Estamos Juntos!

Wonderful month of June. This month was so busy and flew by way too quickly.  This month we celebrated my roommate’s birthday and one of best friend’s birthday Laura! After reconnect, I was ready to get back into teaching mode. Most of all begin my secondary projects. During reconnect I learned about the Livro Aberto/ EGRA secondary project that dealt with younger children and teaching the how to write and read. It is a little preschool but something kids could enjoy instead of running around in circles for hours. In Vanduzi, my house is right in front of the pump (our water source). Throughout the day we have many mothers who come and collect water and of course where there is a mother, one child is bound to tag along. There are so many kids by the pump who literally run in circles for hours. They already love me and sit in front of my house to watch me so I decided this program was perfect for them and I was sure the parents would love to get them out of their hair for at least 45 minutes twice a week.  I have 3 kids already who come over every day just to draw with me and play hopscotch, so I brought books back from reconnect to kind of see if kids would be interested. These kids fell in love with the 5 books I brought back. They would come back every single day pediring (asking) for the books. They see all the pictures they would make up a new story every single time. This is when I decided to apply for the program and begin my own community library. I was getting a little worried because it was hard to find a counterpart, and I would stress to my roommate, Haleigh, how everyone has a counterpart and have so many children already. I was thinking my project wouldn’t be approved. Then I realized I had the best counterpart right in front of me. Haleigh has a colleague named Derreck who teaches English also. He is one of our best friends at site, visits us and helps us out a lot. He had so much experience working with children (he was a primary school teacher once), speaks the local language and Portuguese, also very dependable, which is hard to find here…..the best part is that he is fluent in ENGLISH. This is Peace Corps Volunteers dream!  I told him about the project and he loved it. We discussed how we can begin with teaching them Portuguese and eventually transition English lessons as well. You might be wondering why English? Well Vanduzi is very close to the border of Zimbabwe and also Malawi is fairly close. These countries, use English as their native language. Many students know that speaking English is very necessary and could help them potentially get jobs with companies from those countries. Therefore learning English is extremely important and many students are eager to learn. So we applied for the project and have to wait until July to find out our results…..oh July.

(Panshe and Amendoim sharing the Esterra and reading)

 

Our Juntos group has been going really well. They been working together and learning a lot. We have a really strong group even though it is really small.

(Our counterpart Caushe and good friend)

 

 

Students working hard

 

Their first published journal

 

Close up of our leaders!

Birthday celebrations, for Haleigh's birthday we had a few friends over to celebrate and we ate homemade mac and cheese meanwhile we watched the World Cup! It was a fun get together and we enjoyed it very much. The first week back I went to Tete for the very first time to go celebrate Laura's birthday. Which was a lot of fun, we ate her good pancake cake that her roommate made and had a dance party with her closest friends at site. It was a great night. Her site was really pretty and small, they had a beautiful river that we got to see and hang out by.

 

Laura with her birthday pancake and presents!

The river at their site

So pretty!

Laura's Dog Simba

Jeff and Simba bonding

This was taken on my way back to site Beautiful Manica

Haleigh and I being Mozambican and preparing dinner for her birthday

Wendy, Taylor and Anna. It was super cold that day

Sophia and our favorite neighborhood kids

Eating gummy bears!!!

 

 

 

Once I came back and after all the celebration Haleigh and I decided to visit our very close missionary friends Heather and Rick. They invited us to their house to get a little break. It was nice to feel part of their family and be in a really cozy home. They have two cutest kids and two dogs that of course Haleigh and I fell in love with! It was nice to be away from all the loud bars and speak English all weekend. Don't worry family you don't have to worry about me getting lonely, many friends invite us to their homes and treat us like family.

 

Heather on the side there and Haleigh with the BEAST

Me and this goofy puppy

 

This month we also celebrated Vanduzi becoming a district. Which is huge here and now our school doesn't have to go to the city that is 45mins away to get paperwork approved. Our director is working hard making our school better.

 

 

Our Director of the school

Some of our students and Simao our teacher friend!

 

Welp that is all I have for you folks! 

 

 

                          
                                                     Always yours, Thelma and Amendoim!