Parties and Tchaus

Today is my last full day in the US of A until December of 2015... It seems o so far away, but I know it will fly by. Yesterday my families had a going away party for me. It was so much fun to see all of my family and friends in the Chicago area. I can't believe how much support I have. My cousins and I stayed up entirely too late watching youtube videos and drinking beer while enjoying the great life in our country together. Then we woke up nice and early to grab a hugeeeee breakfast with a bunch of my family. I devoured a spinach, feta, and mushroom omelette. After I went to my cousin Jamie's engagement party. It was great to see her and my family over there as well. Tomorrow, however, I depart Chicago at 9:55 am. I will be headed for Philly. I should arrive a little after noon, and be there the following day as well. We will have a conference in the afternoon and then take a bus at 2am on the 25h up to New York. That same day we will fly out of JFK to Africa... That is a scary thought... 50 or so emotional and excited Peace Corps Volunteers on an airbus for 16 hours to South Africa where we will catch a connecting flight to Maputo, Mozambique. I am so excited, just typing this blog post is making my heart race. I hope to have some great stories and tell about some amazing people that I will meet over the next few days! I will leave you with one of the youtube videos that my cousins and I discovered last night... (Jon shared this one with us)

Weird, but oddly hilarious

2/3 of Packing Doneski

First let me explain our packing situation. We are allowed 1 carry-on, and 2 checked bags. The checked bags must not exceed 50lbs per bag. One bag we will have access to during our 10 week training period and the other bag we will not receive until we move to our job site in December. This makes packing that much more difficult. So far I have figured out my carry-on and my bag that I will have during training. I can tell you this... I am exhausted. I will tell you what is in my 1st bag, and update later.

Bag for training (38lbs) will contain

1 khaki pants

2 button downs

1 pair jeans

3 t-shirts

1 tank top

1 long sleeve shirt

1 hoodie

1 blue cargo shorts

1 khaki cargo shorts

2 athletic shorts

running shoes

sambas

toms

8 pair underwear

4 pair black ankle socks

3 pair white ankle socks

3 pair crew socks

along with the stuff in this picture... 

Underwear and Socks

So i have been struggling on what to pack for the next 27 months in Mozambique. The other soon to be volunteers and I have been questioning what is important. I have the solution. I have the answer to the infamous question, how do you pack for that long? The answer is simple. It is fundamental, and it goes back to every child's Christmas present nightmare... Underwear and Socks. That's all I'm going to bring. Well not all I am going to bring, but it sure would make this packing easier. As I sit here listening to Sail by AWOLNATION, I am going to continue to ponder my thoughts on object importance. I will report all my findings back as soon as I can comprehend my packing situation.

7 days

On The Home Stretch... or something like that

Time is ticking away. I will be on an Airbus for Africa in exactly 2 weeks 2 hours and 32 minutes. That time will go by very quickly, and to make the time seem like it is further away I have been counting down in minutes. That means I am 20,280 minutes from departing to Mozambique. When I put it that way, it seems a lot more manageable to get everything done before i leave.

The past few weeks have been great. I flew back to Tuscaloosa and spent time with family and friends. My mother had a going away party for me here in town, and it was amazing to see so many people come say farewell and good luck. I felt so much support, and it was very encouraging.

Yesterday my dad and I crushed a few buckets at the driving range, and today my mom and I are flying back to Chicago for a couple of weeks before I depart. The next 20,276 (it has been 4 minutes since I last typed the countdown) minutes of life should be amazing! I am really looking forward to some final preparations.

For everyone interested, The Auburn Plainsman will have an article about me in their weekly paper tomorrow!! Check it out! I am hoping to share some stories with the Auburn Community while I am gone. My goal is to share a little about the Mozambican life with my friends and family back here in the States.

My next couple of blog posts should begin to get more interesting. I will be sharing info on what I will be packing for the next 27 months! Honestly... who the hell knows how to pack for 2 years?!?! Well I think I should go grab some food. I will begin to update more often now that life is starting to become real.

Mozambique 101

As you can imagine, I have been reading up on Mozambique a lot the past few months. I was originally expecting to receive an invitation to French speaking Africa, but instead I opened my letter to see the name Mozambique. I was confused, and honestly did not know where exactly it was... So here is a little Mozambique history for everyone... including myself. Mozambique's population is around 24 million, and the country gained it's independence from Portugal on June 25, 1975. This was a huge day for the country, and they celebrate independence day just as we celebrate July 4th. Since then, the Country has been divided into 10 provinces (Cabo Delgado, Gaza, Inhambane, Manica, Maputo, Nampula, Niassa, Sofala, Tete, and Zambezia) and a capitol named Maputo. I will be living in one of these 10 provinces after my 10 week training. Each area of the country focuses their linguistics using many many languages. Most people of Moazambique speak more than one language. Portuguese is the national language, and the most widely spoken. It is followed by Emakhuwa, Cisena, Xichangana, Elomaie, and Cishona. These are languages native to the African area, and are molded my history. Besides language, the Portuguese had influence in religion as well. This is why 56% of Mozambicans are Christian. After that, 19% are atheist, 18% are Muslim, and 7% are some other form of religion (often time animism). Onto the most interesting piece of history in my opinion, the flag.
 
The Flag was adopted on May 1, 1983. The colors and symbols on the flag each represent an important part of the country.
Green represents the riches of the land
Black represents Africa and the people of the continent
Yellow represents the minerals that are commonly found in the soils
White represents the peace that Mozambique works towards
Red represents Mozambique's historical struggle for independence
The star represents Marxism and internationalism
The AK-47 and bayonet represent the country's defense and vigilance
The hoe represents the abundant agriculture of the country
Lastly, and most important to my mission in the peace corps is the open book. The book represents education, and it is laid open to show that the country is striving towards improving their education. It is a very important aspect of the growing economy. This is why I am going to Mozambique. I am going to teach, and it is the mission myself and all other teachers in the country to bring that book in front of the hoe and AK-47. It is our mission to make education the gold standard for the people of Mozambique.
I hope that history lesson helped describe my future home a little bit. I will be able to embellish more once I live there.

Feel free to leave comments with any questions or criticisms of my posts. I would love to compile any questions and hopefully answer them through my blog.

Am I Ready Yet? (Peace Corps Update)

By popular request, let me walk you through what my application process has been like. I submitted my application in April of 2012. I had an interview in July of 2012 during camp war eagle. After that I learned I had been nominated for some jobs in Africa. After months and months of waiting, I was given an invitation to teach in Mozambique on April 22nd of 2013. A year after submitting my application, my dream had come true. Since then I have received 10 shots, countless blood work, completed online safety courses, written and rewritten resumes, and submitted applications for a visa and government passport. I am happy to say that at the end of July I was officially granted full medical and legal clearance. It is completely official, but the work has just begun. We will fly to Philadelphia and be there for a couple days of orientation, then fly out on September 26th. Before then I must prepare myself. I have been gathering addresses, making a packing list, visiting family, putting all my music and movies on a hard drive(which I hope will be usable at my site), begun my studies in Portuguese, and overall began mentally preparing myself. We are allowed to bring 2 checked bags to Mozambique. This means 80-100lbs of stuff for 27 months in Africa. It is going to take some sacrifice. I have been communicating with a few people that will be leaving in my group, and we are all very excited. I am gathering some basic info about Mozambique that I will share with everyone in my next post. So get ready for a history and culture lesson.

Summetime Livin' (Life Update)

Let me catch you up on my life. As of right now I am living in Chicago with my family. We have been having a blast. We took a family trip up to Hayward, Wisconsin for a week. This was amazing because we used to go every single summer as a family, but when everyone gets older life has a way of changing. Our time up North consisted of fishing, board games, eating, drinking, and just an all around good time. I will share one story with you from our trip.
It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take the pontoon over to a little island about 20 minutes away. We brought sandwiches and drinks so we could make a day out of it. While over at the island, my uncle and grandmother had to take the pontoon back to pick up Aunt Nancy. Leaving my mother, Uncle Jeff, my 6 cousins, and myself behind on the island they departed with our only mode of transportation. It was really funny because we kept waving like we were stranded. It was a cool little island with a lagoon and tons of wildlife. While we were swimming and enjoying our time we noticed some dark clouds coming in. No more than 5 minutes had passed before the sky opened up with freezing rain. All of us began laughing as we realized we were a good 25 minutes or so away from being back on the pontoon. That rain was freezinggggg. My uncle returned with the pontoon and we made the trek back to the cabin in the freezing rain. It may sound like a miserable experience, but my family has an ironic and weird sense of humor. It was one of those moments that always happens to us, and we have learned to appreciate all of time together. When we got back to the cabin, naturally we all began to laugh and dry off. All in all the trip was fantastic. We only had 1 bear incident and the fish were biting every single day.
Other than that, I have been enjoying my time up in Chicago visiting family and really preparing myself for the upcoming journey to Mozambique. If you would like to hear more stories about my trip to Hayward or in Chicago, feel free to ask and I can post some more. I am trying to get a feel for what I want to write about