Life in Mozambique n the past four months has been full: joyful, challenging, fun, interesting, difficult, exciting, and different -- all at the same time.

I live just outside a small town called Inharrime, only about 15 miles inland from the Indian Ocean. Amid the forests of coconut trees and brick-red dirt of “Centro Laura Vicuña,” I've spent the past 4 months working at a variety of jobs. Mainly, I've worked teaching explanation English classes for students at Laura Vicuña Secondary School, and helping teachers and teaching English classes at Domingos Sávio Professional School -- the technical/high school across the street from the sisters run by the Salesian Priests. I've also taught music class at the professional school, helped out with the small summer theatre group at the secondary school, and done lots of playing and working with the little girls on English and music.

Since most of my daily interactions here are conducted in Portuguese, I’ve been forced to pick it up rapidly during these months. Besides my brightest students and the other English teachers, no one speaks more than a sprinkling of English, so I've had to pick up the new language at a rapid pace. While I'm by no means a ''fluent'' speaker, I manage to carry on intelligent conversations and perceive the vast majority of things spoken to me at this point. I now even find myself accidentally sprinkling in Portuguese words when I speak English.

My initial few weeks and even months here were difficult -- not speaking the language, trying to decipher what my job and my ''place'' here should be, feeling quite alone and out of place when stuck into this community of nuns and little girls -- but things have improved. I have a lot of interesting work now. I love teaching and working with the students at my schools, I've gotten used to the some of the differences in cultural norms here, and also come to accept the fact that I will probably continue to feel ''out of the loop'' on some things because I just am a foreigner and there's no way around that. I've even become proficient at eating ''shima'' (a food something like mushed up rice, or wet, doughy bread) and ''fejão'' (beans) with my hands during our weekly ''eat outside with your hands'' meal that we have so the little girls don't forget their Mozambican traditional ways of eating.

As I've become more comfortable here, I've started to work on some interesting projects. I helped some other volunteers in my area organize an AIDS awareness day in which local high school students competed in a theatre contest where they presented short plays about responsibility, fidelity, equality of genders, and other AIDS prevention strategies. 6 groups from my two schools participated. I was also recently approached by a small group of boys who came to me asking for help with their rap music group. While I'm not really a rap fan, they sing all about social issues -- working to change systems of poverty, preventing the spread of AIDS and malaria, stopping early pregnancy and the abandonment of children -- so I'm going to help them out however I can.

It's difficult for me to distill my experience into a short description, but I wanted put up a general update here, and then make an effort to share more of my experiences from here. I hope that an important part of my being here can be to share some of what I learn with my friends and family at home who do not have this opportunity to travel to a new country and learn about a new culture.

For now, I close with a realization that Mozambique has become much more to me now that a faraway land or a foreign new environment: Now beyond the heat and my constantly dirty feet and the unusual foods, Mozambique is a sea of faces and names: Yolanda, Amélia, Julia, Ângela and the other cute little girls constantly following me around shouting ''Mana Maria!'' Lucília, Albertina, Verdiana, and Lúcia -- the sisters. Sérgio, Fanuel, Marta, Santos, Albazine, Mateus, Armando -- my students. Stephanie and Rita, Gildo, Herlagia, João -- other volunteers and teachers. Dona Rita, Tia Saquina, Senhor Camilo, Padre José Maria -- my neighbors. These people are Mozambique to me now.