Tempo de fome

So since getting back to site and school in mid January, I really haven’t done a whole lot except teach. I haven’t traveled at all, only one daytrip to nampula for medical stuff, but other than that I’ve been burnin the midnight oil for 2 and a half months! So this year I’m teaching 9th grade again and I followed my 11th graders from last year up to 12th grade. In 9th grade, compared to last year, there are way fewer standout students that already know a basic level of English and are really eager to learn more. I’ve also decided that I needed to go at a much slower pace than I did last year and I started the year off with the alphabet! You wouldn’t believe how many students don’t know the order of the alphabet and also the sounds of each letter even though it’s almost exactly the same in Portuguese… yikes. Honestly, as long as they can conjugate ‘to be’ in the present and past tense perfectly I will be a proud mama. With 12th grade, I have my kids from last year and I inherited one of vonnie’s classes, and let me tell you, I got JIPPED! I didn’t have anything to compare it to last year since I only had the one class, but this year teaching two of them, I realize how BAD my kids were and are! Von’s kids are friggin angels and always want to do extra work and ask questions and don’t talk, but my kids are NEVER quite, never wanna do anything, and don’t even appreciate the awesome things I do for them like review games and prizes… the only thing I had to compare them to were my 9th graders and yeah compared to a class of 120 fifteen year olds, 70 eighteen year olds seemed like heaven! But now I know better and won’t be letting them get away with anything! So the past few weeks have been jam packed with testing and proctoring other teachers’ end of trimester tests and it is so tiring. They are pretty much constantly cheating and cheating really poorly… and it has been so hot and you’re just sweating bullets in the classrooms and having to walk around and btw aisles that I can barely squeeze through… absolutely no fun. But it’s almost over and we just have lots of grading and grade entering left to do til the end of the trimester. So right now we’re nearing the end of tempo de fome, and it literally means time of hunger, because there is hardly any food. The only things we’re able to get at the market are tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and lately cucumbers. But we’ve been doing pretty well as far as meals go, and even added some new meals to our rotation, like now I can make a banging white cream sauce for pastas, but the real highlight to my culinary feats is my pancake and omelet making skills! I can make amazing pancakes from scratch now! When I first started out they were flat and rubbery, gross, but now they’re fluffy and delicious! But there’s some real worry about the amount of rainfall this summer because it just didn’t rain enough and now all anyone is talking about is how nothing is growing in there gardens. This means they won’t be able to feed themselves, and that there won’t be much being sold in the markets, also it means we’re gonna have a hell of a time getting water again… it is no fun having to live in fear of not having enough water to cook, shower, and esp drink. So hopefully (everyone do some rain dances) it’ll rain a bunch more before the summer ends! What else… ohhhh von, megan and I have perfected drinking sorry! Haha and it’s absolutely glorious! Now if I could only get my hands on sorry spin haha = ] also our friend sam has proven that the ‘win by development card’ strategy in settlers does work! It is something that I have seen many people attempt and fail miserably at so parabens (congrats) sam! Also my mom and miray are coming out and it’s right around the corner!!! Almost all the plans are now set and I seriously can’t wait! It’s going to take some arm-twisting to get my director to sign off on my vacation days again, but hopefully since it’s my family coming here to Africa, and also to Mozambique, he’ll be more… what’s the word… pleasant? Understanding? Lenient? None of those quite fit the sentiments I feel towards him = ] ok well that’s about it for me since nothing interesting is going on in my life, but do you guys realize that assuming I get to leave in December, I only have 8 ½ months left!! WAHOOO! Home home home home home!

Teacher panda