Short break and back to work

We had a week off from school that I am proud to say I made the most of. It was mostly quite intense with a short relaxing interlude at the beach.

Just a couple of days before the break I celebrated my 26th birthday, and the students were very sweet and sang to me at the morning parade they have every day before classes. Some also gave me cards that they had bought or made. It was very nice.

A couple of days after that was the big party I had been planning for awhile. It was a huge success. It had originally been planned for just one night, but it extended into two, with the second night even bigger than the first. We cooked chilli one night and cooked a chicken and a duck from the school the second night. Thankfully the sisters were kind enough to kill and clean the birds for us. There were fifteen people sleeping in my house and despite the remoteness of my place we managed to keep well supplied. I have to thank Kajuna, another teacher and my school and a good friend, for a lot of help getting things together. He helped me organize a lot of things like having crates of beer delivered. This is a big deal because they had to be pushed about five miles over the mountain on a bicycle. This upped the price a little, but it was well worth it. Some people from quite a ways away managed to make it out, which was quite nice.

Afterwards we went into Lushoto for a day and did a little hiking and had a nice relaxing dinner. I went to Dar the next day and went to the beach for a couple of days before going to a short meeting in Dar I had to attend. This gave me a couple of days to enjoy a place with actual nightlife. It was a successful trip because I discovered a great Chinese restaurant, and Irish pub, and a few other new places. I love where I live, but there are quite a few fun things you can't do in the village. I was, however, quite glad to come back and get out of the heat.

School's been back in session this week and the rains have finally come. I'm glad I bought some rubber muck boots because I've been wading through sometimes ankle-deep mud to get to school every day. Today, however, it's actually sunny, so it was a pleasant walk to get into town.

The exciting news coming up is that in July Josh and I are planning a trip to Gombe Stream National Park. This is where Jane Goodall studied the chimps and there you can basically hike up and hang out with them because they're used to people. I'm really excited about this. I won't have any time off until July, and that will be my last break before I come home in late November, but I definately think it'll be a good one.

Other than that, life goes on as usual. I'm going to be working really hard and trying to push these kids as much as I can. The Tanzanian syllabus for math in Form 2, which is mostly what I teach, is way too long for one year, so it's a struggle to get all the material in. So far we're in decent shape, but now I'm moving into geometry, which the kids really seem to struggle with. I think I'm going to have to make some teaching aids to try to help them visualize things a bit more. This is the kind of thing that's a bit of a struggle for me because I always found geometry very intuitive, so it's a little more difficult for me to figure out how to explain it. Fortunately I shouldn't be too pressed for time and I'll be able to do extra sessions with them on the weekends. The main problem, as usualy, is that too many kids just think math is too hard and don't even want to try. Well, in the next few months, we'll see how good a motivator I am.