The Big Day

So it's finally come! Swearing-in is tomorrow...I am going to wear the amazing dress that my TZ mama sewed for me. Its a tradition style dress with zebras on it. It rocks.

We had a ton of tests and our OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) this last week. I got advanced-low on my OPI. You need Intermediate-mid to "pass", so I was excited about that. They're allowing me to go to my site, so I am assuming I passed all of the tests.

I had to say goodbye to my host family this morning and it was so sad. I will miss them quite a bit. Last night we had a Tanzanian-style farewell party for all the volunteers in my CBT (interned with me). Mama gave me a kanga which says "Hongera Mwanagnu", which mean congradulations daughter. That was very nice of her. I gave them their goodbye gifts and I think everyone like them, especially the boys. I gave them a soccer ball. I thought they were going to break everything in the house.

Thanksgiving, I will be taking a 15 hour bus ride to my site, with my mkuu (headmaster). That'll be a bit uncomfortable. Besides that, everything going really well. I am really excited to be done training.

I am sorry for the short post. I don't have a ton to say. But I wanted to post something before I left. Who knows when I'll have internet again.

If you want my new address, email me or facebook me, or call me, or something. I am not going to post it on here. The Peace Corps recommends not doing so, so I won't. Miss and love you all!

From Moro to Moshi and everywhere in-between

Hey everyone,
Site visits have pretty much come to an end. After an 8 hour bus ride on a sweltering bus, I am sitting in an air-conditioned internet cafe in Dar. Life is good. Except I'm in Dar. But AC is kicking ass right now. So I travelled to a town about an hour from Mt. Kilimanjaro to visit a volunteer up there. Mwanga is really pretty area up near Mt. Kilimanjaro. It's gorgeous. Our host was a fabulous cook and we ate some ravioli, some pumpkin pie, some pudding, some rattitoui. And got to see Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The most exciting part of the whole trip was that I was talking to a teacher at my host's school and he was from the area in Mbeya where I am heading in 10 DAYS! He says that it is very similar to the Kilimanjaro area, which is awesome. But besides that good news and some great food: we had a super eventful 5 days.

We arrived at the site last Wednesday night. Getting there from Moro consisted of a 7 hour bus ride to the base of a mountain. And then a 45 minute daladala ride up the mountain. When we arrived, we met our host's neighbors "babu" and "bibi" who are really nice, cooked some food, and went to bed. The next day was Thursday, so our host had school. We went to school with her and watched her teacher - three Form 1 Math classes on surface area. Exciting stuff. The students are great and wanted us to teach them songs. We taught them the chicken dance, and since they knew Old Mc.Donald and the Hokey Pokey, we let them "teach" those songs to us. After that, they all wanted pictures with us, so we used our host's camera to get millions of pictures with all the students.

Thursday night was quite an adventure. We went to bed at the normal time. It is the beginning of the short rainy season here, so things are coming to life. Around 4 in the morning we hear this crazy buzzing around us. I look around, and no lie - there's about 400 kumbekumbe flying around our heads. I'm not sure what they're called in English but they're like flying termites. And they were EVERYWHERE! We had left the outside light on, whcih they were attracted to, and apparently the back door isn't kumbekumbe proof so they just came right in. So we found brooms and books and flyswatters and started swatting away. We also turned off the porch and house lights, turned on the choo light (about 10 feet away) and opened the door, hoping they'd leave. About and hour later, problem solved. But it was too late to go back to bed. We made some chocolate pudding for breakfast and sat around like zombies until we had to go to school.

Friday was similiar to Thursday, except that I was pretty sick and skipped all but one class. No biggie, I have a cough, running noise, all those fun things. I'll survive. No worries.

Saturday, we took a bus into Moshi, the city right at the base of Kilimanjaro. It was kind of crazy how touristy it was. I haven't seen that many wazungu in one area for a long time. It was strange atmosphere. We met up with a ton of people there, went to dinner. A lot of people went to a club afterwards, but since I still felt kind of like death, I stayed in and went to bed. I hear the club was a mini Las-Vegas with slots, and bubble machines, and fog machines and basically every cheesy-awesome effect you can get. I'm not too upset I missed it. The next morning, I had a VANILLA milkshake and pizza for breakfast (Mom and Dad, aren't you glad you taught me such great nutrtion?) And then we headed back to our host's house.

This is were things got a little not-as-great. My camera was stolen when I was gone :(. Which means that someone got into our host's house when she was gone. Hmm. It really weird because the only things missing are my camera (not the memory card that was in the camera or the bag that the camera was in-weird huh?), 10000 TS /= (less than 10 dollars) and our host's battery charger...but my camera didn't have rechargeable batteries. Nothing else: including 40,000/= in my backpack, our host's IPOD right next to her battery charger, her passport or money. ODD. Today, our host spoke with the mkuu at her school and babu and bibi. I hear in a small village, things have a way of showing up. So I haven't totally written my camera off yet. Mungu akipenda.

So yea, thats about it. Everything else is stellar. Apparently people have had some trouble calling me from America. Sorry. Keep trying, I'd love to hear from you in the next 9 days when I have guaranteed cell service...who knows if my site will!

Love and miss you all!

Off To Kilimanjaro

Hello Everyone!
How's everyone holding up. I'm assuming it is getting colder and colder back in the states. It is getting hotter and hotter in Tanzania. The last few days have been terribly hot. Hard to sleep hot. So when you want to complain about the cold weather, just think of me.

But don't feel too bad. I get to go on a little vacation to shadow another volunteers on Wednesday. When Brian did his site visits, he visited the site where he'd actually be living. For us, this is not the case. Which definitely has it's ups and downs. For me, the up is that I am going to the region of Kilimanjaro! About an hour away from the actual mountain to visit a volunteer who seems super nice and is going to escort us to see Mt.Kili. I am so excited to go see how education volunteers live, to eat some "American" food, to see Mt.Kilimanjaro. It'll be great.

So training is essentially done. Written Swahili test tomorrow, shadow from Wednesday to Sunday, Dar for a few days, back to Morogoro and then a few more days of wrap-off before we ship off to our sites. I can't believe how quickly time has passed. Today we had a farewell party at the school that I've been interning at. The teachers there are so nice and have been so helpful. It was sad to say goodbye. Many of them are fantastic teachers and, here in Tanzanian, that is saying a lot. I give them so much credit for their teaching under the conditions here. Kudos. I realize teaching anywhere must be really hard(and have gained a new respect for all my teachers), but teachers here have so little to work with and the students are struggling against a system that is plaqued by teachers who don't really care, no resources, corporal punishment and a HUGE language barrier. At the school I was interning at, these things weren't as glaringly obvious as many other volunteers have described. I learned so much in such a short time from the teachers and students. It's sad to say goodbye but it's exciting to move on to my own school.

Speaking of moving on, many of you have asked about mailing address. It will change once I move to site: I will keep you posted about what my address is. I wouldn't send anything else to the address I'm at now since I will be moving in 16 days. Yes, that's right. 16 days until swearing in! 16 days until I am a real PCV. Crazy huh?

Anyways, hope everyone is holding up back home. Love and miss you! Also, I am trying to upload photos onto Facebook. We'll see how well that works out on this crazy slow internet...