The Cantilevered Spirit Quest: Back to the Barnyard

As noted in the travels post, I got home to the barnyard in Chiure on January 8^th. School technically started on January 15^th, but the first month or so of school doesn’t really count. I spent a few days at school helping with scheduling (I have software). A lot of work when everyone else was chilling, but power to control the schedule means power to control your schedule.

I’ve actually been transferred to the new school in our town this year. As college graduates, we are technically considered ‘doctors’ here; the district prefers that we teach 11^th and 12^th grade, or second cycle as it’s called. These advanced class-levels were transferred to the newer school this year so we were switched too. Anyway, this other school already has a bunch of Mozambican teachers. They get paid extra for teaching extra hours; they don’t want us (who’s living subsidy is the same whether we work two or forty-two hours) to take those hours. So that means that I am only teaching 11^th grade physics. I get all of the 11^th grade physics classes but because only science-track kids take physics, that adds up to nine classroom hours per week for me. Chilling. Eric has fifteen hours of English. 11^th grade physics is my favorite material anyway.

Nine classroom hours + me making the schedule = Tuesday through Thursday class, three hours each day. That means I will have a lot more time to do some outside-of-school projects. Plan is to improve science fair, both locally and on the provincial level. Would also like to setup some sort of math help group. Travel a lot inside of Cabo (I’m done traveling to faraway places in this country). Should be good stuff. The new school is a little more organized (though two weeks into the school year nothing has really started yet) and actually has some common-use space. That should translate to getting more done, generally. Just being in a nicer space where kids don’t all sit on the floor in a collapsing building seems to have everyone, teachers and students, taking things a little more seriously.

So I did some intro lessons this week (“You will learn to ‘think critically,’ damn it!”), but generally school hasn’t really started yet. Tomorrow I am heading to Maputo (flight from Pemba) for our Peace Corps mid-service conference. That means a week off of school, capital city-level per diem, and chilling with lots of friends from training. The last two weeks have been pretty laid back. Eric has been cruising around with a friend from the States so I’ve been holding down the fort solo. Basically just sitting around eating pineapple and mangos with the dog, the cat, and the pigs, reading a lot of magazines from 2012 (who will win the election!?!), and yeah, chilling with the dog and cat (who are best friends). Maybe doing some school-prep as well. I actually do do stuff here, just the pace of life is pretty slow, especially as the school year very slowly gains momentum.