It seems that I have trouble traveling and writing at the same time. Long time between entries for quite a while now - but a lot is being accomplished.
On Thursday, I watched more lessons. It's interesting watching future teachers give their first lessons and making the same mistakes that I made, then be eager to hear what it is that they did wrong and could do better. Similarly, it's wonderful to get ideas and be motivated to try new things from the very same people who think and feel that they don't know how to teach.
One of the Michael's (there are 4 of them) taught a lesson as "Futureman Will", teaching - of course - the future tense. He had a full costume and act all prepared for the day, complete with enthusiasm. Chioma made a dietary "wheel" from paper and inserted the names of nutritious foods into the wheel with the help of students. Jason brought his students outside to make a DNA double-helix in three dimensions, from students joining hands. Courtney similarly brought his students outside, but as he's an English teacher, they acted out several action verbs, like run, jump, throw and catch. Jing (?) have a lesson on likes and dislikes, and had the students use the information in about 5 different ways (3 more than I thought were possible). Makes me really wonder why we don't have a midservice teaching training to share experiences and actually give lessons in front of each other.
On Friday, the class I was watching was full of students who wanted another English lesson during a free period that they had. So I gave a short lesson and realized how uncreative it really was. I should definitely start planning lessons again, instead of being content with the fact that I'm there and I can make it up as I go along. It's a good experience, for sure, to be able to walk in and teach, but not that I've over-planned and under-planned, I should try to find the balance in between.
After giving a session on gender equality in the classroom, we gave the trainees s'mores which they thoroughly enjoyed - it's amazing how one bag of marshmallows can suffice for 39 lost Americans. Later, we went out to the bars and celebrated the end of the first week of teaching for the trainees. I think their group is a lot less close than our group is - but then again, is that relaly the point of being a volunteer? It's an interesting question that's always up for debate.
At about 2:30 in the morning, we met a fairly important man in the British volunteer organization VSO. He talked with us for quite a while, while we wondered why he was out at such an hour.
SPeaking of famous people, we even met Mia Coutos (a famous author), who gave a session on Mozamican history. It was a wonderful experience and I even got to pick his brain for about 20 minutes. He's wonderfully articulate in English, and had a lot to say about how the political system in Mozambique is shaped and why it is that way. He answered questions for the volunteers who were there who had been wondering about these things for quite a while. But as Mozambicans tend to be fairly quiet about political matters, you take advantage of the opportinities you get.
Oh, and our medical officer, while telling us that pot is illegal here as it is in the US, freely offered that yes, it is a great stress reliever. Fantastic...
On Saturday, three hours after going to bed, I woke up to go to Maputo to get Chris so that we could go to Phillip's goodbye party. We talked the whole way, but it was a fairly uneventful trip. Except my seat wasn't very well fastened. It was a seat that folded over to let people behind through, and it served much more than its function as it was completely detachable. The owner of the chapa told me it wasn't necessary to remove the seat in order to let people pass, but I insisted I hadn't meant to remove it. So I gave it to Chris who looked just as lost as to what to do with a seat.
In addition to having to constantly be monitoring my seat, we ended up stopping a tremendous amount of times - including at 2 gas stations. We would, over the course of the next two rides, stop at two more gas stations. This is not normal!
Saturday, we went to Phillip's party which took me a while to get into after taking an hour nap, but eventually was dancing the night away. At one point, I started chasing a little kid around because he had "provoked" me, giving me a little love tap on the butt. We ran around a group of dancers for about a minute until I decided to go in the other direction and I grabbed him. I spun him in circles until we fell down, directly onto an immature pineapple tree. Everyone, including us, was laughing too hard to be in pain. Chris started exchanging hats with random people giving them a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. A friend of Phillip's had written and then performed a poem for everyone. Zach danced.
So I got into town today about 5 PM on a quite uncomfortable ride, sandwiched between the door and three people on a bench made for 3 (me being the fourth), and in front of me about 10 people in a one-square-meter space.
Yes, it feels like home.
Peace
John
