23/11/09

Last night I heard something running around the floor of my bedroom. I just hope they are the lizards they have here, rather than mice. And I hope they stay on the floor. The Portuguese word for chalk is "giz," pronounced the same as the english slang "jizz." So the childish jokes are endless when we are constantly getting chalk all over our faces, shirts, and pants. We have one more teaching day of model school and them we are giving exams on Thursday. We are giving a practice exam tomorrow which is as much for us to learn as for them. A volunteer told us, "if you can't take the exam in three minutes, it's too long" (class periods are 45 minutes here). I now have three little brothers/cousins. One who just showed up is three years old and apparently always lives here, if just happened to be with an aunt for the first seven weeks I was here. Mozambican kids like to in through the trash and play with it. This is something all volunteers from all years have experienced. Girls have to be especially careful to properly dispose of all items, otherwise they will become a child's plaything. Today I came home from classes and found my seven year old brother chewing on my old birth control packet.