i have a site!!!

today i found out that i'll be living in a house at a primary school in Lwanga village located in the middle of the Iringa region of Tanzania. It's a new site so no other volunteer has been there before (read: no expectations....just kidding...kind of) i'll be living alone there with no electricity or running water but my closest peace corps neighbor will be about 5 Km away. so just a bike ride. i'm really excited Iringa is a fantastic place from what i hear. cooler temps, few bugs, and great communities. everybody google it and figure out when you want to come visit.

p.s. i reread my last post....so many spelling errors. try not to judge me. i'm always pressed for time when i'm posting. and there are always people staring me down waiting for computer time.

i love you and miss you!

Kilimanjaro!!!

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!

one month...still standing

i've been in my homestay month now. i live with a bibi and babu (grandma and grandpa) and their awesome. my baba speaks english and is very smart. my momma is hysterical. she's a take-charge kind of woman. (she says its because her grandpa was german...) she take good care of me and always worries that i don't eat enough. i've never bathed as much as i do here in my life. since deodorant isn't a thing that people have here they bathe twice a day. so i do too (but i also use my deodorant :)) no plumbing so its hot water in a bucket with a cup to pour. i also use squat toilets exclusivley but i think i like it better honestly. although when your in digestional distress sometimes you wish you had a seat to rest on.... i think its better for you i've decided. i walk to school everyday...about a 30 min walk. its fun i walk through my village and all the little kids come out to watch me....i've never been this interesting before. i live with three little sisters who are all grandchildren of my mama and baba. they are 16, 8, and 5: philomena, ester, and evonna. they are the best teachers, they dance with me everyday and we crack each other up. mostly they laugh at the things i accidently say in swahili.

my swahili is coming along...slowly. but its ok. i'd say i'm functional....barely. i can scrape by. but its fun and the people here are very patient and like to teach. if you call me i'll talk to you in swahili and you can be impressed by me. rediculous things happen daily. one day my dog simba slaghtered a baby pig outside my window. the sounds of tearing flesh brought me out of a deep sleep. umm cool. i also made the mistake of telling me host family that i eat chicken. i clearly did not think that through. weird how the boneless skinless chicken breast that i can get from ralphs isn't quite what i'm encountering here. more like on the bone, with the skin, and all the gristle, leg. i'm not ready for this. so i'm still picking at in on my plate every night pretending to eat it. i can't do it. i've tried. too much change.

the people in my group are awesome. lots of funny people. we're all excited because this weekend we are taking a group trip to Mikumi which is a national park here in TZ. we'll get to see animals and even.....stay out late *gasp*. right now because we're so new in the country peace corps keeps us on a pretty tight hold. we're home everynight before dark and don't go anywhere without a peace corps escort. so everyone who was worried about my saftey, don't. its a non -issue at least for the time being.

TOP TEN THINGS ABOUT AFRICA:
1. people don't care if you smell like a toilet but they care if you iron your shirt.
2.
3. there is always more time and there is no such thing as "on time"
4. midmorning chai break
5. midafternoon pumzika (nap) time
6. chipati...i can't even begin to describe this heavely food. google it
7. beers cost a dollar and a half
8. the two old men who live on my walk to school. they across the steet from each other and sweep the leaves at the same time everyday. i imagine them as the tanzanian version of jack lemon and walter matheau (sp?) in grumpy old men
9. lots of little nugget children to play with
10.babies regularly run around naked for hours but the exposure of adult knee caps morally offensive


i have a phone and an address: call me (with a calling card...its expensive) or write me letters. its much easier than email. this blog is on about the 5 attempt to get a working comp.
my phone number is country code:255 then: 782136776
write me and old fashion letter so on mail call days i don't feel like the last person picked for dodgeball.
36 Zambia Road PO Box 9123
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

i miss you guys and love you!

Morogoro

i'm in morogoro. i went to the market today and saw a hospital named st. harry's. is there a saint harry. i don't think saints have nicknames. i meet my host family tomorrow!!

Dar es Salaam

after 33 hours of travel, we made it here. it was long. my butt hurt a lot. but we made it. tanzania had no customs so that made it easier. all my bags made it. so for the most part it was really good. we started our training. they're trying to ease us into it. right now we're staying at a catholic center that functions as a kind of univeristy so it has dorms and we're staying there. its actually pretty sweet. i get my own room with a mosquito net and fan. we've been introduced to a lot of the staff and they're all testing our swahili. its not great. lets be real. it didn't go well. but all the tanzanians are REALLY welcoming. i think i like it here. all the current volunteers tell us that training is the worse part so just brace yourself and try to get through it. the real training, the hard kind, starts on monday. thats when we start language training and job training. i'm actually still waiting to see what my volunteer sector is. it was supposed to be environment but it may turn out to be health. i'm waiting to see. all the little kids are curious about the crazy group of 49 white people that don't speak any swahili and travel in herds. thats it for now. i've got like 15 other trainees waiting for computer time.

i'm actually going

tomorrow is the big day. i actually leave for tanzania. we're here in D.C. right now. we just finished staging. it was way less boring than i anticipated. it was one long meeting that lasted a day and half but it was fun. i met the other peace corps trainees that i'll be going through training with and the ones that (if we last) will be sworn in with me in august. but i'm trying to take this one step at a time. my group is cool. totally what i expected (granola) and totally suprising too (i so many things in common with everyone here) its nice also to have a bunch of people who are going through the same stuff as you. so tommorw morning we get some shots, take some malaria pills, and wait for the acid trip to start (evidentally these pills have several side effects, i'll let you know). after that its off to the airport to fly to germany then switzerland then tanzania. we should get there sometime wednesday. on friday or saturday i'll meet the host family that i'll be living with for the next ten weeks while i get trained. cross your fingers for me that they'll accept my psuedo-vegetarian lifestyle. thats it for now. i'll keep you updated when i can. computer access is iffy but once i have some cools pictures i'll put those up too. leave messages. they'll make me happy.

Flights Booked

I got the call 6:15 this morning.
Me: heeellllllo?
Travel Guy: Hi this the Peace Corps travel agency. We'd like to arrange your flight to Washington D.C. on June 8 to meet with your staging group before you leave for Tanzania.
Me: mmmhmmmm
TG: Where will you be departing from ?
Me: Burbank, California
TG: oh no! it must be what?...... like 6:15 over there?
Me: yes, definitely 6:15

really? is this guy new? the time change isn't.
so anyhow. its booked. the last thing to be done is done. so I'm really going and its starting to hit me a little bit. I'm nervous. 27 months is a long time. and Swahili is a very different language. and its hot there. i get hot easily. i tend to complain a lot too. did i put that in my application? i hope they have someone there to handle people like me. if they don't, this might be a much shorter trip than anticipated.

but i'm sure i'll be ok. as long as i have enough sudoku's, crime novels, and prozac i'm sure i'll make it out just fine. besides, this is what i wanted. something where i get to meet people from a totally different world than mine and something that is a little bit hard.