bom dia from Africa!

So, per the request of my fam, I will blog about what´s happened thus far. I made it to Africa with all my luggage intact. I didn´t get anything stolen from my luggage surprisingly. Maybe they just cut the lock to find nothing was worth stealing. Hehe, suckers. I didn´t end up saran wrapping my stuff because it costed about 15 dollars per bag plus tip. So I was willing to take the risk and it ended up in my favor. Last night I had a great time. We had a meeting at the hotel everyone else is staying at (I´m with a group that has been staying in the middle of Maputo at another hotel). The current PCVs did a skit on their experience with homestay and any things we might find odd. For example, women are supposed to handwash their underwear as it is inappropriate to hang women´s underwear out to dry. You can only shake with your right hand. And you place your left hand on your right elbow as a sign of respect to people who are older than you. It is also bad manners and wasteful to leave food on your plate. That last one makes me nervous because I don´t have much of an appetite. So, yes, I meet my homestay family later today and I´m nervous. It´ll be a whole new experience. Boy oh boy, did it rain last night. Last night we had our cookout and afterward we danced to African pop music. However, it started to rain, so the DJs had to move the music player so it didn´t get damaged. So we crazy americans stayed out in the pouring rain and had an impromptu dance circle with one person constantly moving to the middle, which mostly consisted of, for example "go Erin, go Erin, go go go Erin." I did the running dance from flashdance. After there was a major bolt of lightning, we stopped but some people ran and jumped in the pool next to our dance floor. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I got soaked. And then after that, we stood around for a bit and two PCTs played guitar and harmonica. I have to go. I´m not sure when I´ll be able to use the internet again. Hopefully, my new town has internet. If not, they´re taking us to an internet cafe next weekend in Maputo. All the peace corps trainees I´ve met have been really nice and this last week has been fun with all the activities we´ve done together. I´ll post more about it later but I have to go get my luggage from my room to take down to the bus. Tchau!