who i'll be living with for the next two years (not including the bat and rat)

so i don’t know how much i’ve actually written about yvonne (vonnie) contreras, but she’s a friggin baller. we’re not exactly sure how they found out about us, we’re almost certain they pulled some houdini magic slash interrogated our families and friends to find out exactly what we were like and decided that we would be the perfect match for each other! i’m pretty sure we’re the best housemate pair-up in the history of PC mozambique if not the world! so why do i say that?? because we are the exact opposite and exactly the same all at the same time and in perfect situations! haha cuz we like a lot of the same music (except that she likes country… she keeps saying she’s going to convert me, but i seriously seriously doubt that… and she just listens to it at night on her ipod before bed… thank goodness ^.^) we love watching tv and movies(we’ve watched FNL, weeds, how i met your mother, greys, glee, always sunny, and about 100 movies already), we love love love eating and love all sorts of candy(but even with candy if there’s a bag of an assorted mix, we usually like the opposite things and that also worst out perfectly!), and we are non-stop gamers! last i counted we had 22 different games that we play on a fairly consistent basis, and that’s not even including all the different card games we could be playing. so those are just a few of the ways that we’re similar, but the really awesome thing is how we’re complete opposites. the biggest one is that she likes to clean, and anyone who knows me knows how much i hate it. i hate hate hate doing dishes especially, and i don’t know that she actually likes it, cuz i don’t believe her when she says she does, but she doesn’t like to cook, or more that she doesn’t know really how, so i cook and am slowly teaching her how to, but she’s a master potato peeler and vegetable dicer btw, and she in turn cleans! it’s seriously one of the most glorious trade-off compromises to be made in life ever. so yeah von’s from california as well, central cali, and went to SD state, and she came to teach biology, but is only teaching one class of that… haha figures, but yeah she’s teaching 4 classes of physics and 2 more of english! the poor thing has to do three different subject lessons plans, and 10 actual lesson plans per week… YIKES! but she’s a trooper and she’s super “popular.” she pins it on having a big family, but we’re sticking to popularity. i think she gets more txt messages from the us than moz, and i think she’s gotten at least 8 packages just during the 3 months that we’ve been living together (not counting the 2months in training). and we’re not talking letters or little mailers, we’re talking big mamma jamma boxes every time packed with all sorts of goodies from food and candy to school supplies to more games! like i wrote last time, i’ve gotten 3, one of which i packed for myself… and i would be extraordinarily jealous except that i get to partake it all of its gloriousness cuz von’s super generous and she loves me = ]. oh also we’ve learned that she likes all things korean. i’ll cook random korean things and make really really korean things like cucumber kimchi and she LOVES it! haha it’s bizarre but hey i’m not complaining! she also mastered playing gong-gi in 2 days and i’m currently teaching her how to read and write korean and then hopefully teach her basic conversational korean and then we can totally talk about other ppl right in their faces in korean! haha jk, but not really cuz that would be super cool!!! ok that's about it, but as you can see, she's amazing and we're super excited to be living together! ok until next time~ byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

panda

we had bats, then moved onto rats, now all we need is a cat!

it all started with the incident of the missing tomatoes. we had gone to the market earlier that day, but when we got back from class there were only 3 of the 5 tomatoes on the shelf. i of course jumped to the conclusion that vonnie lost/ate them but being the highly non-confrontation person that i am let it go and didn’t say anything. then a couple of days later we walked into the house and i screamed when i saw a giant tail scurry off the counter and out of view. von was behind me and didn’t see it and decided that I was lying and tripping on malaria meds. i didn’t like being called a liar, but secretly i hoped she was right. then we started finding our missing produce all over the house. it was really gross finding half eaten tomatoes, onions and bulbs of garlic rotting away behind the counters and between the cement blocks and then von finally saw it scurry across the shelves one night. yeah not good… anyway so no major damage had been done and we just started putting our produce in the fridge and then it happened… I mean it musta been really really really hungry cuz it decided that coming into my room was a good idea. one night i got woken up by a gnawing noise in the corner of my room where there’s a desk and i have a large plastic storage bin. the storage bin is pretty hefty so i thought even if it was gnawing at it there was no way it would chew its way in and i was really tired so i decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. i thought HAH as long as it’s not getting into it and it can’t actually get to me(hopefully it doesn’t try to chew through my mosquito net… shudder) so the next morning i checked the outside of the bin and it was unscathed so i ignored it thinking the stupid rat couldn’t outsmart my bin. that night i heard it again so i sat in my bed and shined a flashlight and threw flipflops in that direction hoping to scare it off. it just so happened to start raining then as well so von woke up to put the buckets out to collect (she’s obsessed with it…) so she saw me with my flashlight in one hand and a flipflop in the other and a.thought i was crazy, and b.ignored me cuz collecting water is wayyyyyyy more important. when she came back from putting the buckets out she turned the light to my room on for me and went to bed. i was getting tired too so i threw my last flipflop at the bin in defeat when the rat came running out and went under my bed. i of course screamed and pulled the mosquito net back over me and tucked it under the mattress and put my ear plugs in and closed my eyes – i mean out of sight out of mind right? well after what i imagine was a couple hours later, the gnawing noise was coming from the bin again and there’s a chair between my bed and the bin. so I got outta bed and stood on the chair and was trying to peer down into the crack between the bin and the wall but i didn’t see anything… it was seriously starting to piss me off but i wasn’t about to start a rat hunt at 3am so i got back into bed and barely made it to the next morning waking up to every noise, one of which i thought sounded vaguely like foil… but when i got up to check the bin, again it was totally unscathed, and then i remembered the foil noise… there was only one thing in my room that had foil on it and it was this toothbrush disinfecting cover thing i got, but that particular item was INSIDE the bin. i honestly didn’t think there was a chance in hell, but when i pulled at the lid one of the corners wasn’t completely latched on and when i finally took the lid off sure enough there was the toothbrush cover thing and the plastic and foil wrapper ripped to shreds… gross… i rummaged through the rest of the bin to see if it got to anything else and it basically tore into everything at least once… hole in my toothpaste, holes in the bags of wet wipes that’ll probably dry out now, and holes in other random plastic bags… stupid rat… anyway so i cleaned out the bin and rearranged it so that it would shut completely and all our valuable foods are in the refrigerator. so it’s pretty much over, but since then he’s still gotten to a bag of powdered sugar, some kinda fruit we think is probably some sorta guava but too scared to try, and rice. ok i should go now cuz we don’t have energy at this moment cuz we’re having issues with the electricity company so it’s hot and i need to save my computer energy, but i’ll be writing about school and a special ode to vonnie soon = ]

byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

traveling panda back in action

i have oh so much to write about, but i think i’ll start with what i’ve appreciated the most since i’ve last written… packages! haha they have been glorious! it’s funny cuz the very first package i received was the one box i had packed for myself before i left the us so i knew exactly what was in it, but opening it up was still like christmas! i mean it was just stuff like school and kitchen supplies that i couldn’t fit in my luggage, but man getting a bag of halls watermelon flavored vitamin c drops was like getting a bag of caramel apple pops! i mean that’s how excited i was… oh so sad… the second time i got packages was when i got a christmas package from my sisters and a package from my parents. i learned a valuable lesson on why i shouldn’t judge a package by its shape and size! my parents had sent me a fairly large box of korean goodies, complete with different kroean food like gochugaroo(korean chili flakes), chocolate filled pepero, and gongi(korean game kinda like jacks)!!! thanks umma and abba! the second package was from my sisters and well it was… small… it was only a soft envelope mailer and when i saw it my heart sank a little… i was like really miray and migum? realllllly? this is it?? but then i opened it and i no joke ate those words and i did it happily cuz it was the greatest package everrrrrrr~ it had 2 recorded dvds, a flashdrive, a deck of cards and a couple of cards. the 2 recorded dvd’s had 6 glorious episodes of friday night lights and the season finale of top chef! i mean really as if we needed any more ‘hotness’ in our lives hoooo it was amazing~ but hang on that’s just the beginning! the flashdrive had 2 home videos of the fam, 10 episodes of the new season of how i met your mother, up and 14 episodes of GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~! unfortunately we weren’t able to watch any of it til just recently cuz i needed internet to authorize my computer to watch it cuz they were all itunes purchases and as you now know the internet didn’t work for a while, but as soon as we got internet we watched everything in pretty much one weekend! we declared yesterday glee day cuz we saw all 14 episodes in one day! and seriously it was unreal! SO GOOOOD! we can’t wait for more! ahhhhh tv’s so goood! oh and they sent a deck of scrabble slam! cards which is a super fun game! and then of course there were homemade cards from my bambo, his christmas tree by the way was amazing! so thank you thank you thank you! i love it all and can’t wait for more! ok now a few quick words about school… it’s well… school… haha well i teach 4 classes of 9th grade and there’s about 95-110 kids in each of those classes… it’s tough getting through to those kids just cuz theres so many of em, but when atleast one or two get it I feel accomplished! we also ended up taking over for a sister who teaches at the school cuz she’s been sick, so vonnie took her 11th graders, and i took her 12th graders, and man you would think that after 6-7 years of english they’d be fairly good, but… yeah… it was a rude awakening… but the sister is back now and i think she’s taking back the 12th graders, but we still have to split up the 11th grade classes, so i’m taking one of the classes, and vonnie’s taking two, but i don’t feel bad for her cuz she gave me the delinquent class and kept the two good ones for herself haha but at least now we get to lesson plan together so it’ll cut down on the work a bunch! ok well i think that’s about it for now, i have many more stories to tell you like the one about the rat being in my room, so another blog’ll be up soon I promise! oh and i got the mac facebook photo uploader thing so hopefully that works well and i can put pictures up easily! kk love and miss everyone! byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

p.s. can you believe it’s been 5 months??