Only 26 short months left. Where does the time go?

Last Sunday I came into town to use the internet, but the Morogoro network was down. Fortunately, I bumped into Nathan, one of my good PCT buddies and we decided to go have a soda. We ran into some PCVs at our watering hole of choice, Mama Pierina's, and later went out for ice cream where we met an Australian man and Irish woman travalling together. Our now fairly large group ended up having quite an exciting afternoon. I ended up getting to do everything except what I set out to do. Such is life, especially in Africa.

The last two weeks have been very good. Each week is easier and going by faster than the week before. I'm making a lot of progress with the language and am to the point where I can get basic information across and understand simple things said to me. Teaching has started off great too. My first lesson was a little rough, but the second one went extremely well. I am becoming extremely confident about my ability to perform both in the school and in this culture. I know it's going to be far from easy, but at the same time I know I can do it.

I'm enjoying the Swahili. As I mentioned, it's really coming along, but it's also a great sounding language. The language uses a lot of prefixes for agreement between nouns and adjectives and subject prefixes for verbs. The cool thing about that is that it means Swahili often lends itself to a lot of fun alliteration. For example: "Watoto wetu wawili wafupi walikuwa wanifunzi wazuri." That sentence means, "Our two short children were good students." The stuff with the noun-adjective agreement is pretty complicated and to large extent it seems arbitrary why a noun is in this "class" or that one. The class of the noun is what tells you what prefixes you will need on adjectives, numbers, and even the Swahili word for "of." This aspect of the language is what I'm finding hardest to learn.

As exciting as linguistics are, I will move on to different things. I am definately getting comfortable at home. Communication is much easier and washing clothes by hand and bucket showers now seem pretty normal. Pretty soon our training schedule will get much more exciting. We're going into Week 5, and in Week 8 we will visit Dar es Salaam and shadow a volunteer in the field. The week after that is Thanksgiving and we have been invited, along with all PC staff and volunteers, to the US ambassador's residence for Thanksgiving dinner. We just found out about that this week. Needless to say it's a very nice surprise. Five days after Thanksgiving, we swear in, and then it's off to our site.

We still don't know our sites, but that's mainly because Peace Corps hasn't matched people to sites yet. We talked to them about what we want in a site, but I figure I'll most likely be ok with it no matter where it is. I did tell them I like mountains though. It would be really great to be in the southern or northern highlands, both because of the scenery and the weather. Time will tell, I'll find out in about a month.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of computer time. It's very hard to focus my thoughts so quickly. I may start writing the entry before I come and just type it in here. Things are still going well, and I appreciate the emails, letters, and comments posted here. Keep them coming. Bottom line of my situation is that while it's far from easy, I'm having a good time and I'm adapting well. Until next week, or perhaps the next.

Updating already?

That's right, I was here just three days ago, but I'm back at the internet cafe. We are still training hard, but on Sundays we have the day off. Earlier I washed all my clothes by hand. That was quite a chore, and now my knuckles are rather raw. Fortunately one of the girls who works for my family helped me out. Tomorrow I will start observing math classes in Kihonda Secondary School. I'll probably observe three or for classes, and then teach my first lesson. Friday we practiced teaching to each other in our language groups, and I think I did ok for the most part. I need to speak slowly and carefully because my students will not be that proficient in English, and I need to practice writing on the chalk board because I'm not used to that and my hand writing is terrible. I'm feeling good about it though. My organization was good and I think I am able to present the material in a way that will be understood.

Communication is improving day to day. I am getting much better at understanding what people say to me. Most of the time I'll still struggle to find the words to respond, but I'm definately making progress. I'm still impatient for training to finish so I can get to my site. I believe it's seven more weeks before I swear in.

First Two Weeks in Morogoro

It has been a very hectic two weeks. This will likely be stream-of-consciousness, so bear with me.

My host family is great. They are a fairly young couple (mid 30s) with two little girls, 6 and 1 1/2. The older is in boarding school and I haven't met her yet. The little one, Tina, is really cute and hopefully I can eventually post a picture. Baba (dad) speaks fluent English but since I'm learning Swahili, we try to communicate in that until we hit a brick wall, then we'll use English. Mama speaks some English too, so when communication is really necessary, we're ok. There are also two girls at the house who are hired to cook, clean, etc. I found out one of them is Mama's younger sister (Mama has 19 siblings). We live in a village called Kihonda outside of Morogoro. It's about a 45 minute bus ride from there into town, so unfortunately I probably won't be able to update this as much as I'd like. I'm doing my training and internship teaching at Kihonda Secondary School. Our training group has four people with our language and cross-cultural faciliator, a Tanzanian named Peter. Peter's a great teacher and a nice guy and I feel like I'm making huge progress in the language considering I didn't speak a word of it two weeks ago. I will also begin teaching a lesson or two week after next, so I'm a bit nervous about that.

The last two weeks have been very fulfilling, but also challenging and stressful. Communication with a lot of people is very frustrating because very few people speak English. We also have very little down time. We did have some time off last Saturday though and several of the area Peace Corps Volunteers were in town. They were all extremely laid back and said that training was intentionally like a boot camp and that the actual service isn't so quickly paced. They all seem to be having a great time and to love what they do, so I am extremely excited. I just am kind of impatient to get through training. The people I'm training with are great, so I hope I will be posted close to some other volunteers so that we can visit each other.

Tanzania is a really great place. The mountains here around Morogoro are beautiful. The food is good, though there isn't too much variety. A lot of rice and beans and a spinach-like vegetable (called mchicha). The coolest thing though is that I am yet to have a meal without fresh fruit. My house actually is very nice by Tanzanian standards. We don't have a shower, but we have a tap in the shower room and choo (squat toilet). We also have electricity and even a TV. It is extremely unlikely I'll have such luck at my site. I'll sign off for now. There are about eight more weeks of training, and then the swearing in. I hoping I may get in here on a weekly basis to update, but that may be too optimistic. Until next time!