One Year in Country

September 30^th marked our 1 year anniversary here in Mozambique. Having reached this milestone, and with our first school year coming to a close in a few weeks, we've been feeling reflective. So far we haven't come down with malaria, or been eaten by lions, or stepped on any landmines or been bitten by the deadly black mamba. Even though our experience so far had debunked some stereotypes of life in Africa, others have been reinforced – we have seen plenty of poverty, HIV and death and we have endured our own hardships too. Living in a far corner of such a big country has left us feeling isolated from our Peace Corps community, but we have developed a special relationship with Malawi instead. We have had moments when we wondered what we're really doing here and if we're making any kind of difference when facing such intransigent and systematic problems in our community and education system, and even considered just giving up and returning to our comfortable life in America. But we've also had a lot of positives this year. We've both grown and learned so much, even with all of our previous international work and formal studies in international education, working in a rural school in Africa has been transformative. We've learned a new language, (although Portuguese still seems like a dialect of Spanish to us) and had the opportunity to travel around the continent and see some amazing things. We celebrated our one-year anniversary at our little hillside restaurant, treating ourselves to a beer (Janet) and French fries with ketchup (Luc). One of our favorite students was waiting on our table, and he asked us in a very loving way if we could be his teachers again next year. So, on the whole, we're happy with our big adventure so far and proud of what we've been able to accomplish.