Frisbees

Samantha and other Ultimate players in the Philadelphia area organized to collect Ultimate Frisbees for Mozambique! Family and friends carried them here over the holidays. Jesse distributed a Frisbee to each dedicated player from last year’s team. This year each of those students is going to teach primary school somewhere in the province… and hopefully start a team there. Some are going to teach in very remote areas - it’ll be fun to see this new Ultimate Frisbee movement grow. New students arrive to the Teacher Training College in February. I bet they’ll be some great potential Ultimate players in this new group too. Jesse’s hoping to organize tournaments!

We’re changing our post office box for this year. Now our address is C.P. 85 Xai-Xai. There will be no more C.P. 270.

Happy Holidays!!

Happy New Year! Best wishes to everyone!

For us, 2008 left and 2009 entered packed with memories.

Before Christmas, Phil visited! It was wonderful to spend time with him in Mozambique.

Then our whole family met in Tanzania for an amazing vacation of hiking, safaari, and beaches. One highlight was climbing Mt Meru - the hardest hike I've ever done, but worth it. We summitted as the sun was rising over Mt Kilimanjaro.


The beautiful beaches of Zanzibar stretched way into the ocean during low tide.

After Tanzania, Paul came to see Mozambique. We took a lovely, relaxing side trip into Swaziland too.

It was wonderful to be together and share these beautiful places and experiences. Now I'm ready to get home to Xai-Xai and soon meet my new students! Classes will probably begin in February.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even without classes, Jesse and I stayed busy this November, both in and out of school. Some highlights:

Jesse visited Russell, another Peace Corps volunteer who lives in a very rural site. They went on great hikes and saw this googly-eyed lizard!

I got to spend a week in Namaacha where I met the talented new group of Peace Corps volunteers. I felt competent to be participating as a “teacher” because just a year ago Jesse and I were in the same place for our initial 10-week training. Our host family is doing well and says hi. They know that their photos are floating around America!

We got together with Peace Corps friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, with approximations of all the standards, including stuffed chickens!

Trick-or-Treat!

Happy Halloween! Classes ended on the 31st. We invited students to trick-or-treat at our house and they were great! Here are some photos of their costumes.
The other big news is that we kind of have an English Resource Room now. Here’s a photo of all the wonderful books that finally have a home.
Thank you to everyone who voted and who worked on Barack Obama’s campaign! Everyone I pass gives me a pat on the back and personal congratulations for Obama's victory. Yay Amercia!
The rest of November will be full of different school activities for us like exams, discussing grades and preparing for graduation. We’re thinking of everyone! Thank you for your love and support!

JOMA and REDES to the beach!

Last Saturday, Jesse and I had a great time bringing members from our extracurricular groups to the beach. We had good discussions, the journalists interviewed the REDES girls, and then everyone had fun with beach activities!

It´s hot!

After many complications, Jesse’s journalism group published their first edition of the journal for the semester. A compilation of work done so far, it’s over 20 pages long!! The photo shows a few of the students who are particularly involved journalists – the woman in the picture is the student editor.

Jesse and a few other Peace Corps volunteers organized a regional meeting for us to get together last weekend and share our ideas. Here’s a photo of us there in case you forgot what we look like.

The next picture is not Mozambique, but Jesse and I are very excited because we received a report about Bangladesh Connections. The picture shows the nutrition initiative – our school scholarship recipients now also receive breakfast! I updated our Bangladesh Connections blog. If you’re interested, the address is http://bangladeshconnections.vox.com. The Bangladesh Connections website is http://bangladeshconnections.atspace.org.

Ultimate Frisbee, Timbila Festival and More!!

Jesse's Ultimate Frisbee team is good and preparing to challenge the team of another Peace Corps volunteer. We're still interested in connecting with more Ultimate Frisbees. Besides supplying the team for games and practices, we want to give team members a disc at the end of the year so that they can spread the game to through the rural areas of Mozambique where they'll be going to teach.

My REDES group interviewed the founder/coordinator of a community-based organization that works in the neighborhood of our school, Kuvumbana. They learned about the projects and services of this NGO and about how an organization works. Kuvumbana mostly works to support people living with AIDS and orphans.

My students were thrilled to recieve their penpal letters. (Thanks, Phil and Mandy!! ... Marcia is on the far right of the photo in white. Vasta is second from the left in brown.) We're thinking that the skills development of our REDES this semester can be computer literacy. We're going to learn how to type, and I'm showing the girls how to set up and use email. That will facilitate more exchanges - let me know if you'd be interested in corresponding.

We got to go to the Timbila Festival last Saturday. The timbila is an important instrument in Mozambican culture. It's made of wood over various sized balls to make the scale (hard, hollowed shells of a local fruit called massala). The music is perfect for Mozambican dancing, and it was fun to experience this celebration of music!

The festival was in the town of Quissico. There's a beautiful lagoon there, so of course we enjoyed a great hike. We were told (later) that people shouldn't go in the water because they might get eaten by crocodiles.