"Jack, I'm Flying!"

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a great day wherever you are at and that you have a happy and safe New Year's as well! This year definitely was hard to get in the Christmas spirit but I definitely had a great time. Angoche is becoming my home away from home. I am so happy that its just a two hour chapa ride. The volunteers that live in Angoche are amazing and love to host! Christmas on a beach is pretty frickin' cool. We celebrated on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas day. We figured Christmas day was going to be "not do anything because we celebrated the night before" day. So we headed to the beach in the morning, where I bathed in sunscreen and still got pretty burnt...Chega! Afterwards we went home to clean up and relax. We had an amazing seafood dinner and afterwards had a bonfire on the beach. A couple of us took a little swim. I had a really awesome moment where I was floating on my back and looking up at the stars. I still have a hard time believing this is my life. On Christmas day we just chilled out and recovered from the previous night. We had another amazing seafood meal. Today we all had to leave early. A majority of people left at 12:30am to catch a chapa to Nampula City...Arden and I were able to leave around 3:30am because we live a lot closer. This chapa ride was a little more scary for me because I had to stand and the roads are so bad here. I did manage to have a Kate Winslet, Titanic moment, though! The wind blowing through my hair and bugs hitting my face while Mozambicans are laughing at me...ok maybe it wasn't exactly like Kate Winslet's experience, but we were going fast enough that I felt like I was flying! We made it home in one piece though so that is all that matters.

I was honored to spend Christmas with some great people that Peace Corps has brought into my life and I look forward to celebrating future holidays together. I have never laughed so hard in my life!

Take a look at some more pics!

The Air Up There

For those movie buffs out there, you know that the title of this post is actually a Kevin Bacon movie. Kevin Bacon portrays a basketball coach who hears about this phenomenal player in Africa, so he goes to recruit this person. This phenomenal person ends up being the son of a tribal leader...but he really is phenomenal so Kevin Bacon lives with the tribe and learns about them. I won't spoil the ending so go watch it! Anyways...there is a point to the title of this blog. Today I got to play basketball with an Indonesian priest, a Mozambican teenager and my roommate with a bunch of Mozambican kids watching. It was like a movie. It was awesome. For those of you who know me, know that I love basketball. The only basketball court in the vila is at what I like to call my second home. It is the catholic compound where the priests and nuns live. It is actually pretty close to where our future house is, which is great! One of my goals in the next two years is to start a girl's basketball team. This morning Father Marcelo picked us up bright and early and took us to a machamba (farm/big field). He gave us a tour and we helped plant corn...the old fashion way...by hand. It was fun but hot! Father Marcelo has become a fast friend! We have lunch together and tomar cha (have coffee/tea). He loves to listen to Alan Jackson when he drives, so he is going to be my best friend. He loves country music! Have I mentioned that he is Indonesian?! Hahaha...he is a great guy.

Christmas is quickly approaching! A group of us are going to Angoche and to the beach to celebrate. It has been hard to get in the Christmas spirit. I miss my family and the....COLD! I also have a different perspective on things now since arriving in Africa. People have next to nothing here, live in reed huts with no energy or running water, have no clothes and the clothes they do have are torn and dirty, and have barely any food. It is sad but people are so nice here and seem to be content. I am learning a lot about myself and what I want out of life and how I want to live my life. I want you all to think about your lives and what you find important. Do you really need to complain about the things you complain about? I definitely took a lot for granted in the U.S. I hope I can help change some people's perspectives with my experiences and blog posts. I don't want to come off as sounding pompous or that "I know all" but I definitely want to shed light on what life is like in one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the United Nations, of the 187-ish countries, Mozambique is ranked 185th in human development (learn more here).

Anywho, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Be safe and enjoy your time with your loved ones!

On the Road to Angoche...

So this post is going to have a little bit of everything in it...some fun stuff and not so fun stuff...some interesting stuff and not so interesting stuff...bear with me.

Yesterday marked our one week anniversary at site. We are not in our house yet but we are hoping to get moved in this week! We ran into our first of many roadblocks on Friday. We were wanting to go to Angoche so we went to the chapa stop to catch a chapa. There is this guy in our vila that has some mental problems and hasn't caused us any harm. He is just annoying and always around and follows us everywhere. Let me give you some background on gender inequality here in Mozambique...it is frustrating! The men here have it easy. The women cook, clean, fetch water, take care of the kids and house, etc. The men get to enjoy the food, the clean house, the water and don't have to worry about watching the kids. This being said the retention rate of keeping girls in school is so low because of all the responsibilities they have at home. Have no fear, that is why I am here! I am looking forward to mentoring the young women here and empowering them to explore their potential! Anyways back to the crazy guy. He was really persistent and wouldn't leave us alone at the chapa stop so we cancelled our Angoche trip and locked ourselves in our house.

Yesterday we woke up at 4am and went to the chapa stop again to see if we would have a better chance of getting a chapa to Angoche...and sure enough at 6:30am we were on our way to the beach! There are two current volunteers in Angoche, one of which was not there this weekend, but we got to meet and hang out with the other one. They have an apartment that has ocean views and washing machine! It is super fancy. They love hosting people because they have the space and the location is just perfect. Maria took us to the beach. A beach that we could only get to by canoe. Yay for adventures! We noticed on the walk there that it was getting pretty cloudy and dark over yonder. We decided to just go with it and continue on. Once we got to the beach we took picks and I put my toes in the INDIAN OCEAN...hello bucket list! I got some good pics too so check out my pics page. As we were waiting for the canoe to get us it started to rain a little and once it got to us it was pouring. We took the canoe back with some fisherman who caught a humungous fish. By the time we got across we were soaked. The next adventure was walking back. I fell in the mud and ended up walking barefoot a majority of the way back. At least I can laugh about it. Only in Africa can you walk around barefoot drenched head to toe covered in mud. After we got dried off and cleaned up we just chilled and relaxed and waited for the rain to stop. For dinner we went to an ice cream place. I know what your thinking..."Ice cream for dinner?!" First we had a fried egg with mayonaise and ketchup in a tortilla type thing. I know it sounds gross but it wasn't that bad. We had ice cream for dessert! We grabbed a beer down by the water at one of Maria's favorite places and met a friend of her's who is a dentist.

Today we woke up at 3am to catch a chapa back to Liupo. Imagine a bed of a truck that is about 8 feet by 5 feet more a less. Now imagine big bags of rice, beans, vegetables, clothes, tools for farming in that bed. Now imagine 31 people, including yours truly, 3 kids and 4 babies piled into that bed, as well. What I just described is the normal public transportation here in Mozambique. I have bruises everywhere from being sat on and pushed around. We made it back to Liupo, though, and we were happy to be home!

Hopefully the next time I post, it will be from our new home!!!! Thanks for all of your continued support!

"Insert Clever Title Here"

Today has left me with so much excitement about my future, not only here in Liupo, but in general. The people I have met in the 3 and a half days I have been here, have changed my life and the way I am looking at life. This journey has already had a profound impact on my life and it is an experience that is just beginning. I have two more years of experiencing these moments of clarity. I honestly believe that I was meant for this journey. It hasn't always been easy but these moments of clarity I have been experiencing more than make up for those tough times.

Yesterday, I attended a catholic service where I took communion. Taking communion at a catholic service in-the-middle-of-nowhere, Mozambique wasn't on my bucket list but it should have been. It was a very emotional experience for me. I wasn't expecting it to be. All I could think about was wanting to talk to my Grandma Kearney about it because I knew she would have loved hearing about it. This experience is making me feel closer to her. After the service, one of the nuns introduced herself and invited us over to meet the other nuns. Once we left the church we stopped by the local "establishment", which happens to be across the street from our future house, for a soda and some mangoes with a couple of colleagues.

Today we went to the school and took a look inside our future house. It looks super tiny from the outside but seems pretty spacious inside. It has two bedrooms, living room, a kitchen and a nice back yard where our bathroom is. I never thought I would say this but I love having a pit in the ground for a bathroom! After lunch and a nap we headed back to the school where we met up with Vincente, a colleague, who took us to see the nuns. They were so nice and funny. They have some spunk too! We had soda and cake and they gave us a bag full of mangoes...we LOVE mangoes! Sister Rosalind gave us a little tour of the compound and I found a basketball court, which I hope to frequent often. We met a couple of the priests and ended up spending the rest of the evening with one of them. His name is Father Marcelo and he is from Indonesia. The other priest we met is from Zambia. I am really looking forward to visiting them more often. We ended the night at a birthday party for a colleague. The food was amazing! The people were amazing! We left with cake that we plan on having for breakfast with our coffee!

Having such a great experience and it is hard to put into words sometimes so if you have any questions, comments, etc. please feel free to leave them for me address!!!!

Adeus Trainee, Ola Volunteer!

Hello all! Hope all is well wherever you are. I haven't updated in awhile and I apologize! I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Woohoo! All 51 of us were sworn in at the ambassador's house in Maputo on December 3! On the Nov. 30th, we celebrated with our families! I gave a thank you speech. I was shaking the whole time, but everyone enjoyed it. I will try and post the video. Videos are hard to post when the internet connection isn't very strong. It was sad saying goodbye to my family in Namaacha, but I am excited for the opportunities that Liupo will have. Ok, back to swearing in...We stayed in really fancy hotel in Maputo. It was called Hotel Arabias or Vilas Arabias...I felt like I was in the movie, Aladdin. After having our swearing in celebration, we took to the streets of Maputo to find some good food. After eating dinner we all met up to hang out one last time and say goodbye to each other. It was an emotional night. On December 4, the northern people, myself included, were to fly out of Maputo. We barely made our flight. The staff underestimated our baggage and didn't send a big enough vehicle for everything. After arriving in Nampula, we went to our hotel which was also fancy. There I had to argue with the front desk because the paper they had said I was a male...and I am obviously not...The positive side of the argument was that I got a room to myself! We also had a conference at the hotel where we got to meet our supervisors or colleagues of the schools we would be working in. Our pedagogico director is really nice. A pedagogico director is the person that oversees programming and is in charge of the professors. On Dec. 6th, a majority of the Nampula volunteers left for site. Again, it was sad saying goodbye to our friends. The road from Nampula city to Liupo is very bumpy and rough. It is a dirt road the whole way. Half way there we got a call saying that they packed the wrong luggage and that my stuff was still in Nampula city. I was lucky enough to have some things with me, though. Once we arrived in Liupo we were put into a temporary house because our house isn't quite ready. It is right next to the governor's house and it is fancy! We met other supervisors and important people with the school and community. Language is definitely difficult but we are getting bye. The local language here is Macua (sp?). We want to learn a little of that too. Today, we walked around a lot. We did get to see our house. It is tiny! lol...We went to the school, the market, and introduced ourselves to neighbors. We are exhausted so decided to rest all afternoon and continue walking around tomorrow...I know I am forgetting a lot so I apologize for the random thoughts, events, etc.

Check out the pics!