Finally the crazy weekend has ended, now the crazy PST really starts.  It’s a big holiday here in Mozambique, people don’t go to work and there isn’t any school.  Everyone just parties and it seems to be their Independence Day.  Home stay debriefing was a good time, we heard the stories of other PCTs about their weekend.  One PCT almost got smuggled into Swaziland, a big no no for PC, and we don’t have any form of ID at this point in time.  Another PCT shared some milk with a local and then afterward found out it was beast milk.  Then the real training started, nothing but language for the first day.  The PC language program is said to be one of the best in the world and language is taught only in Portuguese, right from the start.  This is the same teaching style that OSU uses and I don’t know Spanish worth a damn now, so this didn’t have me excited.  Most PCTs have a decent Spanish background which helps out greatly with Portuguese.  I’m starting from square one and it is quite obvious.  By the end of the first day my teacher would just look at me to ask a question and start laughing because he knew nothing good could come from it.  At the very least I get to provide entertainment for my language class.

Lunch is an hour and half long here, everyone goes home to eat.  Someone is at home cooking lunch, usually the mamas, so shortly after getting home everyone can eat then head back to work or school.  Today when I got home for lunch mama Celeste wasn’t there, Junior said she was at a friends house but she had already cooked lunch.  I ate and went back to class for more fun.  When I got home in the evening it was just Junior, mama Celeste was still MIA.  He told me we had to go get some pão, which was fine with me because I love it.  He didn’t take the normal route to the bakery by the market but went down into Bairro A, which is the name of the neighborhood right next to where we live.  I hadn’t been down there before so I was up for the adventure, of course it is getting dark at this point in time so I wouldn’t be able to see much.  After he tried to go to a couple places back in the bairro, I suggested we go to the bakery by the market like normal.  He didn’t seem happy about it but decided that’s where we were headed.  He leads me snaking all around the bairro, down strange paths between homes, completely dark and the only light are small fires burning at the houses.  I can’t see the people standing by their homes, I can only hear their voices and even in complete darkness I know that the locals are staring at me.  It seems that the mulungos don’t make their way back there very often.  Mulungo is the Changana term for the white settlers from the colonial days but is still used to describe white people today.  If you are white and walking around southern Mozambique, you will hear someone call you a mulungo, and that’s not a negative thing, they are just surprised to see a white person.  After our strange venture through the bairro, we make it to the wonderful smelling bakery and get the bread.  When we get home he takes the bread to the neighbor’s house, it wasn’t even for us the whole time and I was left disappointed.  Junior reheats the pots of food from lunch, as this is dinner for the night.  After dinner we sit around and I see two mice running around the living room.  They try to make their way into my room but I scare them away.  I go to bed without mama Celeste coming home but Junior doesn’t seem concerned so neither was I.