Hitting the half-way mark

Here´s an update on our Peace Corps training in Mozambique! Elections took place last week in a mostly peaceful process. No major surprises occurred, the FRELIMO party, which has ruled since independence in 1975, won another landslide victory (75% of the vote) so they are in charge for another 5 years. We´ll miss FRELIMO´s catchy jingles, which until now have dominated the airwaves. As a result of the smooth elections the US embassy has lifted the nationwide standfast travel alert for Americans, which is especially meaningful for us because this next week we are scheduled for site visits. All of us trainees will spread out across Mozambique to visit current volunteers at their sites to see what Peace Corps is really all about. Janet will visit a rural beach site in southern Inhambane province - supposedly one of the most beautiful PC sites in the country (or world!). It will involve most of the day in various types of ground transport on Saturday, but she´ll be with other volunteers. Luc will spend the visit in the mountainous interior province of Manica, near Chimoio. He will travel by air because of the great distance, which he does not like very much!. Everyone is very excited for a chance to see more of the country and get a little break from our routines. We have spent most of our training hours focusing on honing our Portuguese (and Changana, the local language) and preparing our technical skills for teaching large classes with very limited physical resources (lots of practice at the blackboard!). We also have weekly cultural exchange sessions called Ngome(drum) time, which usually involve lots of dancing and skits. This week Janet´s group led us in the playground fortune-telling game of MASH and Luc attempted to portray American culture by painting himself blue and beating our rhythms on trash a la Blue Man Group. Last week we had a two day training session dedicated to permaculture - how to use simple agriculture techniques to increase food production in small sustainable family gardens. It was very fun getting out and digging in the earth, even though it was raining and we later had to spend extra time while cleaning our clothes to scrub out all the red clay dirt. Next up after site visit is our Model School, a two week school simulation organized by Peace Corps in which all of us Peace Corps education trainees teach classes to local secondary school students currently on vacation, which we anticipate will more accurately reflect our future jobs than our current mock teaching assignments which involve presenting English/Biology lessons to our peers, who already speak English/majored in Biology! Training is flying by quickly, we are just about halfway done!