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...