so here i am in Moshi its the capital of the kili region. i've been staying for the week at Umbwe secondary school. me and my friend emilia have been shadowing a current education volunteer that teaches math at the school. its been really a hysterical trip so far. we're on the slops of Kilimanjaro and when the clouds lift and you see the peak its really amazing. the rest of the time its actually really really cold. i didn't know africa could get this cold. the showers are cold so those have gone down to about once every other day. i didn't pack that well for this trip so my clothes are dirty and i can't wash them because its so cold and wet that they won't dry. cool. so i'm smelly and wearning dirty clothes. i know, noone is really all the surprised so far. life as a volunteer is pretty slow is what i'm learning. i've read two books in the last four days. emilia and i have entertained ourselves by having extensive convos about tupac with the students. there are ofcourse awesome little kids who like to hear us speak swahili then laugh uncontrollably after. today we decided to leave the school, go into town and explore...attempting to use our keen swahili and tanzanian cultural skills. that meant wearing a head scarf and trying to look as if we were from around here and knew what we were doing instead of actually knowing...
its about an hour daladala ride (minibus) from school into town. we got lost on the 20 min walk down the hill to the daladala stand...but we made it by asking secondary school students who we felt whould not judge our crappy swahili as much. we successfully got on. just so you can imagin this - it is a 12 passanger van but we actually fit 30 people on it. there is no such thing as "no room". at one stop, the slidding door fell off. completely off. no one reacted. expect of course for me and emilia who were laughing hysterically. the decided to just put the door on top of the van, drive down the hill and fix it later. it was taking to long anyway. now we are spending a blissful day of eating pizza, using the internet, and buying american brand food (made in south africa)
i also celebrated my 23rd birthday here. it was fantastic. its funny because tanzanians don't celebrate birthdays or actually know their birthdays. at best they'll know the month or the day of the week they were born on. but my training group was traveling at the time so we found an touristy bar that had kareoke and stayed there disturbing everyone until midnight when we had a birthday countdown and two white zimbabwean men sang me happy birthday. it was great. once i find a comp fast enough to upload pics i'll share pics of that night with everyone.
next week i will be traveling to the capital to get me site announcement. i'll find out the place that i'll be living and working for the next two years. training is finished and now we're just traveling then saying our goodbyes to our host families. i'll update you all when i find out where i'll be.....stay tuned
on a sad note. my host brother here passes away two weeks ago. he was 26 and had been suffering from health problems for quite awhile. it was terrible and wonderful to be apart of the grieving process here. they took me as apart of the family as i was dressed as a family member and asked to lay a rose on the grave during the funeral of over 300 people.
thanks audrey (you live in florida now?), carl (thanks for the st. harry info), trina, amy, uncle brad, aunt camille, jessica, jackie, jen, and everyone for the posts and text messages. it make me so happy to hear from you. the mail is slow but i'm looking forward to getting your letters and i'll write everyone back. keep me updated. i love you and miss you!
