Chapter one: If you don't know something, you can't just google it, you have to just not know it

Where could I possibly begin?

I have a toilet. I'm lucky too, most of the Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) with me poo in holes in the ground in dark outhouses (imagine doing this at night). It doesn't flush, but it's pearly shine is something to be appreciated in Mozambique, and rest assured I do.

I shower out of a bucket, pouring water over my head with a cup. I sleep under a mosquito net. We have running water one day a week, and if it doesn't rain not even that much. I live with a Mozambican woman and her family who shares the property with the husband's second wife, and the husband died years ago.

My family? Elisa is the matriarch. She is a big, boisterous, happy lady. She is wonderful with me, but doesn't cut me too much slack. At 5:30 am last week she knocks on my door. I open it bleary eyed and confused. She hands me a broom and says "clean your room" and walks off. The next day I return from class. "You are smelly," she says, "you should take a bath before dinner." Aah, mothers. They're all the same really. It's comforting.

The eldest daughter in the house Melita is 26 and has a 6 year old son. Lotina is the next and she has an eight month old, add to that the kids from the second wife, and the various other children whom I don't know at all running in and out of our house. The kids spent the first week squealing and running away every time they saw me, and now they won't leave me alone unless I pick them and flip them over and over and over and over. "Mais! Uma mais!" they scream. But I'm a sucker for kids.

My portuguese? Terrible. It's a lot of dumbfounded looks and drooling. It has improved hugely in this first week, but I still can't really speak in the past tense, which as it turns out is kind of a big deal.

Am I happy? It's a crazy time for me. The jet lag was epic. The food did its predictable tap dance through my digestive system. I don't really speak the language. The days are busy. From what I can tell my task is daunting, to teach a class of between 60-100 students who speak a language that I don't yet know.

I had a dream that I was about to leave for the Peace Corps, and I was afraid and in tears, full of fear and regret. But when I woke up and looked around my room (well, mostly just my mosquito net) I realized that I want this more than I have wanted anything in my life up to this point.

I'm still adjusting, I miss a lot of things. I miss being able to google stuff. I miss my friends, sure, I miss my family. But I'm learning the guitar, I am learning a new language, and hey I even have a toilet.

Damn, this has been the longest two weeks of my life.