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!