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!