Life's a Happy Song

This morning, I got up early (5 a.m.!) for a short morning jog. I was listening to my music, and a song from the most recent Muppets movie started to play.

Everything is great,

Everything is grand,

I've got the whole wide world 

in the palm of my hand!

I passed the market and lo and behold! Tempo de fome ("time of hunger") has left Mavudzi-Ponte! You can actually buy food here! I bought guavas, tomatoes, yams, and bananas -- all for about $2. So many vitamins! Did you know that one guava has the vitamin C of four oranges? With the amount of guavas I ate today, I'm probably going to start radioactively glowing with vitamin C.

Everything is perfect,

 It's falling into place,

I can't seem to wipe this smile off my face!

Teaching this week was a blast. We're reviewing for a test next week so I played Jeopardy with all my classes and they absolutely loved it. The score was really close in my 9th grade class, and they practically exploded when the last question ended it up in a tie -- my friend told me she could hear them cheering all the way from the professors' complex.

"What on earth were you teaching today? It was so loud, I woke up from my nap!"

I've got everything that I need

Right in front of me!

We're teaching our REDES girls how to cross-stitch -- after they practice a bit, we're going to try and make pretty things to sell in the community to raise money for our group. They're really enjoying it, and they squealed with delight when I pulled out my colored thread (thanks, Mom!).



I wanted to show them an example, so I stitched this cute owl a few nights ago. Unfortunately, owls are apparently a super bad omen around here -- when I showed it to my girls on Wednesday, they said "Oh... that's um... nice..." and went about their business stitching their flowers and decorative borders, making sure to keep away from the owl. Oops!

Nothing's stopping me,

Nothing that I can't be

When you're right here next to me!

On Tuesday, some of my little friends were over at my house watching me make dinner. They think it's so funny that I eat pasta with tomato sauce all the time -- a little hypocritical, coming from people who eat nothing but xima and couve all day. In any case, I was listening to music and when the song "Oh Yeah" by Yello came on (you know, the one from Ferris Beuller's Day Off that goes Oohhhhhhhhhhh yeaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!) they freaked out and started having a crazy dance party. I naturally took pictures to avoid having to join in with the White Girl Step-'n-Snap.

Life's a happy song

When there's someone by your side to sing along!

Life is pretty good here in Mavudzi-Ponte. I finally feel like I'm part of the community. People don't think I'm so strange anymore. (I haven't heard the word muzungu in over two weeks!)

I am growing very fond of my tiny town in a forgotten corner of Africa.