First Week of School

The chalk board at our school announced our first staff meeting for 8:30am on Tuesday, January 12. We showed up a little early, excited to see what it would be all about. No one was there, and although a few people trickled in and out, we decided after about an hour that maybe we should try again tomorrow. The next day was dedicated to copying meticulously last year’s lesson plans into this year’s subject matter binders, drawing out the charts with rulers and making duplicate copies with carbon paper. (Some of you might not know what carbon paper is?)This entire assignment, which took the teaching staff two days of work to complete, could have been done in a matter of minutes with the copy and paste functions on a computer! After several tedious hours, the teachers announced they were tired from so much “planning” and we could go home and continue on Friday, since Thursday would be a national holiday to celebrate the re-inauguration of Mozambique’s president. We took advantage of the day off to visit the other two Peace Corps Volunteers in our province who had just returned from vacation with family out of country. We enjoyed the break from site, talking with Americans, baking pizza, and were not in a particular rush to return and fill out more boxes, but we did!