I promised Mirel, the wonderful art trainer at the JOMA Conference, that I would post some of his paintings. Here are two of my favorites. More of his work can be seen at: mirelflor.blogspot.com

My front porch.

My bedroom.

My bathroom.

My bath buddy.

She is one bad mamma jamma.

My students from Turma 22.

My students from Turma 17.

More of Turma 17.

Chase and Ali chilling at the library.

Inhambane.

Cameron forcing a smile.

The longest boat ride from Maxixe to Inhambane.

Dino's.

Dancing girls at Dino's.

Bloody Marys, pizza, and conversation at Dino's.

Relaxing evening at Tofo.

Ninjas at Tofo.

Me, being over-dramatic.

Intense. Like backwoods Utah.

Night shot at Tofo.

Exploring Tofo at night.

Tofo.

Cartwheels at Tofo.

After the wonderful week in Chimoio, I returned to school for a few meetings then was able to enjoy my first holiday vacation of 2008. Cameron got into Massinga around 5:30am and, by the evening, we were eating Mozambican cuisine in Inhamussua with Chase. We all enjoyed some great "bro-time" and had both heartfelt and outrageously ridiculous conversations. We ate well, met some Peace Corp Volunteers from Swaziland, and then went back to Maxixe Saturday afternoon. It was an exhausting power-vacation but a vacation nonetheless. To say the least, I was happy to get home...and I hope all are happy to finally see my home!

Click to see a larger image of this mural in Chimoio.

The Massinga Crew

Chimoio's Market

The Mule Man

Chimoio's new mural.

A painting student.

An instructing professor.

A painting instructor.

A teacher painting.

Our amazing instructor, Mirel, instructing.

Mixing paint.

Mirel.

Another teacher hard at work.

A community artists who also loves short shorts.

Teamwork.

Before we could paint, we had to scrape and clean the wall.

Me. Giving orders as usual.

The preoccupied art crew.

Hamilthon posing in front of Chimoio's new mural.

The Art Club representatives from the southern region of Mozambique.

Kevin and the art students.

Hamilthon observing the win of his team.

Ebên devouring bananas in an eating competition.

Jared and Kevin hard at work.

Preliminary paintings for the mural.

Sketches for the mural.

Hamilthon reflecting on his experiences during the week.

Massinga's very own Mod Squad.

A giant plant and two tiny volunteers.

Competition in the spirit of movement and action.

The Pirate King.

Art session.

Critique.

Critique.

The gentlemen of Massinga enjoying lunch.

Justino enjoying Chimoio.

During the first week of holiday, I, along with two students and my counterpart, had the pleasure of visiting Chimoio, in Manica Province, for a communication conference sponsored by JOMA. As you can see we all had an incredible time where we attended art sessions, learned about gender and leadership, toured the city, and painting a mural together. The whole conference was an amazing learning experience, not only for the young boys but for the teachers and PCVs as well. Although, getting up at 5:30 just to get a hot shower was a bit painful, the fact that I was able to enjoy a shower at all was undeniably sensational. At the weeks end, we presented our sketches and the students talked about the theme for our mural: The Progressive Movement of Women in Mozambique.