Site placement announcements were made right before we held a Thanksgiving dinner (albeit a day early, for mysterious bureaucratic reasons). There were all kinds of culinary delights that us Americans have been craving—turkey, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, and all kinds of cookies and pies. I learned that I will be teaching English in a rural mission school in Estaquinha, Sofala, in the Central region of Mozambique. Look it up on a map! It is a new site, which means that I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to go there, so I will be blazing my own trail.
As far I know, I’ll be living in a neighborhood designed for teachers but will have my own house with a water pump close by and electricity every evening from 6 to 9 pm. It also seems I’ll have to walk (or bike) 3 km outside of town to receive cell phone service. I’m not sure that much of a town exists outside of the school and school community itself, but there is a small market.
There are several other volunteers relatively close by, which I’m glad about. The school of Estaquinha is part of an organization headed by an Italian priest that operates three other similar schools in neighboring towns, two of which host other Peace Corps teachers. It is perhaps more of a matu (bush) site than I would have chosen for myself, but I’m excited for a challenge, and I think the mission structure provides a nice community for networking rig
whispers of some quiet conversation 
Congrats! That sounds like a pretty cool posting (Sharif got a good one too, it sounds like).
Incidentally, I arrived in Portland, Oregon, tonight for the first time. It feels like it’s missing something, and that’s probably you, but I’ll try to make the best of it sans Rebecca Balmer.
Oh I’m so glad you got posted! A neighborhood designed for teachers sounds wonderful. I really love reading this blog, your writing is so clean and spare, but filling! It makes up for all the other terrible blogs out there on the internet. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I will write a long email VERY soon (they finally overhauled the internet in my building at long last) – miss you. al X