(market) and talk to the vendorsh and just convershar(converse) along the way! what elsh can i tell yall about… ohhhh… ohhhh… the rooshtersh… oh the rooshtersh… well a. they are EVERYWHERE… and when i say everywhere i really mean everywhere… im pretty sure there are more rooshtersh here than mozambicansh! and i was lead to believe my entire life that they only cry at sunrise, but no… no no no… they cry at 6pm, 3am, 8pm, midnight, 11am, anytime they see fit! they’re going during class, while im trying to sleep, when we’re eating, when im on the phone… ALL THE TIME! and we have a hen – she’s mad cool, and when we got her i named her donna becaushe she’sh mad chill but crazy popular and bringsh all the rooshtersh in the hood to our yard hahahaha. love and missh you donnaroooo! man i could go on and on with all the storiesh but i don’t want thish to get too long so i’ll save some for my next entry! i can’t believe i’ve only been here 2 whole weeksh! feelsh like i’ve been here a lifetime already! i leave you with picturesh from the firsht two weeksh here with more to come!

with lotsh and lotsh of love,
panda
(ps i promise this will be the only entry with the “sh’s,” and don’t forget to shush your local shusher! SHUSH THE SHUSHER!!!!!)


all packed up... well kinda...


the beautiful sunset view from our hotel in maputo~

real real safe~ one of the modes of transportation fron maputo to namaacha!


my house~

ok so there are a lot more pictures but it's taking too long to upload so i need to find a better way to do this! but love you and more stories soon!!

noooo... africa?

as i re-read my last post and began writing this one, i realized again just how terrible a writer i am. i’m thinking maybe i should just post a link from this page to another volunteer’s page… eh whatever you’re stuck with me!
so anyway… I’M IN AFRICA! IN AFRICA!!!!!!!!!
yep that’s right folks, after 2 years i’m finally here! although… i don’t even know if i can technically say i’m in africa when i’m staying at a waterfront hotel in the capital city with a pool and air conditioning!
i guess the story is that there’s a hotel here that the peace corps always uses, that’s well… not as great according to the past volunteers and staff, but that hotel somehow lost or overbooked the reservation of 70ish rooms, so they had to put us up in a much much much nicer hotel! but hey i mean i’m not complaining and it’s definitely a nice way to get over the jetlag and injections. i’m now up to 5 shots, but i have no idea what i’ve gotten… they just kinda shoot you up with whatever it is they think you need, then you’re on your merry way! i also just popped my very first malaria pill so i’ll let you know how that goes! not gonna lie still pretty psyched about those side effects!
so orientation today was pretty standard- safety precautions and procedures, medical issues and instructions, meeting our training staff and portuguese teachers, oh and we got our training info. our schedule for the next 10 weeks is insanely busy! from learning portuguese to how to be a teacher to living with a host family… i’m getting tired just thinking about it (or maybe that’s just the jetlag), but man am i excited! so we leave tomorrow for training in namaacha so i may not be able to post til training’s over, but i’m sure i’ll have much better stories to tell at that point!

love and miss everyone so much!
panda

Get outta here?!? No but really, GO!

so i meant to blog much sooner, but shocking i procrastinated til the very last minute... and i mean the very last minute! i'm already in philly for staging and it's been so much fun meeting the whole team, or at least like 20 out of 65 of em, finding out a little more information, but still not much, and finally knowing that after 2 years it wasn't all a dream and i'm really really going! so as my family has so kindly pointed out, i've been pretty vague on the details of my departure so here it is.
i got to philly monday night, staging today, and we leave at 3am for JFK on buses! it's gonna be just like college on academy buses! they're accounting for bus breakdowns and tire trouble, but really it's only going to take us like 2 hours max to get there so then we're gonna be at jfk from 5am til 11:30am when our flight leaves for johannesburg. then after 15 hours we'll arrive in jburg and wait another 4-5 hours for our flight to maputo, mozambique! we got our government passports and government debit cards and it's pretty awesome!! we'll be in maputo for 3 days getting situated in the country, meeting our in country staff and getting shots! lots and lots of shots! oh and malaria pills!!! everyone knows how excited i am about those! haha ok side note on the malaria pills... apparently when you take em everyone reacts differently to them, but some people have really vivid dreams, hallucinate and get delirious! i mean i thought waking up from anesthesia when i got my wisdom teeth pulled was gonna be the closest i'd get to drugs, but this could be it yall! trippin on malaria pills wooooo! haha
ok anyway then after our 3 days in maputo, we go down to namaacha, which is a 2 hour bus ride from Maputo, to meet our host families! we'll live with them for the next 3 months as we go through training to learn the language, culture and teaching skills specific to each field. i hear we pretty much have no access to the outside world during these 3 months, but i'll try to let everyone know i'm alive!
also pc gave us a letter to send to family and friends explaining how to contact and send us mail and CARE PACKAGES for the first three months so here it is!

_________________________________________________________

Dear Families & Friends,

Greetings from the Mozambique Desk in Washington, D.C. It is with great pleasure that we welcome your family member to the 2009 Mozambique training program. During the past year we have received many questions from Volunteers and family members regarding travel plans, sending money, relaying messages and mail, etc. As we are unable to involve ourselves in the personal arrangements of Volunteers, we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance by providing specific examples of situations and how we suggest you handle them.

1. Irregular Communication. (Please see #3 for the mailing address to Peace Corps' office in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique) The mail service in Mozambique is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service; thus, it is important to be patient. It can take two to four weeks for mail coming from Maputo to arrive in the United States via the Mozambican postal system. From a Volunteer's site, mail might take 1-2 months to reach the United States. Sometimes mail is hand carried to the United States by a traveler and mailed through the U.S. postal system. This leg of the trip can take another several weeks as it is also dependent on the frequency of travelers to the U.S.

We suggest that in your first letters, you ask your Volunteer family member to give an estimate of how long it takes to receive your letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often you will write to each other. Also, try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows he/she has missed one. Postcards should be sent in envelopes--otherwise they may be found on the wall of the local post office!

Volunteers often enjoy telling their “war” stories when they write home. Letters might describe recent illnesses, lack of good food, isolation, etc. While the subject matter is good reading material, it is often misinterpreted on the home front. There is a Peace Corps medical officer at the Peace Corps office in Maputo. In the event of a serious illness, the Volunteer is sent to Maputo and is cared for by our medical staff. If the Volunteer requires medical care that is not available in Mozambique he/she will be medically evacuated to Pretoria, South Africa, or the United States. Fortunately, these are rare circumstances.

If for some reason your normal communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member for an abnormal amount of time, you may want to contact the Office of Special Services (OSS) at Peace Corps Washington at 1-800-424-8580, extension 1470. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call OSS immediately, so that we can inform the Peace Corps office in Maputo. Tell the operator your name, telephone number, and the nature of the emergency and the Duty Officer will return your call.

2. Telephone Calls. The telephone system in Mozambique is relatively good and service in and out of Maputo to the United States is mostly reliable. In the interior of the country, where most of the Volunteers are located, phones are fewer in number and of decreased reliability. Volunteers do not have residential phones; however, they have the opportunity to make and receive international calls through public phones or personal cell phones that can be purchased locally. They will be able to inform you of the actual telephone numbers once they arrive at their permanent sites in the country.

The Mozambique Desk maintains regular contact with the Peace Corps office in Maputo through phone calls and email. However, these communications are reserved for business only and cannot be used to relay personal messages. All communication between family members and the Volunteer should be done via international mail or personal phone calls.

3. Sending packages. Parents and Volunteers like to send and receive care packages through the mail. Unfortunately, sending packages can be a frustrating experience for all involved due to the high incidence of theft and heavy customs taxes. You may want to try to send inexpensive items through the mail, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. We do not recommend, however, that costly items be sent through the mail. Even though many Volunteers choose to get local post office boxes, you may always use the following address to send letters and/or packages to your family members:

Esther Gweon, PCV

Corpo da Paz/U. S. Peace Corps

C.P. 4398

Maputo

Mozambique

It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed more frequently. For lightweight but important items (e.g. airline tickets), DHL (an express mail service) does operate in Maputo.

If you choose to send items through DHL, you must address the package to

Esther Gweon, PCV

c/o U. S. Peace Corps Mozambique

Avenida Zimbabwe 345

Maputo

Mozambique

(The phone number for the Peace Corps office in Mozambique is 258-21-49-9082, as DHL will need this information).

For more information about DHL, please call their toll free number, 1-800-CALL-DHL, or visit their web site at www.dhl.com. Other courier services may operate in Maputo; DHL is only one possibility. Shop around to find the best prices and service options.

We hope this information is helpful to you during the time your family member is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique. We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline. Please feel free to contact us at the Mozambique Desk in Washington, D.C. if you have any further questions. Our phone number is 1-800-424-8580, ext. 2331 or 2332, or locally, 202-692-2331 or 202-692-2332.

Sincerely,

Fernando Moyle, Country Desk Officer

Mozambique Country Desk

Peace Corps

___________________________________________________

i'll be getting a new address once i get to my permanent site in december, but til then send me lotsa letters and goodies! (but maybe no more caramel apple pops! haha i'm covered! thanks donna and nicole!!!)

anyway it's almost already 1am now so i gotta go repack my bags, shower and be on my way so a big thanks again to everyone who came out to celebrate with me in ny and in la, and for all the emails/phone calls/msgs and the many many awesome presents! i'll be sure to take as many pictures as i possibly can and upload them for everyone to see! love and miss everyone so much already and seriously come visit if you can!

lotsa lotsa love, panda