Thursday, January 28, 2010

28/01/10

Today in all of my classes, each time I asked for a volunteer there was a huge commotion as 8 different people would jump out of their seats, trying to be the first one to start reading. It was a wonderful feeling. One girl also asked a question today in class. It wasn’t subject related, but I’ll take it!
With about 15 minutes left in my last class it started pouring and I had my first experience with trying to teach a class of 45 students (absurdly miniscule by Mozambican secondary school standards let me add) in a cement room with a metal roof. I ended up letting them go 5 minutes early because attempting to teach was just futile.
Natalia and I had our first Portuguese tutoring lesson today with one of the Salesian priests across the street. It’s funny because Natalia (who is Spanish) speaks much more fluently than I do and can converse much better than I can. But what she actually speaks is a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish without realizing it, and nobody bothers to correct her because they can understand perfectly. And thus I actually speak and write much more grammatically correct Portuguese than she does, because I actually received some formal formation in Portuguese, I have read a lot of text books and written out word-for-word many class lessons, and because I am not hindered by all the Spanish pronunciations and rules that she has ingrained in her.
Last week during some of the interminable hours I spent sitting under the trees outside my school with my colleagues, one of my colleagues brushed a very large and colorful spider off of my shoulder. He said “now you will have 6 months of good luck!” but our other colleague sitting nearby said “no, that’s in Gaza province, here it’s only 3 months of good luck.” I asked “so in Gaza province when a spider is on you, you get 6 months of good luck, but in Inhambane province you only get 3 months?” He laughed because he knew how ridiculous that sounded, but still responded yes quite seriously.

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