Hey hey!

Not much news, but I've got some spare time and internet this weekend in Newala so I figured I'd post some words (and pictures)...

April ended with a Peace Corps Super-Regional (Lindi and Mtwara regions) conference, held in Mtwara town. It's always nice to have the chance for all 24 PCVs in the deep south to get together and catch up. The week-long conference was half catch up/share time with PCVs and staff and half focused on malaria training. Each PCVs local ward's CCA (community change agent) was there to talk about ways we can collaborate together in our respective villages. The highlight of the training was going to a nearby village with a "mobile video unit" that drives around and sets up a projector and shows various movies, this one a 45 minute Tanzanian love-story/fishing action drama/important lessons about malaria learned feature film. Tons of adults and children showed up and piled on the ground and it was really fun! Oh ya and then we spent our last afternoon at the beautiful beach :). It was also great timing for us to get some much needed time together for planning our girls empowerment conference, which will begin in just 12 days. I'm really excited, but I'll be relieved if and when we are finally able to pull it off!

Things are moving slowly in the village, as usual. A few weeks ago the 2nd year students at the nearby teacher's training college had their graduation ceremony. Tyler and I went and got to see Hanako (the JICA volunteer teaching computers there) and Tetsuko (JICA volunteer teaching in Newala) and eat some tasty pilau (Tanzanian spiced rice, special for weddings, ceremonies, etc.). This last week my ward's Malaria CCA (community change agent) had a meeting in my village with some Mamas. Trying to teach people to use mosquito bednets (when they don't have beds) is tricky! Hopefully in June the MVU (mobile video unit) from Mtwara will be coming to Maputi to play a movie, which should be more fun than listening to someone talk about the importance of malaria prevention!

And guess what! Peace Corps finally approved a pay increase of 20%! After seeing prices increasingly rise, some things nearly doubling in price over the last year and a half, it'll be really nice to have that extra 50,000 shillings (~ 30 USD) per month. Speaking of money, I'm supporting my former student, Karimu, during his A-level schooling. He's studying way out west of Songea. It is always amazing to me to see how little money Tanzanians are able to live on, and for just around 250,000 shillings (~160 USD) he can pay for school, room and board in the hostel, his uniform and supplies (of course a calculator for math class!), food and walking around money, and travel to/from home for an entire year! I'm trying to pay this from my modest PC living allowance, so if anyone is interested in helping support an amazing student this year or next year, let me know :)

I think that's it for now! Happy birthday sister (2 days ago)! And happy mother's day ma (tomorrow)!

Hello again! Happy Easter to all!

First off, uploaded some new pictures. And here are a couple of funny videos made by Peace Corps Volunteers. The first one is made by a few PCVs from the newest health/environment class...but maybe it's not so funny if you don't live here.

"Shit Peace Corps Volunteers Never Say (Tanzania Version)"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP_O_Oyffug

"Poop in a Hole"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUWaAr-itY

I've currently got a week off of school for mid-term break/Easter holidays. A district wide soccer tournament is currently going on (will go all the way up to nationals in June), so last week we cancelled our mid-term exams, halfway through, in order to prepare. My school is very professional, you family moved there and opened a restaurant and the old man is awesome and gives us free wine and dessert! Came to Mtwara town yesterday for a few relaxing days at the lovely beachhouse. Splurged last night at the fancy restaurant here on a BBQ...grilled red snapper and steak! This morning we cooked a feast of bacon, eggs, toast, and splurged some more for a block of cheddar cheese. Bacon cheeseburgers planned for lunch, followed by cliff jumping into the ocean (today at 4pm is the highest tide of the month), and a game night with some other ex-pats living here. I'll say a pretty good Easter weekend!

I really can't believe it's already halfway through my last full semester teaching here. And I feel like the rest of the term will go by even faster. I'll be back to Mtwara soon for a week-long malaria and sub-regional training for Lindi and Mtwara PCVs the third week of April. Then at the end of May we'll host the girls empowerment conference. It was supposed to be this week, but changes in school break and issues getting grant money from PC meant rescheduling it. Now it will be at the teacher's training college only a 25 minute walk from my house! It has been a frustrating process, with lots of added work and planning to move locations, so it will be a relief to eventually get to the fun part - actually hosting the conference! And since it's so close to my village, I'm hoping to sneak in a few extra girls :). Speaking of girls, one of my very best Form I girls from last year, Upendo, moved schools this year (most good students will transfer to a better school if they are able...it's good for them but sad for me to lose a student that is so enjoyable to teach). She came by to visit earlier this week and it was so nice to see her again...if only I could take her to the conference, too!

And then comes June! And my family will be here! My mom, two sisters, and older sister's boyfriend are coming for about two weeks and I can't wait to see them and show off Tanzania. We're doing safaris at Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, hanging out beachside on Zanzibar, and ending with a day in the big city, Dar es Salaam. Unfortunately they won't have time to make it all the way down south to my village, but we're hoping to stop at a fellow PCV's site so they can get a glimpse of village life and a Tanzanian school. I'll have just a short June break this year and then 5 weeks off in August/September because...dun dun dun...Tanzania is 2 years behind conducting the 2010 census. So they've changed the breaks to accomodate the census in August (all students must return to their home villages, teachers will do the actual census taking). Also at the beginning of August I'll have my last PC training - Close of Service (COS) conference. And with the additional break, I'm thinking of travelling all the way west to Kigoma and Gombe Stream, where Jane Goodall did all her chimpanzee research. So we'll see!

Oh ya, and I'm old now! I celebrated my 25th birthday a couple of weeks ago in Newala with a few other PCVs. We made beef fajitas and queso and pumpkin cake with cream cheese icing so it was great! It also marked one and a half years living in Tanzania...time sure does fly! Thanks for all the well wishes from home!

Hey again! First off, an exciting new blog change. Okay, so probably not really that exciting. I made my first twitter account and added a feed from my blog. It's under "Sasa Hivi..." (Right now). This has all come about because of lots of work (big thanks!) from my mom and a friend's mom who brought it over, I now have a Kindle with working 3G internet! So I'll be able to check email, facebook, etc. from my house kule kijijini (there in the village). My plan is to give some more frequent small updates between blog posts. Also I added some pictures of my Mafia trip, MSC, and some random pics around my school, so check out the photo stream.

Not much new since my last post, but a few weeks ago my school received some very exciting news! One, out of 60 or so, of our Form IV students from this past year scored high enough on his NECTA exam to continue on to A-level high school. I think I've mentioned Karimu in a past blog post. He used to live with my counterpart next door and just might be the most driven person I have ever met. He literally studied day and night, and when he wasn't studying he was helping to run the school and his house. And he's always smiling which wins big points with me! He scored a C (40-60%) in all subjects except Biology (B) and Math (D). It may not look like it, but this is incredibly impressive considering he didn't have an English, Math, or Physics teacher during most or all of his high school education. Only a handful of other students in the district also scored Division II. Because he moved back in with his mom in a neighboring village right after exams, I hadn't seen him since October. The afternoon after the results were published, I heard a piga hodi (kind of like a verbal knock) at my door, and there was Karimu, with an even bigger smile on his face than normal! Everyone is so proud of him, and rightfully so! He'll likely go to A-level in Ndanda, at a school where a fellow PCV, Mikey, teaches math. So that's also neat and I'll be able to keep an eye on his progress in math :)

If you actually looked at said twitter feed, then you'd know I'm currently in Dar. I've had some meetings the last few days for Peer Support and Diversity Network (PSDN). We met to review the past year and to talk about the transition for the next group of PSDNers, who will be applying in the next couple of months, as well as conduct a training with the PC staff. The majority of what PSDN does is act as a network that other PCVs are able to call when they are going through a tough time or just need someone to listen. Calls are confidential, so a lot of people frankly use it to talk about things they just don't want to jump on the PC gossip train (it is truly insane how fast information can travel from PCV to PCV here, particularly if it is juicy, people are bored, etc.). We record simple statistics on types of calls that then help staff better know what issues PCVs are facing in the field; maybe not suprisingly, romantic relationships are the theme of the majority of calls. PSDN-led sessions are also a part of every PC training, be it sessions on alcohol and drugs, relationships and sex, mental health and happiness, or safety and security. Recently there has been an emphasis on the diversity aspect of it all. Our PSDN group reflects the diversity in Americans and PCVs in general, whose backgrounds, races, sexual orientations, and religions may differ a great deal. This can translate into very different PCV experiences because Tanzanians generally have a very narrow stereotype of Americans: rich, white, Christians. For example, an African-American PCV often faces different challenges than a Caucasian-American. Out of 20 or so PC Tanzania staff, there are only 3 Americans. Although the Tanzanian staff are extremely educated Tanzanians, speak fairly good English, and may have worked with foreigners and/or Americans for years, there are occasional issues/misunderstandings between volunteers and staff arising from cultural differences that leave all involved feeling frustrated. This year PSDN has become much more of a liaison between staff and volunteers, and for the first time PSDN has been involved in staff trainings. Our new Country Director (an American) has been particularly encouraging, and asked us to come this week for a training with the entire staff. Unfortunately I can't say much beyond that the staff was able to hear very candidly from PCVs about issues ranging from alcohol, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, and gender relations to just general frustrations with Tanzania/Tanzanians. It turned out to be a suprisingly powerful experience for all involved; they were both shocked and thankful for our honesty in sharing some very personal challenges and it was touching to see how much the Tanzanian staff truly care about volunteers and want to know how to better support them. Once again I am reminded how lucky I am to be a PCV in this country. Goal 2 of 3 of Peace Corps involves promoting cultural sharing and understanding, which its much easier to think about when your kijijini, so this week was a wonderful reminder that our Tanzanian staff, supervisors, etc. can be an equally valuable source for these exchanges.

Welp, off again. Headed back on a bus down south tomorrow morning and should be back to my site by Sunday afternoon, ready to start off the next school week. Oh and my counterpart who left in October for university is back at my school during his break to teach biology and chemistry for a month or so. I'm excited to have him back and excited for the students to have some more science!

Hey all, sorry for taking a bit of a blog hiatus. It's been over 2 months, so let's see if I can remember some things...

The first of December brought on Mafia Island and...dun dun dun...swimming with whale sharks! It was awesome! We were close enough to touch them, snorkeling along side them. They are HUGE. And have really wide mouths. It was truly amazing. I posted some pics (above water, sorry), but they really don't do the experience justice. The ferry ride back was about 4 hours on very rough sea and encouraged quite a lot of vomiting (not by me, thanks strong stomache). Cultural observation: apparently throwing up over the edge of the boat is not intuitive. Tanzanians throw up on themselves and their clothes and their neighbors and their neighbors' clothes. It's no big deal, really.

Then I went home to America. It was swell. Seeing family and friends was wonderful, as expected! And I ate so much! And it was perfect weather for most of the time. I did burn my legs on Christmas morning, but was lucky that they healed before I had to head back to the land of dirt and poor medical care.

I returned to Tanzania and had about a week to get over jet lag. I did it in the worst possible way. Like opposite of getting over jet lag. I arrived at about 8 am, went to my friend's apartment, showered, and got in bed for just a "little nap." Little nap turned into all day and I woke up at about 6 pm and ate some dinner. Then some friends convinced me to go out for a few beers, and what can I say, I missed those big Tanzanian beers. Well that turned into going to a safi (nice) club, that has a 20,000 shilling cover (3 days pay). Needless to say, we stayed out way too long and I didn't get to bed until 6 in the morning. Then I slept all day, again. So I was basically nocturnal, but I got over that after not too long. I also had 4 days of 'Mid-Service Conference' at the Peace Corps office, which consisted of a mix of medical check-ups and general training sessions. It was really fun, and the first time my training class has been back all together since March. The next and last training our class will do together is COS (close of service) Conference in early August.

Finally getting back to my village and house was nice. The new school year started up right away in mid-January and we're 3 weeks into term so far. It's been a bit strange because none of our Form I or III students decided to show up until the third week, so our school was few as were our classes. Our teachers are still few...just 3 of us. We have been promised "at least 2, not more than 3" new teachers, but I won't believe it until I see it. My math levels are a bit different, and I've got 5 levels now, but I'm only teaching Form I and II physics this year (beyond that, sciences are optional for students). I have not been asked to teach Form I English again, but I suspect I will unless we receive an English teacher. Teaching math is still usually enjoyable, and I feel a lot more confident this year as a teacher. Many topics I've already taught and have class notes for, so that also cuts down on the prep time which is nice. I'm hoping that our Form IV and Form II math results at the end of this year will show a lot of improvement, as the students would have atleast had 2 years of regular math instruction beforehand. I've enjoyed teaching physics so far more than last year. For starters more current Form IIs (last years Form Is) are my favorite group to teach, most being still active and motivated and not too jaded by their chances for passing to give up yet. A few of my Form IIs that don't participate a ton in math class are interested in physics and ask a lot of questions which is nice to see. I still feel like the physics concepts they are expected to learn is way over their heads and not aligned with their math skills, which makes it difficult to teach. For example, the Form II syllabus starts with 'Static Electricity' which allows for a couple of demos (rubbing plastic pen in hair and then attracting little pieces of paper), but mostly the concepts are not intuitive or possible for them to see. All of this is also in English which makes it a million times harder for them to follow. They often ask me to describe the concepts simply and in Kiswahili; even if my Kiswahili vocabulary was good enough, the concepts just aren't simple. My students have no prior knowledge of atoms and electrons and energy and that's just the start of it. Next comes concepts like capacitance and circuit design and current electricity, things I didn't really learn about until college engineering courses. I think standing in front of a classroom that is paying attention and WANTS to understand a concept and trying but failing, either because of English or my ability to dumb down a concept, is the worst feeling in the world as a teacher. But then I have my classes that I come away from on such a high. One of the biggest struggle Peace Corps teachers have here is how to encourage students to think critically and problem solve, in a system that has only ever asked them to just memorize an answer or process. If I give students exercises that differ at all from my examples in class, they don't know how to solve them. Teaching them to combine multiple concepts to solve a problem seems impossible. Given all this, I had a student ask a question during class the other day that demonstrated critical thinking. It was shocking and awesome and I couldn't stop smiling! We were going over the laws of exponents, dividing powers of the same base, specifically. I just finished an example showing that 3^10 / 3^4 = 3^(10-4) = 3^6. This particular student, the best Form III by far, raises his hand and says something along the lines of "Madam, if it is the other way around and 3^4 / 3^10, do you have a negative exponent and what does that mean?". This was amazing on so many levels, firstly because negative numbers are really really difficult for them and few students know that 4-10=-6 and also because we hadn't been over negative numbers as exponents yet, and mostly because I have never had a student ask about exceptions to laws or use my examples to lead to more difficult questions. Ha, I don't know if any of that made sense to y'all, but it was most definitely the highlight of my teaching thus far.

I've also been working the last couple of months on writing a grant to get funds for a girls empowerment conference that the PCVs of Lindi and Mtwara regions will be hosting. Got just a few changes to make but hopefully we'll get approval soon and some much needed money. The plan is for a 4-day conference during the mid-term break in early April. Each volunteer will bring 4 girls from their secondary school to Ndanda, where we'll have sessions teaching life skills, anatomy and reproductive health, STIs and HIV/AIDS, decision-making and communication skills, and goal-setting and career planning. It's going to be a lot of work but I'm really excited and can't wait for my girls to participate.

Anyways, the only other exciting news that comes to mind is my water tank! I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but a 2000 liter water storage tank was installed on a raised platform in my courtyard in November. While I was home for the holidays, it was collecting rain water and I came home to a full tank! It has a little faucet and it is crazy and easy and like having running water. I also don't have to filter it before drinking so I have been drinking like 3 liters a day just because I can. It's awesome for hygiene...washing hands and feet and hair and dishes and filling up bucket baths and clothes washing buckets and I just couldn't be happier with my tank. I hope it will last through dry season so I won't ever have to worry about having enough water again. Yay water tank!

Hello, it's me again!My sitemate, Tyler, is a health volunteer and helps out teaching at his local secondary school (about a 2 hour walk or a 30 minute motorcycle ride from my vill). He's been working on raising funds to construct a basketball court there and is still about $500 shy of being able to start building. If you're interested in learning more about the project and donating: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=621-223I know Tyler and his school would be very appreciative of any help you can give!Welp, I'm nearly off on official vacation! I'll leave my village on Saturday morning and take a bus to Lindi town to meet up with a volunteer from my training class who's down here visiting. Then on Monday I'll head to Mtwara town, where I've given myself and early Christmas gift and booked a glorious 55-minute flight up to Dar on Monday evening. We'll meet up with a few other volunteers and head out to Mafia Island on Tuesday. After a few days on the island, I'll head back to Dar and spend a couple days running errands, and then be on my flight home to America on the evening of the 12th!!! Just 2 weeks until I get to and see many of you, experience the awesome-ness that is Austin, and escape the heat with some cool weather!And happy World AIDS Day!Lots of love from Tanzania!Kathryn

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I'm in Mtwara with a bunch of other PCVs, celebrating the holiday on the

beautiful beach. We had quite the feast on Thursday, complete with turkey!!! Here's how that goes down,

Tanzanian style:

1. Find a turkey...they're not so common

2. Pay for a turkey...50,000 shillings ($32) for ~8 lb turkey...about a week's pay for a PCV

3. Put turkey on leash and tie to tree until ready for the big event

4. Tie turkey hanging from tree

5. Cut off turkey's head

6. Drain turkey's head blood into bucket

7. Pull out feathers

8. Put in pan and marinate with butter, rosemary, and thyme

9. Bake for 2 hours at 425 degrees...thankfully a missionary couple living here let us use their

beautiful new oven for the cooking

The turkey was pretty small to feed over 20 of us, but we all got to savor a few delicious bites! Katie

and I also used all the turkey drippings to make some bomb cornbread dressing and giblet gravy so it

felt just like home! We had quite the tasty spread, only missing cranberry relish. It was all

delicious!

Aside from Thanksgiving, we also got to celebrate a few other milestones together. Thursday marked me,

Katie, Ghee, Leslie, and Will's 1-year anniversary of swearing-in as Peace Corps Volunteers and Friday

our 1-year anniversary of arriving at site. There were also two volunteer birthdays (Ben's on Thursday,

Katie's on Friday), so it was a fun few days!! And today the newest Health and Environment training

class has site announcements, so we'll learn who else will be joining us down here in the deep n' dirty

south in mid-December.

I'll be heading back to my village on Sunday, where I'll have some time to relax because school is

finished for the term. Although we wont officially close the school until December 2nd, the students

finished their exams this last Tuesday and I finished up all my grading before heading out for

Thanksgiving. So I'll have a few days to relax before leaving on my next vacation...Mafia Island. Me

and 4 other volunteers will brave the notoriously rough 3-hour boat ride out to the island (off the

coast a bit south of Dar) to spend a few days there. It's currently whale shark season and we're going

to swim with them (don't worry, I hear they've got little mouths and can't eat people).

Then I'll head back up to Dar for a couple of days to await my flight home to Austin on December 12! I

CAN'T WAIT!!! It's been increasingly hard to think about much else, and it will be so so so great to

see lots of family and friends and celebrate Christmas and New Years there. I've also been having

really vivid dreams/day-dreams about various foods and I can't wait to go to my favorite restaurants

and the grocery store and satisfy all my food desires.

Hi all! This will be a short post, hopefully more info and pictures later... This week was our fall break at school so I've been doing lots of traveling. Last weekend was Songeafest, an annual party thrown by volunteers near Songea town. Katie and I took a notoriously shitty but always interesting road from Masasi to Tunduru to Songea. It was a two day bus ride with an overnight in Tunduru, and not at all fun, but now we can join the proud few PCVs who have made the trek. The first day was just your typical shitty bus ride on a shitty unpaved road, nothing we aren't used to. I guess we got a little too cocky though because the second day was by far the most uncomfortable ride I've been on in Tanzania thus far. The two bigger buses were already filled up so we ended up squished into the back row of a daladala, the normal Tanzanian transport that looks like a van but is stuffed with like 40 people. I've been on plenty of daladala rides before, but they normally last for less than 30 minutes to take you across a big town like Morogoro. This one lasted a torturous 7 hours, through a windy and hilly game reserve on the bumpiest dirt road I've ever been on. But we arrived safely and relatively on time, and were the first PCVs I've ever heard of whose bus(es) didn't break down for hours along the way so I'd say we were pretty lucky (a friend that took the road during this last rainy season spent a whopping 21 hours on the second half of the journey). And the party was fun, complete with a volunteer talent show, sports competitions, and a few dance parties. The next day I traveled with several other volunteers up north to Tukuyu, a town very close to Mbeya town. We stayed the night with a PCV living there and the next morning headed out to Matema Beach on Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi). We spent a wonderful two days enjoying the gravel beach and freshwater lake, surrounded by a beautiful mountain view, and enjoyed our nights making beach bonfires. Yesterday we headed back up to Mbeya town (where I spent "shadow week" during training, if you remember), where I am now. Unfortunately I spent the night battling bouts of diarrhea (for only the second time since arriving in TZ but unfortunately once again during a vacation). I've spent the day inside near the toilet but have managed to get in a few good naps. I couldn't resist forcing down homemade banana bread and cinnamon rolls for brunch and am going to attempt going into town this evening for dinner, but more specifically to eat a famed creamy avocado burger which I had the pleasure tasting during shadow week and is easily the best burger I've eaten thus far in Tanzania. Tomorrow Katie and I will take an all day bus back to Dar (not doing the Tunduru path again), spend the night, and hop on another all day bus bright and early. We'll stop in Ndanda for the evening for a goodbye celebration for the education volunteers down here who will be COSing in the next month. Then finally back to my village on Sunday to prepare for teaching Monday!

As far as school is going, we've got just one week before our Form IVs take their big national exam so it will be a crazy next few weeks. The full week before I left for break, our Form IIs and IVs also took mock national exams so it feels like its been mostly testing and invigilating (proctoring) for me and the students, but things should settle down for about a month between Form IV exams and Form II exams in early November and I will hopefully be able to get some more teaching in. Despite writing all my midterms, my school ended up officially canceling midterms for Forms I and III last week because there were only two of us to invigilate all the exams which just wasn't possible. Although it will be nice not to have to grade lots of midterms when I go home, I'll probably spend the next week testing them during classtime because I'm a fun teacher like that. It feels like this term has flown by and will just continue to do so until we end in early December. And then, if you haven't heard the news, I'll be traveling home to Austin for the holidays - December 13 to January 4!!! Can't wait to see lots of wonderful family and friends!

Speaking of home, yesterday marked my one year anniversary leaving Austin (headed to Philadelphia for "staging") and Saturday will be one whole year in Tanzania. Can't believe it has gone by so fast, and I hope the next year is filled with as much fun, excitement, good friends, good travel, and of course satisfaction teaching my students!

Spent the last 2 days in Dar after leaving Morogoro on Tuesday. I couldn't get a bus back home until Friday, which has turned out really nice because it is not often that I have a lot of down time here. And its been especially fun because the hotel I'm at has also been taken over by one of the health/environment classes that's here for their mid-service conference. Yesterday I took a quick ferry ride (literally 2 minutes) to a island/peninsula with a nice beach and bar/restaurant/hotel. It was a lovely place to spend the day swimming and laying in a hammock and enjoying few cold ones. Afterwards I went to see my first real Tanzanian soccer game! I must say I was quite impressed, mostly because I was expecting a high school like stadium but it is in fact fancy and new and holds 60,000 spectators. Soccer is huge here and it was an especially big game, between Simba and Young Africans (Yanga); both are Tanzanian teams that also happen to be the top teams in East Africa...fun stuff. Today I went to the really nice part of Dar where all the rich non-Tanzanians live and hang out to spend the day sitting on the water, using tons of wifi, drinking a cold frappucino, and eating a magnificent pizza topped with salami and brie cheese!

Welp, that's just about all the news. I've gotta wake up super early tomorrow for a 6 a.m. bus and will make it (hopefully) to Newala tomorrow evening and then back to my village on Saturday. September will fly by with all kinds of craziness - the newbies arriving, mock NECTA exams for Form II, a 3-day regional training in Mtwara, mid-term exams, and a week off for midterm break (planning to travel to Songea).

Hey hey, greetings from Tanzania! I'm currently in Morogoro, enjoying the speedy internet and variety of foods. This afternoon I'm doing a PSDN (Peer Support and Diversity Network) session about the first three months at site with the current education training class. They will be swearing-in in just a week or two and then heading off to their various sites around Tanzania which is quite an exciting time for us all. Last week was their site announcements and we learned that the deep south will be receiving 7 new volunteers - 4* to Mtwara and 3 to Lindi. It is bittersweet because we have just said farewell to three volunteers and will lose four more in October/November. But we're looking forward to welcoming the new volunteers to our wonderful region and I have the pleasure of spending a day or with them beforehand...I have been entrusted with the very important and creepy role of acquiring all the information (and pictures, if possible) I can about our newbies prior to their arrival down south :). Another plus of going to Morogoro is that I'll get to see my host family again. My host Mama and Baba are getting married in September, and since I won't be able to make it to their wedding, I'm happy to have the chance for a short visit. And of course I'll get to see my little kaka, Isaac, who recently turned 2 and is speaking many more words!

*I have long come to terms with the tendency of people of my parents' generation to name their daughters Kathryn, or some variation there of (traditionally reserved for the most favorite child, I believe). My training class alone included a Kathryn (me), Katherine (Kat), Catherine (Leslie), and Kathleen (Katie). Three of the four of us were sent down to Mtwara region, which naturally started the rumor that Peace Corps assigns sites based, at least partially, on first name. Of the 140 other PCVs in Tanzania, there is one other Katie (probably also a Kathryn). Interestingly enough, she was also placed down in Mtwara, although transferred to Iringa shortly thereafter due to a severe cashewnut allergy. This trend was further confirmed by the most recent site placements, as another Kathryn and Kathleen (Kathy) will be joining us. And because there surely aren't enough Kathryn/Katherine/Catherine/Kathleen/Katie/Kate/Kats to humor Peace Corps Tanzania, they've just sent us a second Tyler from Wisconsin. Ok Peace Corps, this is just getting weird now.

It seems like lots of exciting things have been going on lately in my neck of the woods:

MAJI NA HALI YA HEWA (WATER & WEATHER)

We are about 2 months into dry season, and by dry season, I mean it is dry! When combined with lots of wind, this translates into dust, dust, and more dust. Everything is covered in a thick layer of red-brown dust, which you yourself have the pleasure of being covered by with every stroll around town, bus trip, etc. Blowing my nose after a bus ride is always really interesting...its amazing how red dirt translates into red/brown snot! But more importantly, with another 3 or 4 months to go until the rainy season, there is already very serious water shortage in my area. Because we live on top of the plateau, there is no groundwater to speak of. Many areas, including my school, collect rain water, which doesn't last very long after the rains have gone. My school's water tank has been empty for about a month now, so students are now hauling water for the school and teachers as needed. There is a small river that supplies water to the villages in this area, although it is a bit unreliable and often no water comes out of the village taps. When there is water, it is a crazy site to see - beginning at about 5 in the morning, when it is still pitch dark, Mamas start lining up their buckets from the tap...there will literally be a line of hundreds and hundreds of brightly colored, plastic buckets. To make matters worse, my village's tap just broke, so in the meantime people are walking to a nearby village to collect water. But one seasonal plus - it is winter! Although the sun is still quite strong, it cools off signicantly in the evenings and I have the pleasure of sleeping under a blanket!

On a related note, mine and my neighbor's house were recently invaded with ants...yikesies! I woke up one night at about 2am with ants crawling all over me and my bed. After freaking out and hopping out of bed, I stepped out of my room and found my house literally covered by long armies ofants...every surface, wall, floor...I've never seen anything like it. Luckily I had some bug killer spray that I emptied over everything. After a restless and paranoid night's sleep, I awoke and swept out all my dead little friends. The Tanzanian solution is to surround your house with brush and set fire, which I rather enjoyed watching my students do. My counterpart said that the ants usually mean it might rain, as they come from underground in search of water. Sure enough, two days later it sprinkled for a bit and the ants have not returned. I must say I prefer the rats!

HABARI ZA KIJIJINI (VILLAGE NEWS)

Kitangali, the nearest town to me received a very important visitor a couple of weeks ago! The President of Tanzania, Kikwete, came to tour the area and speak. It was quite a big deal, and was to my knowledge the first time a president has visited the town. Mtwara has been a hot topic in current parliamentary talk - namely because we have the lowest national exam grades and the only road down to here is unpaved so we're a bit disconnected from the rest of the country/economy. There is now a big push to finish the road, which they are saying will be done this December. We all know that's not going to happen, but to the credit of the Tanzanian government, there have been lots of progress lately and workers about. Travel up to Dar es Salaam would be significantly more comfortable with a paved road, so I hope its completed while I'm still living down here! But back to Kikwete. I went to join the festivities in Kitangali with my neighbor/counterpart, Mr. Likulu, and met up with my sitemate, Tyler. Because Tyler and I are white and therefore automatically overally respected guests, we were ushered to the important villager seating to watch the proceedings. There was lots of tribal dancing and singing while awaiting Kikwete's arrival, who in classic Tanzanian style arrived 4 hours late, just about a half hour before sunset. He only talked for 20 minutes or so, mostly just stating the very obvious issues - our shitty roads (he called them frightening), our poor-performing schools (he asked our District Education Officer for our pass-rates mid speech and literally didn't believe him...it made for an awkward pause), our water problem, and the price of cashews. Afterwards he offered no space for questions from the people. For these reasons I was a bit dissapointed (and tired and hot and hungry), although it was still very exciting to be apart of and get to share in the excitment with my students and villagers and the other thousands of people there.

What else? Ramadhan began August 1st and will last until the 30th. As about 95% of my students and village are Muslim, so just about everybody is fasting. From sun-up to sun-down you are not allowed to eat or drink anything, including water. I have been asked a lot if I am fasting too ("Umefunga?", which literally means "You have been closed?"). The answer is no, I'm still very much open. I have said that this year I will simply observe everyone else fast and next year I will consider participating (but probably not because I like to eat). Then I happily make my way home and spend 2 hours (or 5, if beans or chickpeas are involved) preparing my lunch, followed by the 10 minutes or so it takes to eat said lunch. Along with fasting, many Muslims shut down their businesses for the month, so most little shops and places that serve food are closed around here. I am therefore very much looking forward to breaking up the month with a trip to Dar es Salaam and Morogoro, which have much larger Christian populations and therefore more food!

HABARI ZA SHULENI (SCHOOL NEWS)

My school and headmaster are currently in a bit of hot water with the Ministry of Education after a couple of less than exemplary school inspections. Much of it centered around last year's terrible Form IV results, as well as things outside of his control like a shortage of classrooms, labs, and teachers (thanks for the input, how 'bout some money to build said buildings and maybe you could send some teachers this way, too?). They're making my headmaster attend a special training on effective management, so he is expectedly pretty embarassed, but hopefully some school improvements will come out of it all.

Other than that, school is moving along, kama kawaida (as usual). We've got four temporary teachers from a teacher's training college here for the month; of course all are teaching arts subjects, but its nice that the students are getting taught for most of every day. Our other female teacher, Madam Shakira, had a baby in May and is back. His name is Hudhwaifa and he cries a lot and he is cute. Speaking of babies, all the female students were just sent to Kitangali last week to get suprise pregnancy tests - hopefully their results all come back negative or they'll be kicked out of school. Still lots of chickens and goats running around everywhere. I've also been helping my counterpart mix chemicals and set up some chemistry practicals for the students, although we're still waiting on wood to construct lab furniture...

Check out the new pictures!

Peace Corps has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and as one of the first PC countries, Tanzania had its own big in-country celebration a couple of weeks ago. PCVs were able to apply to attend, which I didn't do and now regret. But anyways, here is a speech written by a first year environment volunteer, Dan, who lives near Iringa. I thought it was very well written and powerful (it gave me chills). Thought y'all might enjoy reading it, too.

A couple of helpful Kiswahili references/translations:

ndugu wenzangu = my relatives (relatives is a broadly used term here)

jembe = hoe

mungu akipenda = "if God wishes" (very commonly used phrase...ex: Mungu akipenda tutaonana tena...If God wishes we will see each other again)

nakupenda na moyo yote = "I love you with all my heart" (line from a popular Tanzanian song)

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By popular demand, here is the text of PCV Dan Waldron’s speech at the 50th anniversary celebration on 22 June. Hope you enjoy it as much as those in attendance did:

“Dr. Florens Turuku, Ambassador Lenhardt, Director Williams, Country Director Wojnar-Diagne. Distinguished guests, fellow volunteers, ndugu wenzangu. Take a moment to look around. We are not natural neighbors. We come from different generations, from different states and different countries, from different religions and backgrounds. But tonight we are united in a community of hope, brought together by an unshaken devotion to our common humanity. So it is tonight, and so it was at the beginning of our journey.

50 years ago a group of driven individuals arrived in what was then Tanganyika. It wasn’t a country yet, it wouldn’t be for four more months, and when they arrived, they were greeted by a sign which read “Beware the lions” And there we started. But who were these people, these reckless ambassadors? Reading the first curious accounts, the first letters home from a new frontier, one gets a sense of their characters. Who were they? They were George Schreiber, who talked about embodying “ a pioneer type of spirit”. They were George Johnson, who said “Peace Corps exists as an embodiment of a conviction that the best way to achieve global understanding is to put Americans in contact with other nations.” There were 35 of them, engineers, surveyors, and geologists, from Princeton, Harvard, Michigan. And they were drawn together by a man who stood on the steps of Ann Arbor and told the assembled students that based on “your willingness to not merely serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete.” 5 months later, the Peace Corps was signed into law, with Kennedy again telling us that “We will send those abroad who are committed to the concept which motivates the Peace Corps. It will not be easy:”

Across the nation, people were moved. They volunteered, they went to boot camp (Drill sergeant and all), and they became the first soldiers in an army of peace. 50 years later, that army has fought poverty, hunger, disease, and subjugation in 139 countries, side by side with peoples of every language, tribe, and religion. Kennedy’s words have outlived him. The army fights on. And though it sometimes feels as though our struggle is never-ending, battles have been won, progress has been made.

Yet for all the measurable progress, so much of what Peace Corps does is unquantifiable. There is no box that shows how amazed the children were when the seedlings began to grow, no graph to measure the change that occurred when a woman living with HIV when she realized she had become a leader. And more: how many Tanzanians knew, until the moment they were proven wrong, that Americans could never swing a jembe? How many Tanzanians did not believe that we could dance? And how many of us volunteers never guessed at the number of different ways life could be lived, and lived beautifully, until we came here? We knew about the poverty, but how little did we know about the generosity? These things may be unquantifiable, but they are no less real. Mwalimu Nyerere said "To measure a country's wealth by its gross national product is to measure things, not satisfactions." Many other organizations build more things. Yet I doubt there is another that builds more satisfactions.

Now where do we go from here? The goal of our work is to make the continuation of our work unnecessary. We are not there yet, in fact we are nowhere near the limits of our potential. Success is based on expectations, but it is also limited by them, and we are limiting ourselves, and our communities as long as remain prisoners to what Michael Gerson called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. Let us never tire of pushing ever upwards. We have come so very far, Tanzanian and American alike, still we have so very far yet to go. This is a party to celebrate 50 years of friendship and accomplishment, but it can be more. Let us stand together tonight and take this anniversary as an opportunity to recommit to the spirit of the Peace Corps, to remember the sense of duty that brought us all here, to do better, to go farther, to try harder. We can expect far more from one another, but we can also offer far more of ourselves. American poet Robert Browning wrote, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Tonight we have a golden opportunity on this golden anniversary to not set limits on our potential, but rather expand our expectations.

I don’t know much. I left America a year and a week ago, and I’m just beginning to realize what I don’t understand. But I love this job. There is nothing like it. I said goodbye to everything and everyone I held dear, climbed onto a plane with a large group of strangers, got pushed out at 30,000 feet, landed, and began to plant trees, dig wells, and teach beekeeping. One day, mungu akipenda, I will get good at my job, at which point it will be time to leave. And after all of that, after the level of insanity I’ve put myself and my loved ones through, the thought that will keep me up at night: is how do I get back to Tanzania?

Because somewhere along the way, something changed. We came here as ambassadors from America, to show Tanzanians what America really is. But now…now we have become ambassadors to America, from Tanzania. For the rest of our days we will do all in our power to represent Tanzania: its beauty and its need, its poverty and its riches, its depth of generosity and humanity. The Kiswahili word for together is “pamoja”. It literally means “in one place”. And if that’s the case, none of us will ever be together again. A part of us never left America, the land of the free, the home of the brave. But a part of us will never leave Tanzania, “nakupenda na moyo yote”. That part of us will always be Tanzanian, rising with the sun, gripping the hands of strangers-turned-family, forever exchanging with unguarded smiles the news of the morning.

Because Peace Corps is not for everybody. As Kennedy said, “it will not be easy.” It isn’t easy. It is painful, and it is lonely. But none of us here today have to be here. We could be living closer to our loved ones. We could be making more money. We could be cooler, or more comfortable, and God knows we could be cleaner. But each of us decided that there were more important things to us than comfort, that while a ship in the harbor may be safe, that is not what ships are built for. Everyone here tonight, Tanzanian and American, has dedicated a portion of their lives to the belief that with devotion, and kindness, and insistence on a brighter future, change is possible. Everyone here tonight is part of something greater than themselves. We are all soldiers in an army of peace. An army that marches on, as our President Barack Obama said, “with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us.”

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I'm in Mtwara town for the weekend, staying at our lovely beach house for a goodbye celebration for a few PCVs that are COSing ("close of service" i.e. finished 2 years) in a couple of weeks. Spent last week at home, cleaning up and grading terminal exams. School starts on Monday, so it's back to work for me. Hope all is well at home!

PS - the video that was supposed to be uploaded in the last post actually did not...my bad. Maybe another time.

Added lots more pics of my vacation and the high(er) speed internet in Dar even allowed me to upload another video for your viewing pleasure. Check out a bunch of Peace Corps Volunteers honoring the lovely U S of A with quite possibly the worst rendition of our national anthem ever sang. But we were out in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanga town, so that's gotta count for something.

Anywho, I left last post off eating good foods in Moshi. We also made it to Arusha and spent a bit of time wondering around the city, which is much bigger and dirtier than nearby Moshi. We did find a legitimate supermarket and walked down every aisle at least once, in awe of the variety of products offered...things I've never seen sold in Tanzania before like rasberries and walnuts and bacon and blue cheese and donuts! A few of our friends had spent the two days prior climbing nearby Mt. Meru and we met them for dinner. There is a restaurant owned by a Japanese man that has a legitimate sushi chef. The sushi rolls were amazing, and complete with a bowl of Udon noodles, was probably the best meal I've had in Tanzania thus far. It was awesome, so we also had to go back the next day for lunch.

After that we headed back to Moshi and spent another day or so before boarding a bus to Tanga town (southeast, on the coast). There were 20 of us PCVs meeting up there for a 4th of July bash. We spent the first day just hanging out and swimming, celebrating a couple of birthdays, and eating a tasty Indian dinner. On Saturday we had arranged for a boat to take us out in the ocean. I must say I'm a bit spoiled now because the beaches in Mtwara and of course Zanzibar are much nicer, but we went out a ways to this huge sand bar that we had to ourselves and had fun swimming and drinking and hanging out. Our guides even cooked us a wonderful meal of grilled tuna, cooked bananas, and lots of fresh fruits (Tanga is the famous fruit producing region). We also went to a nearby island, Toten Island, and did a bit more swimming while some others walked around and looked at some old German ruins and graves. We ended the evening at a bar, drinking beers and watching the Tanzanian wedding that was taking place below (Tanzanian weddings are interesting). The next morning we moved on out, so it was a short but great time in Tanga!

And now my summer vacation has finally come to an end! I got to see a lot of Tanzania and it was especially wonderful to get to spend time with so many other volunteers along the way. We counted that we saw 22 of the 34 other volunteers from our training class, while also getting to meet lots of other volunteers from the different classes/sectors which is always fun. Yesterday we left Tanga for Dar and spent today, the actual 4th of July, just hanging out and interneting. We had ourselves a traditional American lunch - a Subway sandwich, bag of Doritos, cold Pepsi, and Twix bar for dessert - followed by a tasty Lebonese dinner. Tomorrow morning we're headed back down south so I should make it back to my village on Wednesday. I've been gone a whole month now so I'm pretty ready to get back home. I've spent too much money and consumed too many tasty calories so it's about time for me to get get back to my village life of cheap living and lack lusture cuisine. Unfortunately, I've got all my terminal exams to grade, term grades to calculate, and what is sure to be a rat trashed house to clean. Fortunately, the next school term doesn't start until July 18 so I've got several days to do it all and relax in my village before getting back into the teaching grind. Also my school was finally able to procure the wood needed to build furniture for our science laboratory, so when I get back we'll be able to get started on that with some local carpenters and hopefully have a functioning lab for next term!

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend - eat some potato salad and deviled eggs for me! Love and miss you all!

Hallo, hope all is well. Short update as I'm hanging out in a lovely cafe in lovely Moshi enjoying some wifi and real coffee, so life is good. Moshi is by far the most developed city I've been to in Tanzania, more so than even Dar es Salaam. There are American and European tourists and ex-pats galore, and I'm still getting used to seeing so many foreigners. The variety of food here is pretty amazing, and best of all is its plethora of cute little cafes that serve lattes and cappucinos and sandwiches and salads - you can easily forget you are in Tanzania! (Just ordered a lunch of pasta salad with feta cheese!). Today's our fourth day here and other than a nice little hike out to a nearby waterfall, we've been filling our days eating yummy foods (can you binge eat for a whole month?). We've also done a bit of shopping at expensive boutique stores, which we also balanced by heading to the used clothing market to pick up a couple of Goodwill rejects. It's been especially fun to see so many friends, as Moshi is a favorite vacation/gathering spot for volunteers. Last night we went to a cool little bar that has an outdoor movie theater set up; The Shining was playing, complete with bats flying across the projector screen for added atmosphere! On Monday we'll head up to Arusha to meet some friends for sushi (seriously) and spend a day or two exploring the city.

My apologies for everyone that was grossed out by my last few poop updates, so this will be the last and least graphic one - I'm happy to report that my bowel movements are back to normal! As I'm sure you've noticed, the two most talked about topics among PCVs are food and poop, and it's suprisingly difficult to get out of that mindset as I'm writing blogposts for non-PCV readers.

Time for lunch, so more later with pictures.

Hey hey short update from the beautiful southern highlands. On Friday Katie and I headed from Zanzibar to Dar. That evening we "unofficially" visited the new education class trainees that arrived in Tanzania on the 15th. Getting new volunteers is quite exciting for all of us PCVs in-country, and I can't wait to see who ends up near us in Mtwara. Then we took a pleasant 8 hour bus ride to Iringa, arriving Saturday evening. We met our friend and fellow PCV, Glenn, and went out from some Chinese food and a couple of beers before heading to bed early. Glenn left early the next morning on a bus and Katie and I slept in and explored the city a bit. We went and had a wonderful brunch of vegetable and cheese omelettes, french toast, and homeade yogurt at a local restaurat here that is an absolute favorite among volunteers. Then we walked a bit out of town and climbed a big rock to get a nice view of the city. After a long afternoon nap at the hostel, we ordered delivery pizza (say what?!) for dinner. On Monday two other PCV friends, TJ and Carly, came into town and we all went for a wonderful lunch of avocado bacon paninis! We spent the afternoon shopping, had some Tanzanian food for dinner, then headed back to our hostel to watch a movie. This morning we had another tasty breakfast and then went in search of the used clothing market (where all the clothes that don't sell at Goodwill end up). Now we're hanging out at a lovely cafe...it's run by a local mission that hires only Tanzanians with disibilities - all the wait staff are deaf and others are employed in making clothes and crafts for sale. What else...Iringa is cold! I do not have appropriate clothes so I'm freezing my but off once the sun goes down, but the hostel provides warm blankets so I'm sleeping well. I suppose it's a nice change from the hot south, but I'm still a Texan and I'll always prefer sweatin' to shiverin'.

Poop update: Thanks for the concern for my health, but I'm doing fine! My fever and headache lasted for just 2 days or so and I've been getting plenty of sleep since. The diarrhea lasted for 5 days; it seemed to be clearing up yesterday but I've had to run to the bathroom twice while trying to type this post so I guess its back. Of all places to get diarrhea I suppose its not so bad because I've had access to western toilets the whole time which is a nice treat and would not be the case at home down south. But we haven't been letting my pooping damper our vacation too much and we've still been eating well..lots of dairy which is probably stupid but when's the next time I'll get ice cream and yogurt? Tomorrow I'll take some immodium to clog up my intestinal track before embarking on a long bus ride, and hopefully I'll be back to pooping solidly in no time.

Tomorrow Katie and I will hop on a bus from Iringa to Moshi, which should take about 12 hours. Can't wait to spend a week in the wonderful north, with views of Mt. Kilimanjaro!

As always, much love from Tanzania!

Been away from site for about a week and a half now. PSDN training in Dar was good - lots of practice with active listening, common issues faced by volunteers, etc. Add in good food and good friends and you've got a good time. Then Katie came up (had quite the scare hearing about her bus accident...you can read about it in her blog) and we headed to Zanzibar on Sunday. We spent the first two days with a couple of other PCVs from our training class, Doug and Eric as well as Eric's friend Chris who is visiting from America. The first day we spent just wondering around the streets of Stonetown, which is so old and beautiful and quaint feeling. The island is something like 99 percent Muslim and has a strong mix of Arab culture, so that it doesn't feel like it is the same country as mainland Tanzania. Then we headed to the beach and watched the sunset, grabbed a beer, and found some street food for dinner. Monday we took a spice tour, which was really great. We went out with a guide to a spice plantation a bit out of Stonetown and just walked around and looked at all kinds of different fruits and spices and herbs, got to taste a bunch, hear about their medicinal uses, etc. The tour was complete with a tasty lunch and a trip to a nearby beach that was isolated and beautiful. After a delicious dinner, the boys left on an overnight ferry back to Dar that night, so the next day Katie and I were able to get in our shopping fix and also got some henna done. We also had an amazing Indian lunch with Claire, a PCV that lives near us down south, and her boyfriend Rob who is visiting from America. Yesterday Katie and I took a daladala to a village called Nungwi, about an hour and a half north of Stonetown. We spent a relaxing day at the beach, and even enjoyed a pitcher of Sangria! Unfortunately I got sick (of course the first time is when I'm vacationing in Zanzibar) - that morning I had diarrhea, had a headache all day, and by afternoon started coming down with a fever. Last night my fever was really bad and I still have diarrhea if I try and eat anything, so I've literally spent all day today lying in bed and sleeping. Not really the plan for our last day in Stonetown, but at least I got to enjoy the first few days. We had planned to meet up with a PCV that lives here and another PCV that is in town for dinner tonight, so I'm hoping I'll feel up for that in a few hours.

Well that's about it for Zanzibar. It is truly beautiful, and if you ever make it to Tanzania you must take the short ferry over and check out its beautiful beaches! I added lots of pictures, so have a look. Tomorrow we'll head back to Dar and then take a bus to Iringa on Saturday morning.

First, I added some recent pictures if you wanna check 'em out. I know I keep posting pictures of white people vacationing, when what everyone really wants to see is pictures of my students and villagers and Tanzanians' lives in general. I'm still pretty uncomfortable whipping out a flashy, nice camera in front of poor people, but one of these days I'll be brave and go crazy taking pictures in my village. Until then, you'll just have to use your imagination...pole sana (so very sorry)!

I just arrived in Mtwara town after a relatively pleasant (no breakdowns) 5-hour bus ride. This leads me into the highlight of my week. Drum roll please...tomorrow I will be...FLYING ON AN AIRPLANE to Dar es Salaam. Yep. Replacing a 15 or so hour bus ride on unpaved roads with a 1 HOUR flight is my idea of a good deal. The road up to Dar is not so great at the moment and volunteers have been getting stuck, which sucks for them, but meant that we (me and Toni, a health volunteer down here who is also going up to Dar for PSDN training) were able to convince PC to book us flights as a matter of volunteer safety and security. The few volunteers that have flown before give raving reviews of the flight, which even includes a snack service. Other people are just as excited as me about the prospect of my flight; my counterpart, Mr. Likulu, has never been on a plane and asked me to tell him all about it and take lots of pictures. And as ridiculous as it sounds, I am even excited to go through the airport security process!

So I'll try to wrap up the post on another high note, but first to bring you all down a bit...Tuesday was probably the worst day of my Peace Corps service thus far. All week I was invigilating (watching students take exams for 6 hours/day) the Form IV Regional Mock NECTA exams. On Monday afternoon, a small group of my top Form IV boys had come to my house and asked for help solving some math problems, which I'm always happy to do. Karim, our very top student that lives next door with my counterpart, even brought over a page of more problems late that night and asked if I could solve them and give him the solutions to review the next morning before the exam, which I also did. None of this was odd, because these students in particular are very motivated, like math, ask lots of questions, are constantly reviewing old NECTA problems, etc. Well the exam rolls around on Tuesday and, upon opening the exam, I was shocked to see about 75% of the questions I had solved for them the previous day. I don't remember the last time I was so shocked, angry, and hurt all at the same time; I was almost to tears. Not only did the students cheat (in the extreme), but they used me to do so. They all know my feelings about cheating - they've gone so far as to tell my counterpart they don't like when I invigilate because I stay in the room the whole time and watch them so they are unable to cheat. If it had even been any other students I don't think I would have been so angry, but I absolutely did not expect it from these students and I was so disappointed in them. They later told us that some students somewhere in the region managed to get ahold (my counterpart assumes teachers were involved) of the test in advance and texted them the questions. Everyone seemed much more concerned about how they managed to get the questions, than the fact that they cheated so badly. Unfortunately there were no consequences at all to the students. If students are cheating on my tests, I can take away points or give them a 0, but there is nothing I can do when it is for another teacher's exam or NECTA. With no consequences its not hard to imagine why students wouldn't at least try to cheat; it just seems to be so ingrained in the education system here that there is really nothing I can do about it but accept it and try not to take it personally...

But now I have 6 weeks off from school and I am starting my vacation and I promised to end on a high note... so one more piece of exciting news: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting Dar next weekend. I may actually get to meet her, since I will be around the PC office for training....we'll see!!

Hey hey hope all is well at home! I'm in Lindi town for the weekend hanging out with a few other PCVs. I was just trying to think of what has happened over the last month but I honestly I can't remember...the only thing that comes to mind is a description of one of my Form IV students, Hassani. Hassani, who is one of the few students that is taller than me, is a pretty cocky kid and this last month he has taken to wearing a woman's purse around his neck all day, every day. And I mean a woman's purse - a big, black leather bag that hangs around his neck...during morning assembly, between classes, and my personal favorite, sitting at his desk during class. You cannot imagine how funny it is to look up and see a tall, teenage boy wearing a purse around his head as he's working on math exercises! And I think he's starting some kind of fad because lately I've seen other students holding Hassani's purse, too. So I'll keep you posted on that one.

Anyways, school has been pretty crazy lately getting ready for the end of the term...I'm not sure who's more restless for a vacation, me or the students. Next week our Form IVs will take a regional mock NECTA exam and then the following week Forms I-III will take their terminal exams. Teaching is pretty much over, and I spent the last week writing my 8 exams as well as typing all 28 of my school's terminal exams which ended up being quite the undertaking! This week I'll do a bit of teaching and also invigilate (what they call proctoring here) the Form IV exams. Then on Tuesday, June 7th I'm off to Newala then up to Dar for a few days of Peace Corps training. I'm on PSDN (Peer Support and Diversity Network), which is made up of 12 volunteers from around the country. We're basically a resource for volunteers to call if they're going through a hard time at site. So I'll be getting some training on counseling and active listening skills as well as enjoy all the food options Dar has to offer. Then Katie will head up to Dar and we will commence SUMMER VACATION 2011...

First stop, Zanzibar. That's right. We will spend an amazing 5 or 6 days enjoying the beautiful island, swimming in the Indian Ocean, eating amazing foods, etc. Then we'll head to Iringa, which is west of Dar on the road out to Mbeya. It is supposed to be amazing and has a fairly large ex-pat community, which means it is well stocked with food and entertainment that white people enjoy. There is, get this, pizza delivery and iced coffee. We'll also get to see a few PCV friends that live in the area. Then we'll head back to Dar and then up to Arusha and Moshi for a week. This is a huge tourist area (base for Mt. Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Ngorongoro crater), so they are supposed to be very nice and stocked with food straight out of an America grocery store. I'm especially looking forward to eating a famed banana split in Moshi. We'll also visit with a few other friends in the area which will be fun. Last stop is Tanga, where we'll meet up with a bunch of other volunteers for a 4th of July party. We'll charter a boat to take us out to a little island so it should be really fun...of course there won't be a BBQ and potato salad but sometimes you just gotta make do! Then off to spend the last couple weeks of break at home in my village before the second term starts July 18. I really can't wait!

Well it took me an hour and a half to upload a 30 second video to youtube, so this will probably be the first and last. Enjoy!

Hey all, hope everyone is having a splendid month of April...happy holidays from Tanzania! I've got a long weekend off from school for the Easter vacation, so I'm enjoying it on the beach in Mtwara town with a group of 9 other PCVs. We're staying in a beautiful house right on the Indian Ocean, owned by some German fathers that give us a good deal. It even has a hot shower (my first in nearly 7 months!) so I've been taking plenty of those. This afternoon we went to the fish market and bought a bunch of shrimp and a 2 foot long tuna fish (prime tuna steak!)...tonight we'll grill up some seafood skewers and make pilau (seasoned rice) so it should be tasty! Then we'll have a bonfire on the beach and then head back to our respective sites tomorrow morning.

Anywho, I've been busy at site since arriving back from IST a few weeks ago. I took a few days to get home from Morogoro, which included a great day in Dar with, I kid you not, a legit Subway sandwich for lunch. For dinner, Katie, Will, and I treated ourselves at a fancy Thai restaurant overlooking the harbour of Dar es Salaam, complete with a bottle of red wine, and topped off the night with ice cream sundaes. Then came the long bus ride home...the normally bad road is significantly worse due to the rainy season, and we kept hearing horror stories about people getting stuck for 3 days on the road. Fortunately we had a relatively smooth trip down to Mtwara, with no breakdowns or mud-stuckage. Then after a pretty round-about way home (the road one direction to my vill is closed) and just one missed bus, I finally made it back to site. I had mentally prepared for my house to be a complete wreck after being gone for nearly 3 weeks, and I was certainly not disapointed. Of course there was massive amounts of dirt and rat poop to be swept, containers and things knocked of all my shelves, and a good sized piece of my math notes chewed off. My kitchen-ish room floods everytime it rains hard, which is normally not a problem because I'm there to mop up afterwards. Expectedly, it was flooded. But, unexpectedly, there was a little zawadi (present) left for me in all the water, in the form of a fully decomposed rat carcass. Not sure how the rat died, but apparently the water had been standing long enough so that only bones were left. Luckily I don't have actual windows, so constant ventilation meant there was no death stench. Also left in the pool was my partly-chewed-up sock that went missing a few months ago, so that mystery has been partially solved! Needless to say I wasn't about to touch any bones or the hairy, gut-juice water with my hands so I waited about 10 days for all the water to evaporate and then swept out the bones. There is still a nice pile of rat hair stuck to the floor, so hopefully that can slowly be swept away.

SHULENI (at school):

Not a whole lot new at school. Graded lots of midterms and am back into the normal teaching routine. Our school grounds are a bit livelier since our school goats had babies! I think baby goats may be the cutest of all baby animals, but they also cry alot which tends to disrupt class. I actually had a baby goat come into my classroom when I was teaching and poop! It sure is hard to get your students back on task after something like that happens!

My counterpart was really motivated from IST which has been awesome to see. We've started to teach "Life Skills" sessions on Tuesday afternoons. We've done two sessions so far, an introduction and a session on effective communication, and the students seem to be enjoying them so far. All the girls also came to school last Saturday and we talked a bit about some issues they face (low self-confidence, early pregnancy, prostitution, etc.). They created a girls club, complete with elected officers, where they can talk about their problems, help each other out, get advice from teachers, etc. so hopefully it will continue and be helpful for them.

Mista Likulu has also been trying to get a lab (he teaches Bio and Chem) started at school for the last several months. He already got most of the supplies donated and has bought a good amount of chemicals, but they have been sitting on the floor of an empty classroom for a few months now. All we are really lacking at this point is lab tables, stools, and storage cabinets, so last week we talked with a few local fundis (carpenters) about getting those built. Wood is a bit scarce at the moment, but hopefully we will have a functioning laboratory soon! Shout-out to my mom who is going to help with the fundi costs :). Oh and if anyone has any old children's books (in English) laying around and would be willing to donate them to my school, it'd be much appreciated! The students' English level is way below where it should be, so we are working hard to get them more comfortable. Unfortunately we have no English books, so children's picture books up to easy, short elementary level reads would be a great resource to have...If you are interested in helping contact me or my mama!

KIJIJINI (in the village):

Last weekend a village nearby (where some of my students live) hosted our ward's annual ngoma kicking off the start of circumcision season. Ngoma means drum in Kiswahili, and is traditional celebration with dancing, drumming, etc. It is a really big deal, and people walk there from as far as 25 kilometers. I went with my counterpart, and let me just say it was overwhelming! I was not expecting there to be what seemed like thousands of people around. All along the road people had set up stands to sell food, fabric, basic goods, etc. and you could barely move it was so packed. We missed the main drumming part, so we just ended up walking around at first. After several months in Tanzania I feel quite used to being stared at wherever I go, but I had never experienced the level of attention I got here. I was literally surrounded by a constant circle of wide-eyed, open-mouthed children and adults, about 10 people deep, the entire time. It was both awkward and amusing. And to add to it, I am tall. Seriously. It is definitely a new experience for me, but I've encountered few taller than me among the short Makonde people! So now picture the "tall" white person that I am, standing in the middle of a massive huddle of short Tanzanians. By this time (late afternoon), most of the adults were good and drunk off pombe (local brew), so there were lots of drunk people coming up to me speaking Kimakonde, which I can understand very little of. I think I've talked a bit about alcoholism around here; it is an especially serious problem among the older people. It is common for villagers to go out and work in their shamba (farm) in the morning, and return home and begin drinking pombe. The result is that if you walk through the village by mid-afternoon, you will encounter plenty of drunk old people or see them passed out on the ground outside their huts. I have to admit that at first it was kind of amusing, but it has gotten old and is truly sad to see, especially because many of them are the parents and grandparents of my students. But on the bright side, my high school students don't drink. Seriously. When we talk about drinking alcohol at my school, it is not about the students, but about the students' parents...quite different than the US. But back to the ngoma, they finally started another drumming session which was really cool to see. Unfortunately my camera died pretty quickly, but you can check out a few pictures and a video I took! There are lots of local Makonde traditions involved that I don't know enough about, but the drummers and a few of the dancers are the oldest men in the village. There is a nearby hut where the oldest of the old men will sleep for the next month. A few of the old women that dance are the ones that actually perform the circumcisions, which I think will happen sometime in the next month. Young boys are definitely circumcized, but it is still unclear to me whether they also circumcize the girls. Previously I had heard that they do not do FGM down here, but girls are atleast somehow involved in the traditional ceremony.

HABARI YA PEACE CORPS (Peace Corps News):

Peace Corps-Tanzania is working hard to try and improve its technical training, so I'm helping another PCV to write a math teaching manual (hands-on activities, teaching tips, etc.). We are super rushed because Peace Corps wants it ready by the end of May for the incoming training class coming in June, so it will be a work in progress, but will hopefully be helpful to future volunteers. I'm also hoping to help out with math technical training of the new education class arriving in June, so we'll see.

HABARI NYINGINE (Other News):

I've been writing lots of letters lately, and I'm taking requests! If you want a super-duper-cool, handwritten letter all the way from Tanzania, send me your address or write me first!

Ok, that's all for now. I added some new pictures, so check them out!

This post will have a bit more substance than the last one (queso), but may still heavily center around food...

We finished up IST yesterday, but 10 of us are staying in Morogoro for an extra day hanging out at a fancy hotel with free wifi. Tomorrow morning the deep-southerners will head to Dar for the day and and night, then back home on Sunday. IST was really fun and it was so good to see everyone again! The days were pretty long and packed with training (8-5:30), with only a break on Sunday. Although some of the sessions were pretty pointless, others were really great and I'm excited to go back to site and do some more things. Our counterparts (another teacher from school) joined us after the first couple of days. It worked out really great and my counterpart (my neighbor/the bio&chem teacher) really enjoyed it and was so excited to participate in everything, so I'm really pumped to go back and work on things together, especially co-teaching life skills (HIV/AIDS, safe sex, girls empowerment, etc.). Aside from some of the good sessions, the best part of IST was getting to hang out with everyone during the evenings, catch up, eat great food (cheeseburgers, pizza, ice cream, etc), and enjoy lots of cold beer. My birthday was especially fun. After we ended training sessions for the day, some of us headed to town to do a bit of shopping. Then we met up with some others at a nice hotel here in Morogoro for bacon cheeseburgers! I also drank a margarita that cost more than a day's salary, but it was so worth it. I got some great birthday gifts that included a ridiculously large party hat, a jar of Nutella, a bunch of snickers bars, a big bag of cookies, and best of all, I was surprised with a delicious birthday cake! Then we moved over to a cheaper bar and had some birthday shots and beer. It was truly a great birthday and I was so lucky to be able to celebrate with so many friends in such a nice town! Two nights later we held the "1st Annual IST Prom" at a local bar/restaurant...it was pretty ridiculous but a whole lot of fun. We even held prom king/queen elections, which were easily won by everyone's favorite older volunteers, Eula and Will. A couple of dance parties rounded out our evening events. We also borrowed the projector a couple of nights to have movie nights in the big conference room which was a relaxing change. I also went and hung out at my host family's house twice...it was really great to see them and play with Isaac! He's so much bigger now (he'll be 2 in July) and speaking a few more words. He can even say my name (kinda like Katie) and points to me in pictures, which is pretty adorable.

I'm excited to go to Dar tomorrow and spend more time there. On our way to IST we spent a day in Dar, which was really our first time to explore the city on our own. I really enjoyed it and we ate some amazing food. We went to this Indian compound/country club thing...we were surrounded by hundreds of Indians and zero Tanzanians so it was really strange, but I literally ate the best Indian food of my life there...it will definitely become a staple of future Dar trips. Tomorrow the plan in Subway (yep, the sandwhich chain) and a supposedly amazing Thai restaurant, so I'm looking forward to it! Then its back down to site, which I have mixed feelings about. I'm excited to get back to normal life, stop traveling and living out of a backpack, spending ridiculous amounts of money, etc. but at the same time it sucks to say bye to everyone again (most of us won't see each other for another 9 months), say bye to good food, and go home to 400 or so midterms that need grading!

Took advantage of free wifi and posted shit tons of pictures...enjoy!

This entire post is going to be about one of the greatest things in the whole world: queso. A little background: Katie's family sent her a 16 oz log of velvetta cheese and a can of rotel in a recent care package. Since then we have been planning out our perfect fatass meal and it all came to fruition last night. Katie came to my vill on Thursday. Early in the day I had started a pot of beans, cooking with grilled onions, garlic, a hot pepper, and a bit of taco seasoning. I made a bunch of tortilla dough, and actually used as much oil as you should, because hey, you might as go all out. After Katie arrived from a typically shitty bus ride, we got started on the queso, tortilla rolling, and kachumbari (the closest thing to salad eaten by Tanzanians: fresh tomato, onion, sometimes bell pepper, and a little lime juice) chopping, all the while enjoying some of her bucket wine she also brought over. The end result, as you can imagine, was heavenly. Together we ate 11 tortillas, a pot of beans, and most of the queso. We were nearly to the point of throwing up, but that didn't even matter because it was so worth it. And as this was pretty much the first cheese we've had in 6 months, we were a bit worried about how our tummies would react, but so far so good.

Anywho, we left my village early this morning, and 3 bus rides later ended up in Lindi, in an air-conditioned internet cafe. We're meeting Ghee and another volunteer from our training class, Will, here today and then we'll leave bright and early tomorrow on a long bus ride to Dar. We've got big plans for our short time there, all of which include the major food groups: hamburgers, pizza, Indian, and ice cream. Then Sunday we'll head to Morogoro for 10 days of in-service training. Can't wait! During that time I will also celebrate my golden birthday (turning 24 on the 24th) as well as our 6-month anniversary in Tanzania so it should get pretty crazy. I will also be celebrating a much needed break from my school/students, as they are taking mid-terms (this week) and then have their spring break (next week).

Added some updated pics of my house and, of course, the aforementioned queso extravaganza. Enjoy!

Lots to update after my first month of real teaching...But first, a little background on the TZ educational system:

SCHOOL STRUCTURE:

Primary school: Grades 1 through 7, called Standard 1 through 7; taught in Kiswahili.

Secondary school, O-level: Grades 8 through 11, called Form I through IV; taught in English (at least officially).

-->continue on to A-level, go to a primary teachers' training college, or find a job

Secondary school, A-level: Grades 12 and 13, called Form V and VI; taught in English.

-->continue on to University, go to a secondary teachers' training college, or find a job

NECTA EXAMS: The National Examination Council of Tanzania (NECTA) gives a national examination to all students after Forms II and IV. This tests all subjects - math, physics, chemistry, biology, Kiswahili, English, history, geography, and civics - and your total score is averaged. NECTA exams really count for everything here, and grades given by teachers are essentially meaningless. The results of the Form IV NECTAs determine whether you get your O-level certificate, but more importantly determine whether you can continue on to A-level high school (and then which school you can get into), or to a training college for primary teachers, etc. The Form II results used to determine whether you could continue on to Form III, but now all students are able to continue. Mtwara, as a region, has the lowest scores in the country, which isn't really a suprise to anyone living down here. My school's results were pretty bad; of our 80 Form IVs who took the exam last year, 65 completely failed (scored below 20%) and therefore did not receive their O-level certificate. We had 15 students, just one girl, pass with a D average (21-40%); they'll receive their O-level certificate but are labelled division 4 and so cannot continue with any type of schooling (I believe you need div 2 to go on to A-level and div 3 to go on to a teacher's training college). Our Form II results (this year's Form III students) were not much better, with just a couple of C's, several D's, and a whole lotta F's. Most of our Form II and IV students got a straight 0 in math, with physics scores just a bit higher. I've also seen the NECTA results from two years ago (our current Form IVs) which are pretty similar.

CLASSROOMS: Students stay in one classroom all day, grouped in their forms, and teachers rotate in to teach. When teachers are not teaching, which is quite often, they hang out in the teacher's "lounge" which at my school is a small room with a couple of desks and chairs and a calendar posted on the wall. Although there is an official timetable, this system doesn't hold teachers very accountable because the students don't really know when they'll be taught what. So in reality, the students are just hanging out in their respective classrooms for most of the day, and teachers may or may not come in to teach.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: It's practiced by most Tanzanian teachers. I was actually shocked my first few weeks of school for not seeing any signs of corporal punishment. While all my PCV friends were talking about having to see students beat on a daily basis, I had decided that I was just lucky to get placed at the one school in Tanzania that doesn't beat the shit out of their students. In fact, the closest thing to punishment I saw was having the students leap frog into class for being late, which just gives me a good laugh every morning. But alas, a couple of weeks ago I walked out of the office to see my counterpart whipping a student with a big stick. Needless to say I was totally shocked and had to just turn around and walk away. Since then I haven't seen it again, although the new female teacher pinches the students' cheeks really hard and then twists. I'm pretty sure all the students know I will never touch them, but I've threatened them with something much, much worse - staying after school with me to write English sentences over and over and over again; so far its working and I haven't had any trouble.

Ok so on to my last few weeks of teaching...As I said last post, I spent the first couple weeks testing the school in math and physics and learning how far behind all the students are, particularly in math. In the meantime I was trying to learn some students' names (we made name tee-pees for their desks and played the name game), and going over classroom rules and expectations. I wrote out a 'Classroom Contract' in English and Kiswahili (the gist: ask questions, don't cheat); they all had to write the contract into their notebooks and sign them, and I signed them all too which they got quite a kick out of. I went and bought the standard 5 (grade 5) math textbook, which is in Kiswahili and has been helpful in translating some math terms...it also shows how poor their primary school education was, because that's when they were supposed to learn fractions and decimals. Although everyone is behind, there is still a spectrum and some students are significantly ahead of their peers. We do actually have the top Form IV student in the Newala district, who got a B average (61-80%) on his Form II NECTAs. He's an amazing kid, who is really self-motivated. His father is dead and his mother is a pretty serious alcoholic (alcoholism is a big problem around these parts) living in a nearby village, so he's been living with the other teacher (my next door neighbor) for the last 3 years. Yet he's always got a smile on his face, and when he's not helping run the school, cooking or taking care of my neighbor's house, he's studying. He wants to be a biologist, and I hope he does well enough to make it to a good A-level school. In general, it seems like each form has one or two students that are way ahead of the others because they are motivated enough to teach themselves. I have three Form I girls that come to the office everyday and actually ask for MORE homework! Granted I have around 197 others that don't, but it still blows my mind every time. But, as sad as it sounds, most of the students at my school are going to fail the NECTA at the end of Form IV, and most of the students that manage to pass will not have high enough scores to go on to any more school.

I spent a lot of time talking with my counterpart teacher about how different learning math is than a subject like history; some people just get math and some don't and you cannot just memorize yourself through it. In the U.S. we are completely used to grouping students based on ability (regulars, honors, AP/IB, etc), but that is a totally foreign concept here. My counterpart and Mkuu both acknowledged how far behind the students are and agreed that by regrouping the students during math lessons, I'd be able to cover a lot more material with the brighter, more motivated students that actually have a shot of passing, while I can go at a slower pace with those that have a harder time with math and atleast teach them some basic math skills. I spent about a week going over the results of my test, as well as their math scores for those that have taken the Form II NECTAs, lists of all the registered students,etc. in order to figure out how to best reorganize them. Let's just say that I'm glad my parents instilled a deep appreciation of the power of Excel spreadsheets! I ultimately divided all the students into four math levels A through D (youngest/slowest to oldest/fastest). Levels A & B will basically be doing lots of review of basic math plus Form I material, while levels C & D will start with review but then we'll try and move through as many of the main Form I-IV topics as possible. I'm sure there will be lots of playing it by ear and adjusting as necessary, but ultimately I think it will work out better for everyone. Because there are kids from 2 or 3 forms in each level, it meant that the timetable had to be completely reworked so that the other teachers weren't affected. I spent a while remaking the class schedule, which has also turned out really nice for me because I got to plan my classes when I wanted!

About three weeks ago I finally began teaching the new math levels, which started out a bit messy but is getting smoother everyday; although I can teach in one of our spare classrooms, the students have to bring their desk and chair which causes quite the commotion, not to mention that being in a classroom with students from other forms is totally new and different. But it's starting to become routine and once we're actually able to get class started the students have responded well and I've really enjoyed teaching math, especially to my top two levels. Teaching physics is less enjoyable for a number of reasons: the topics/syllabus are arranged pretty terribly and heavily based on memorizing facts rather than solving problems; the problems that they are expected to solve they don't have the math skills for (e.g. they don't learn how to calculate volume until Form IV math, but are expected to calculate things involving volume, such as density, in Form I physics); the Kiswahili/English language barrier poses a much bigger problem for lectures; most students like physics even less than they like math; and finally I teach physics in the afternoons when most of my students are hot, hungry, and tired.

About three weeks ago we also received two temporary teachers from the training college in Mtwara, who will be here for six weeks or so, and this week we received 6 more that will stay for just one month. They all basically teach the same subjects - history, geography, and Kiswahili - so it doesn't exactly help me out and they aren't really able to teach very much, but it's still nice to have some more teachers around. We've also got a guy from the Kitangali teacher's college coming in the afternoons to teach English, but he decided that he didn't want to teach Form I; needless to say I'm not a big fan of this guy and, as of a couple of weeks ago, I'm now teaching Form I English. When we had a staff meeting and my headmaster said that we still need a Form I English teacher, we all just sat around for 2 or so minutes of awkward silence, while everyone just stares at the one white, native English speaker in the room. I finally said I would do it, but I haven't stressed too much about it and will just try and have fun and enjoy the change from teaching math and physics.

I've also ended up with a few other school duties. Tanzanian schools, especially in rural villages, have no secretaries, administrators, janitors, counselors, etc, so all the "little" tasks it takes to run a school are divied up amongst the students, teachers, and the headmaster. So I am now officially our school guidance counselor, which is pretty funny because there's still quite the language barrier between myself and the students. I'm also the class mistress for Form I, and I'll let you know when I figure out what that means. Naturally, I'm head of the math and physics departments and, by default, the English department, although there's not a whole lot of fun in being in charge of just yourself! Head of the science club and assistant treasurer round off my school responsibilities. Every few weeks it will also be my turn as "Teacher on Duty" which means supervising school cleanliness and just doing general bitch work like writing permissions to leave school, etc.

But in all seriousness, I hope no one is misreading my sarcasm, because I still feel really lucky to be where I am. It's really interesting talking to other volunteers about their sites/schools because we all really have quite different experiences. There is huge variation between Peace Corps sites, each with its advantages and disadvantages. One of my good friends, for example, is way the hell on the other end of the spectrum, living in a fancy-schmancy apartment at the Mbeya Institute of Science & Technology and teaching all his lessons by PowerPoint! Most volunteers fall somewhere in the middle, but I've been told my school's NECTA results are the lowest of all PCV sites (not sure how true that is). And while there are certainly downsides to being at a rural, poor-performing school, I'm excited by the potential I have to make a difference here. I don't know anyone else that has been given the freedom and trust to reorganize their students and classes, completely change the school schedule, etc, and I'm excited to spend two years here and see what we can accomplish.

On a totally a different note, I want to send a delayed thank you to everyone who has sent cards and letters; they are truly exciting to open and it means a lot to me! It has certainly been an interesting few weeks for mail...A couple of weeks ago, my nearest fellow PCV called me on a bus headed to Mtwara; some random guy on the bus had four letters addressed to him and four for me. We still don't know how he got them or what he was doing with them. But hey, opening Christmas cards in mid-February is still pretty damn exciting! And then, the very next day I was walking around in Newala and a guy driving a motorcycle stopped, asked if I was Kathryn, and said he had some letters for me at the district agriculture office but hadn't known how to find me. I've had no problems receiving packages down here, but for some reason letters end up taking some interesting detours!

A few people have asked about my rats, which are still a problem but I've come to accept them as my housemates for the next 2 years/my allergies prevent me from getting a cat so I don't have much choice in the matter. So as long as they stay out of my bed and out of my food, they can have free reign of my house at night and I will clean up after them in the mornings. We've had a few disputes lately, as they apparently have an affinity for snacking on expensive, athletic wear; I've had a hole eaten through a $16 pair of underwear, as well as a running sock go missing after I made the mistake of leaving it on the floor one night. And despite the fact that not a single rat has succumb to my poison or trap, a couple of weeks ago I woke up to find a dead rat laying in my living room! (hmmm...isn't that how the Black Plague started?) How did it die, and how can I get more to do so?! My latest theory, or at least the theory that gives me the greatest pleasure, is that it choked to death on my stolen sock.

As for travel, I try to go to Newala every other weekend to see Katie and stock up on fruits, veggies, and peanut butter.I'm currently in Masasi for the weekend to meet up with some ed volunteers that I haven't seen since Christmas, hit up the bank, and stock up on oatmeal. In wo weeks I'll be headed back to Morogoro for 10 days of Peace Corps training (they put on in-service training, IST, about 3 months into site). I'm so excited to see everyone again, visit my host family (Isaac is supposedly talking, kidogo kidogo!), and enjoy some big city pleasures like ice cream and hamburgers. My birthday also falls during IST, so I'm lucky to be able to celebrate turning the big 2-4 with lots of friends and cold beer!

Welp this post has gotten way too long, so I'll stop here for now. Hope everyone is doing well! Love, Kathryn

Uploaded a bunch of pics from Thanksgiving, Ruvuma river, Mikandani, Christmas, Kilwa, and New Years...check 'em out!

I've attempted to get online for the last couple of weeks, but the internet/electricity at the nearby Teacher's Training College is not the most reliable. So I know I'm a bit late, but I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and New Years! Apparently I also had quite the celebration back at home, as I was pleasantly suprised to find a bunch of new pictures on facebook of me with my ridiculous but wonderful friends, cold beer, pitcher of margarita, chips and salsa, etc. In reality my New Years was significantly less exciting and tasty, although we did make some mac and cheese that tasted just like home. But anyways I had fun celebrating at Katie's house along with Ghee and Leslie. It was really nice to just hang out as a small group from our training class. We didn't have any champagne but we did bust open a bucket of mango wine that Katie started a couple of weeks prior. PCVs have discovered that pretty much anything can be fermented and try out lots of interesting recipes; this mango wine was actually really tasty, so long as you got over the idea of drinking bright orange wine!

I headed back to site on Jan 1st which was a bit of a relief after so much traveling over the holidays. I think I logged something like 90 hours on buses from Thanksgiving to New Years. Four-hour bus rides now seem completely reasonable, although they have not become any more fun and took quite the toll on my bank account. But with school now in session, I will likely be enjoying cheap village life and not traveling for some time!

Speaking of village life, in early January I attended my village's annual meeting which was really interesting. The meeting was supposed to start at 10 in the morning and my mkuu and I mosied on over around 10:20. The rest of the villagers came a bit later so the meeting didn't actually start until noon (Tanzanians don't stress too much about time). Both my VEO (village executive officer) and village chairperson are actually females which I think is pretty great. I had to sit with them up at the front along with a few other "honorable guests", facing the 100 or so villagers who were sitting under two giant mango trees. That actually added a bit of excitement to the meeting, as we were in peak mango season at the time and mangoes were literally just falling from trees; there were many close calls with villagers getting pounded and the crowd found it funny every time (Tanzanians literally laugh at everything...I love it and fit right in!). I had to stand and say a few words, so I just introduced myself and thanked them for welcoming me into their village (Tanzanians like to give speeches and they especially like to make guests give speeches). But the most surprising part of the whole meeting was when it was decided that the village will be split into two because it has grown too large, at about 2000 residents. The back part of the village, where I live, is now separate from Maputi. Unfortunately I already forgot my village's new name, so I'll have to get back to y'all on that. But it looks like my school will still be named Maputi Secondary, which won't be confusing at all.

The other highlight of the month happened in the same week, when Katie and Ghee both literally shit their pants. Before you get too grossed out, you should know that this pretty much happens to every PCV at some point. But it is still funny everytime. Ghee's soiled boxers now sit at the bottom of Katie's pit latrine, which should be enough to entertain us for the next 2 years. I'm pretty sure they shared this info in their respective blogs, but telling you all this definitely can't help my gastrointestinal karma, which has actually been pretty good so far (I've only had diarrhea once, ironically after eating pizza at a nice wazungu restaurant). So now I probably deserve to be next...stay tuned! In general, bowel movements are quite the hot topic among PCVs and are discussed with ever-growing casualness. Here's an excerpt from a recent phone conversation for an example:

Me: "How's the diarrhea going? Cleared up yet?"

Nameless PCV: "Well sort of. I'm no longer shooting water out of my ass, but I wouldn't exactly call it solid."

And now I should probably apologize to everyone at home that is thoroughly disgusted, and generally doesn't care to know about their family or friends' poops. But really, everybody poops.

Other than that, January didn't bring a great deal of news to share. Prior to school starting I had a great deal of free-time to try and fill. Because everything here takes way longer to do than in the US, I spent quite a bit of time just doing daily chores like cooking on my little kerosene jiko (stove), collecting water, washing clothes and dishes, and cleaning my house. I was sweeping my house and courtyard atleast once per day, which actually came to be one of my favorite things to do to pass the time. I've also done a great deal of reading, listening to my ipod or my shortwave radio (I can pick up BBC), or chatting on the phone with other volunteers (we all pay to be on the PC phone plan, which is awesome and lets us talk unlimited to each other). After my mom sent a jump rope and some resistance bands in a care package, I even started to get a little bit of morning exercise, although let's face it, jumping rope gets old fast.

I also did a fair amount of obsessing over my house and planning my future decor which probably doesn't surprise any of you. I painted a 4x4' chalkboard on one of my walls which has been fun and is now home to lots of lists and Kiswahili/Kimakonde vocabularly. And thanks to some recent lighting additions, it's a little easier to stay up at night (I've even pushed 10 pm a couple of nights). I bought a solar-powered charger that can charge my phone battery and also has a lightbulb that is now hanging from my living room ceiling. I also finished making my door-cinderblock-mattress-couch, which looks remarkably like a real couch (pics next time?). It is even pretty comfortable and was tested and approved by my first houseguest, Katie. Receiving a visitor was quite exciting because I won't be getting a whole lot of PCV-through-traffic over the next 2 years (my site is way off both the main roads and is kind of a bitch for everyone to get to).

And because a lot of you have asked about how my Kiswahili is coming along... I tested at 'intermediate-high' just before swearing-in (you need 'intermediate-mid' to swear-in which basically means you can greet, introduce and talk about yourself, use past/present/future tense and basic grammar, etc). I can definitely converse about basic things but I'm not to the point of having any type of extended, meaningful conversation in Kiswahili. Quite frankly I don't feel like I've improved at all since coming to site, which is pretty dissapointing but mostly my own fault. My headmaster and other teacher both started off speaking to me in English, which was really nice at first as I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, but now I really should ask them to switch to Kiswahili full-time. And at this point most of my interactions with villagers are pretty superficial (basic greetings, etc) so I don't get much practice on a daily basis. Travelling with volunteers that have been here for a year also doesn't help because they are pretty fluent and end up doing most of the Kiswahili conversing. So it is definitely something I need to work on because it's really important to me to eventually reach fluency. And because learning one language isn't hard enough, I've also got to work on learning Kimakonde, the tribal language spoken here. My headmaster keeps appointing me Kimakonde teachers even though I keep saying I need to work on my Kiswahili first; basically the thought of me speaking Kimakonde might be the funniest thing in the whole world to the villagers here and everyone is pretty excited to teach me. So who knows, maybe after two years I will also be able to speak a bit of Kimakonde.

And before I forget the whole reason I'm here, my school has been officially in session since Jan 17. Just to update you, I am in fact responsible for teaching all of the math (form 1-4) and physics (form 1-3) at my school, so I have my work cut out for me. But there are no other teachers and I just can't rationalize doing the alternative, leaving half of the students not learning any math or physics at all. But anyways, this is Tanzania and the first week(s) of school means students and teachers may decide to start showing up, then the students must clean the school environment, etc. So last week I didn't do a whole lot, but this week I started off really popular by testing my form 2-4 (grades 9-11) students. Since my school hasn't had a math or physics teacher the last 4 years, I had no idea what level any of the students were at and whether I could just start teaching the syllabus or if I needed to do a lot of review. So I wrote what I thought would be simple exams, made from material that should have been covered in previous forms (i.e. I gave questions from form 1 material to my form 2s, form 1+2 questions for form 3, form 1+2+3 for form 4, etc.). I started with my form 4 maths and holy shit was it an eye opener! First off I thought it would maybe take an hour (29 questions, simple enough for no calculators). I finally cut them off at 3.5 hours because I thought they were either going to fall asleep, die of exhaustion, kill themselves, or kill me. And grading their exams was significantly more painful.

A few examples of answers from nearly every one of my form 4s (11th graders):

1) 1/4 + 2/3 = 3/7

2) 15 - -6 = 9

and my personal favorite because it would never have occurred to me,

3) Solve 5x - 3y when x=4 and y=3 --> 54-33 = 21

So as it turns out, I will need to start out with basic math for nearly all of my students. I'm going to try and meet with my mkuu tomorrow to talk about solutions. I've spoken with my second-master/other teacher about the possibilities for dividing the students up based on ability rather than grade-level and he seemed really receptive, so we will see. Ideally I could start all 4 classes with basic math but be able to move the classes along at different paces. Another serious problem is that most of my students speak little to no English, and of course we have no English teacher. I am hoping to start a "conversational English" club after school where we can have informal English lessons and they can get in some more practice.

Welp I think that's probably enough updatin' for now, so until next time!

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! I went to Newala on the 23rd to meet up with Katie and then we went to Ndanda the morning of the 24th to meet up with 9 other PCVs for holiday festivities. We went again to the watering hole for a nice swim and ended the day at a restaraunt for some basic Tanzanian fare and beers. We began Christmas morning by cooking a fabulous breakfast feast. We had eggs scrambled with lots of veggies, sausage (made by local nuns), and Katie and I even channeled our southern-ness (she's from Oklahoma) and cooked up some rockin' biscuits and sausage gravy. After brunch we did a gift swap...the theme was ridiculous stuff you can buy in Tanzania and we each had a 3000 shilingi (~2 USD). It was a lot of fun and the gifts ranged from a Hannah Montana CD case to a bottle of ranch dressing and CD of porn (there was a lot of regifting from care packages). I think I ended up with the best present of all...a 4-pack of Starbucks double shot espresso drinks. I even got to drink them chilled, courtesy of Dylan's fridge! We spent the rest of the day just relaxing, puzzling and playing scrabble, drinking bucket wine and cooking. For dinner we made beef fajitas that also turned out to be pretty tasty, and ended the night playing charades. All in all a very nice Christmas.

On the morning of the 26th me, Katie, Ghee, Grant, Jeff, and Jose hopped on a bus to Lindi and then went onwards to an island village called Kilwa Kisiwani, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its 9th century ruins. On the 27th we took a little sailboat over to see the ruins, which were pretty neat, and then spent the afternoon at the beach. The beach was really nice and I can now cross 'playing Marco Polo in the Indian Ocean' off my bucket list. Ice cold beers at a safi hotel bar on the beach ended out the vacation nicely. Katie, Ghee and I headed back to Lindi this morning (the others went on to the next stop of their trip) and we're spending the day here in an air-conditioned internet cafe, tonight in an Anglican church, and tomorrow we'll head back to Katie's site in Newala to spend New Years. I'm just about out of computer time, so that's all for now, hopefully pictures later. Hope you all have a fun New Years!

Got cut off the computer before I could finish uploading all my pictures. I finished captioning the last of the swearing-in pics and created a new album (PC Tanzania - service) with a few pictures of my house* and school. Enjoy!

*My house pics are already a bit outdated, but my laptop is dead so I can't upload new pictures at the moment. Recent additions to my living room include a bookshelf and the beginnings of a what will one day be a couch...so far I've just removed one of my doors and gathered up some cinderblocks to set it on. Hopefully I'll find a couple of cheap mattresses soon and some fabric to upholster them!

Hello from the deep south! I've been at site for 3 weeks now, and it's been quite the adventure so far. I added a bunch of pictures from our swearing-in ceremony at the US Embassy and Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's house plus a few of my new house! Check 'em out in the photostream above.

So what's my new life like?!

MY VILLAGE...is called Maputi, and is near the town of Kitangali (or Kitangari) on the Makonde plateau in Mtwara region. It is pretty small, but it's hard to get any kind of accurate population, so I'm just going to guess that there are 1000 or 2000 people living here. I think my village is really cute, and pretty much looks like what you all probably imagine a rural African village to look like...lots of little mud huts with grass roofs. It has just a couple of dukas (shops) that sell some basic goods. We don't have much of a market, and the only produce I can buy here is onions, potatoes, and shitty tomatoes. Kitangali has a small market where you can usually find some sort of leafy green vegetable and maybe a bit of fruit. Unfortunately there is a huge valley between me and Kitangali and so it is about an hour walk up and down a couple of very steep hills. Another PCV lives in a village on the other side of Kitangali; his name is Tyler and he is from the most recent (swore-in in August) health and environment group. He's nice and has been really helpful so far, showing me around Kitangali and letting me share his PO Box. There is also a teacher's training college about a 20 minute walk from my house; I visited it the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find a very nice looking computer lab that is hooked up with internet! The vice principle told me I could use it anytime I want for free, which is great news considering the closest internet cafe is probably a 4 hour bus ride away. Anyways, one of these days I'll snap some pictures of my vill, although it is a bit awkward to just whip my camera out most places.

MY SCHOOL...is on break now so I don't have much to update you all on. My mkuu (headmaster) is really nice and seems really dedicated to the school and students. He already got a bunch of math and science textbooks donated from an NGO out of the UK and even obtained some lab equipment from another school. My neighbor/other teacher has also been super helpful and I think he'll be great to work with. His name is Likulu and he's the only other full-time teacher besides myself, teaching Biology and Chemistry. The school has never had a math or physics teacher, and would like me to teach both at all 4 grade levels. That would be an extremely heavy teaching load (8 classes/day --> double what PC recommends) and require a lot of lesson planning, so I haven't quite figured out how I'll manage that...I may talk to my mkuu about cutting it down. But either way I'll begin teaching with the next term in mid-January.

MY HOUSE...is pretty basic, but I like it. I share a duplex with Likulu and our mkuu's house is maybe 50 yards from ours. We don't have electricity, which means I get quite a bit of sleep (usually in bed at 8pm) because there's just not much to do after dark. Fortunately the primary school connected to the teacher's training college has electricity, so I can take my cell phone over to one of the two teachers that live there and they'll charge it for free. Water in general is a problem on the plateau, but I've actually got a big concrete storage tank right next to my house that is connected to a rain catchment system from me and my mkuu's roof. It's pretty low now because the rainy season is just starting, so for now it gets filled by students that carry buckets of water from the main tap in the village. My house has a living room and 3 bedrooms which is way more space than I need...one room is storage at this point and another is completely empty. I also have a private courtyard which is really nice and where I spend a lot of my time. It's got a little room with a choo (bathroom/hole in the ground), a little room for bucket bathing, a storage closet, an area to cook, and clotheslines for laundry. My house started out extremely empty with just a bed, table and chairs, and desk. But I've since "borrowed" a few more desks from my school so now it's just mostly empty. I also went to a fundi to work on getting some shelves/cabinets built so that I can really begin unpacking my things. But they turned out to be a lot more expensive than I thought/can afford, so I'm going to have to just get one piece built at a time...up first is a bookshelf that should be ready today or tomorrow! And one day in the far far future I hope to be a proud owner of a couch, but for now I mostly just hang out on my bed. Every time I go to a town I try and pick up a few things to help me settle in (you can never have enough buckets). All in all setting up house will be quite a slow process, as everything I buy has to be either carried by yours truly or somehow shoved in/on a jam-packed bus.

But most unfortunately for me, I've got a serious rat problem. At first I could just hear them scurrying in my roof at night, find half-eaten bars of soap, and would sweep up rat poop every morning. But lately they've become quite the daredevils and like to come into my room at night. About 2 weeks ago I was completely startled to find a rat in one of my duffle bags. I bought rat poison and mixed it with some tomatoes and left it out one night, but apparently those little guys aren't easy to kill. Then I woke up to scratching behind my head...I turned my headlamp on and sure enough there was a rat trying to get into my tucked-in mosquito net! It turned into a pretty restless night's sleep as I'd wake up to more scratching every hour or so and have to hit my bed to make it scurry away. I left the next morning to go out of town for 5 days and sure enough it managed to eat through my mosquito net in that time. I came home to find a 2x2 inch hole in my mosquito net and a bunch of rat poop and pee on my bed. I washed my sheets and patched up my mosquito net, and just recently acquired a rat trap that I will test out tonight. If that doesn't work I think I'm going to get a cat (yep, that's right, did you ever imagine me a cat owner?!).

TRAVEL...down here is no fun. So far I've been on a bus that got stuck in the mud for 2.5 hours, a bus that broke down for 2.5 hours, 2 flat tires, a fire extinguisher explosion, drove on a 30 degree incline while dodging giant dirt piles, witnessed a full-blown physical fight over seats, held sleeping children on my lap, and completely changed my definition of the word crowded. There is only one paved road in the region, so most bus travel is done in shitty buses on shitty roads. And rainy season is just starting which should make travel even more interesting! But on the bright side, I get a great core workout every time I spend a bus ride trying to maintain my balance while standing in a variety of uncomfortable positions!

Buses don't go through my village very often, but there is one daladala that runs once a day to Newala, where my good friend Katie lives. Unfortunately it leaves my village at 5:45 in the morning, but it only takes about 1.5 hours to get there. Newala is pretty nice and has a big market where I have bought most of things for my house and also where I've found the most fresh produce. There is even one duka that sells peanut butter which has been a huge lifesaver! There are also a few other health/env volunteers that live near Newala so it is one of the meeting points in the region. If I go the opposite way on the main road from my village (north), I can reach a town called Mtama in about 2 hours. There is another ed volunteer, Grant, that lives there. Mtama is on the paved road that runs from Lindi to Masasi. A few volunteers live in villages along this road, including my good friend Ghee, who ended up getting transferred down here last minute. I've gone west to the town of Ndanda, where two ed volunteers, Dillon and Jeff, live. It's a pretty big town with a nice market. Dillon has a really safi house there with electricity, water you can drink straight from the tap, an oven, etc. so that is another big congregrating point for volunteers (and where I spent Thanksgiving).

So all in all I've already done quite a bit of traveling, mostly because the other ed volunteers are on break from school and it's holiday season. Although we're pretty isolated from the other regions, Peace Corps has been building Mtwara up so there are quite a few of us down here and we are relatively close to one another. It has definitely been nice to see/travel with other PCVs and have more of a transition into full-time village life. I got back about a week ago from a 5 day trip that was a lot of fun...I went to Newala for a couple of days to celebrate a volunteer's, Claire, birthday. We hired a truck to take us from Newala down to the Ruvuma river, which defines the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. It was a really pretty drive down the edge of the plateau and the river was also nice. It was quite tempting to make the short cross over to Mozambique, but we resisted because there are supposedly alligators and also because Peace Corps would shit themselves and then quickly send us home if they ever found out some crossed into northern Mozambique (which is still covered in lots of landmines). Then aobut 8 of us headed by bus to Mtwara town. We stayed 2 nights in Mikandani, a nearby village, at a pretty nice guesthouse that we were able to get a good deal on. We also stuffed our faces with extremely tasty but extremely expensive food. I ate quite possibly the best steak of my life and I drank a margarita! But the best part is that we went snorkling! In the Indian Ocean! It was my first time to snorkel and it was absolutely beautiful. I also recently went to Masasi, a 4.5 hour bus ride away and where the closest ATM is, and soon I'll be headed back to Ndanda to celebrate Christmas with some of the volunteers down here. Still not sure about New Year's plans, but thinking about heading to Lindi.

Welp, that's just about all I can think of to write at the moment. But I am doing well and still feel really lucky to be in Tanzania and Mtwara! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the holiday season!

Kathryn has a mailing address at her site. She is sharing a post office box with the nearest volunteer. She can be reached at:

Kathryn Alexander

P.O.Box 12

Kitangali, Newala, Mtwara, Tanzania

She is about an hour walk from Kitangali, longer than the distance would indicate because there is a very large, deep valley she has to cross and scaling it is pretty slow. (Note the "l" instead of the originally reported "r" in Kitangali. She said that "l" and "r" are largely interchangable in Kiswahili and that the "l" is more common for that town's name.)

She likes her headmaster and said everyone has been very nice and helpful. She is making some progress on getting settled in and has managed to get her mosquito net hung from the hard-to-reach ceiling and successfully made a tasty eggplant / tomato / onion meal with her stove. There is a well outside her house and she said when it is low the students carry buckets of water to fill it. She still needs to find a way to store her stuff and is thinking she could stack some of the baskets they use for fruits and veggies on their sides to make a bookshelf of sorts. She likes the other Peace Corps volunteers in her region and some of them have electricity so she can go charge her phone and other electronics. She is thinking about getting a modem so she doesn't have to make the 4-hour trek to the internet cafe.

[Posted by mom, based on info from phone conversations with dad & sis ]

Hi everyone, this is a post on Kathryn's behalf by her assistant editor / mom. Since it may be a while before she has internet access (currently a 4-hour bus ride away), I will give a short summary of our phone conversation earlier today.

After a busy day on Wednesday (swearing in day) and only a couple of hours sleep, Kathryn left early Thursday morning for her site, accompanied by the headmaster of the school where she will be teaching. They arrived safely late Thursday evening after a very long and very crowded bus ride on a mostly unpaved road. Even though though the rainy season is just getting started, the bus got stuck in the mud for a couple of hours. They were met by students who helped carry her bags to her new home. She will live in one side of a duplex, with the other side occupied by the other full-time teacher at the school. He is the chemistry & biology teacher and her designated "counterpart". The current school term is just ending, so Kathryn will begin teaching in mid January. She will teach math and physics for forms 1-4 (8th grade through 11th grade).

Her living quarters are almost empty at the moment, containing only a bed and a little table with a couple of chairs. There are no shelves or counters of any sort, so she can't really unpack yet. On Friday, her counterpart helped her buy a few dishes, a small kerosene stove and some food. She has yet to meet the nearest Peace Corps volunteer, a health care worker who lives in a village on the other side of a small nearby town. She hopes he has some hints for how to get furniture and other household purchases home on buses so full that the aisles are packed with people standing. There is no electricity or running water.

On Saturday, Kathryn got up early and used her battery-powered head lamp to get ready while it was still dark. Then she rode the bus (standing) for a couple of hours to get to the town of Ndanda, where she joined some other PC volunteers from the area for a Thanksgiving dinner. She will return to her new home on Sunday and resume the process of settling in.

She does not yet have a mailing address. She can be reached at the same phone number (assuming she can find a way to keep it charged, possibly by obtaining a solar charger).

I added a bunch of pictures from our last week in Morogoro, so check them out from the photo stream.

We've been back in Dar for a couple of days which has been a lot of fun because we're all back in one big group again. It's also nice to have some freedom back. I will really miss my host family, especially Isaac, but am excited to be in charge of my own schedule/life/etc. Anyways we've mostly just been hanging out and doing logistics stuff...All of the headmasters of our schools came to Dar and we met with them this morning. My headmaster seems really nice, but it was a bit awkward to come up with lots of things to talk about...should be even more fun sitting next to each other on the10 hour bus ride on down to site.

Tomorrow I will officially swear-in as a PCV! We recently had one volunteer go home, which was sad but for the best, so there will only be 38 of us swearing-in. We have a big celebration tomorrow morning at the US Embassy, that will consist of taking an oath, lots of speeches and singing songs (American and Tanzanian national anthems), and we are evening putting on a performance of the Beatles song "With a Little Help from my Kiswahili (Friends)" that was rewritten with Kiswahili lyrics...it is probably going to sound pretty terrible but will be fun nonetheless. Then tomorrow evening we are going over to the US Ambassador's house for a Thanksgiving dinner. Thursday morning I'll wake up at 4 am and hop on a 6 am bus ride for Mtwara!

Hopefully I can post some more pics after our swearing-in ceremony. All the guys will be sporting "swearing-in staches" so they should look pretty nasty.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Shadow week was amazing! I like to think I've been on some pretty cool trips, but last week felt like the greatest vacation I've ever had. I was in a group with TJ (one of my best friends here), Glenn, and David and we had a blast. We started the trip off pleasantly surprised; I guess we were all expecting a miserable 10-hour bus ride on something in between a crazy local daladala and a Greyhound, but we stepped onto a nice bus with freezing cold air conditioning. About 15 minutes into the ride a man came around with ice cold cokes (served with straws!) and delicious little cakes (tasted like angelfood!). I think you have probably never seen four happier people in your whole life, and we probably would have been satisfied to just vacation on that bus. And sure enough the giant cheesy grins didn't leave our faces for the rest of the week. The bus ride flew by and we arrived in Mbeya around 8 pm. We were met at the bus station by a health PCV that lives in Mbeya and the vice principal of the Mbeya Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), who drove us all out to the MIST campus. The PCV we were shadowing, Anita, teaches computer engineering there and lives on campus in teacher housing. Her apartment was super safi (clean, nice, upscale) and bigger and probably nicer than any college apartment I ever lived in. She had electricity and running water, an oven, stove, refrigerator, freezer, and, get this, a blender. It was exciting to walk into a kitchen with fancy cooking appliances, after being used to sitting on the ground and cooking Tanzanian food (mostly rice and beans) over a little charcoal stove. Anita is also an amazing host and loves to cook delicious meals for people, so you can probably imagine where I'm going with this story. Anyways, we arrived there and were immediately treated to a giant pot of homemade enchiladas (what?!) and guacamole (what what?!).

So what other amazing things did I eat?! Oh don't worry, I documented all of the deliciousness, so I hope you weren't expecting pictures of anything other than food:

- I bought vanilla yogurt, granola with raisins, and peanut butter

- We made spaghetti with marinara sauce

- We made guacamole (again) and I made pineapple and mango salsa (even had cilantro!)

- We tried to make frozen margaritas but didn't have enough lime so added in mango, pineapple, orange, and konyagi (kind of like gin)...therefore inventing konyagiritas

- Went to out to eat at a restaurant where a fellow PCV told us he ate the best hamburger in Tanzania. It had a giant scoop of guacamole and some sort of cole-slaw type mixture and was served with french fries. It was delicious. We went there twice.

- We made pizza (homemade dough and sauce, veggies, CHEESE!) and a fresh salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing (perhaps the most enjoyable thing I ate all week), topped off with a couple of glasses of red wine

- I baked peanut butter cookies that we snacked on during our hike

- We cooked spinach lasagna (homemade noodles and ricotta cheese...who knew you can make ricotta cheese so easily?!), served with homemade focaccia bread drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette

- After a long day of hiking we chowed down on some vegetarian chili, served with chopped onions and yogurt. As an appetizer we enjoyed a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad tossed in balsamic vinaigrette.

- Veronica and I cooked an awesome Saturday morning brunch of eggs scrambled with potatoes, onions, peppers, and tomatoes, served with chapati (kind of like oil-soaked tortillas), fresh tomato and avocado slices, and bananas

- Konyagaritas (again, but perfected...more mango plus avocado for creaminess),

- We made SUSHI...No fish but they were still pretty delightful with mango, cucumber, and avocado (never would have though that my first time making sushi would be in Africa). Served it with miso soup and Anita even made homemade chocolate cake with chocolate-coffee icing for dessert.

- I also enjoyed drinking real, brewed coffee (hot and ICED!) all week

Don't worry we didn't just eat. We also relaxed a lot. One day I even took 2 naps. And I wore shorts around her apartment all week which felt so nice, despite making me more aware of how pale, fat, and hairy my legs have become. I even got in a little exercise and went for a nice run with Anita one morning around the farms outside her school. On Thursday we also met up with some of our fellow trainees (Veronica, Justin, Tim, and Paul) that were also shadowing in the Mbeya area for a beautiful hike at Crater Lake. It was actually a pretty tough hike to the top and then down and back up from the water, but it was well worth it.

On the weekend a bunch of PCVs that live in Mbeya region came into town and we met them all and hung out at their favorite bars. I learned that PCVs get crazy and drink a ridiculous amount whenever they manage to get together, so I'll have to try and not become an alcoholic.

In summary, the week was completely unproductive and Anita's site (rumored as the safi-est of all PC/TZ) couldn't be further from what I'll experience at my site, but needless to say it was the perfect vacation! After leaving food heaven, we came back to reality (Morogoro). This week was our last week of training, and we spent each day at our training hub doing final exams, logistics stuff, etc. This morning I took my final oral language interview/exam and this evening we're having a little goodbye celebration with our host families. On Sunday we'll leave to go back to Dar and prepare to be sworn-in as PCVs on Wednesday...ahhh it feels great to be done with training!

NEW PICS! (58-109) http://picasaweb.google.com/KathrynBAlexander/PCTanzaniaPST#

Today was quite the exciting day! Our Country Director, Andrea, came in from Dar with a couple other PC staff. After morning chai at our training hub, CCT, we all gathered under a mango tree with a beautiful view of the mountain in the background. They brought in traditional African dancers and drummers and we watched a dance and then all joined in. We all sat down and they brought out a big map of Tanzania. Everyone's pictures were covered up with post-its and strings were pinned from each picture to their future site. One of the PCTs got to go up to the board and uncover the first person's face and then that person came up to hear a little about their site and then uncover the next face, and so on and so on. It was all very dramatic and exciting and happy!

So now the news you really care about...I'll be spending the next 2 years in Mtwara region in southeast Tanzania at the border with Mozambique!!! I'm on the Makonde Plateau, so I'll have fairly cool weather which will be a nice change from the heat. I've heard its really beautiful and is famous for its cashew nuts! I'll be about halfway between the towns of Mtama and Newala, at a school called Maputi Secondary School. It's a pretty new school (opened in 2007) and has never had a PCV before. That means I don't know much about my site except for that it an O-level (forms 1-4 -> ~grades 8-11) rural, co-ed day school has about 250 students. It has a headmaster (principal) and 3 diploma teachers (just have high school diploma), only 2 of which are full-time. It looks like I'll be teaching physics and math.

One of my good friends here, Katie, will actually be in Newala town and I think we are just a 2 hour bus ride away from each other which is really nice. Another friend from my CBT, Leslie, is also in the region but closer to the coast. Several good friends are spread far around the country so it will be sad to say goodbye but hopefully we will be able to see each other on occasion. It sounds like there are/will be 15-20 PCVs in the region so I will have plenty of opportunities to meet/see other volunteers. I've already spoken with a couple of current volunteers down there and I'm getting so excited! It sounds like I'm pretty much out in the bush, with no electricity or water (water in this region is a big problem). In general this part of Tanzania is one of the least developed, and has very few paved roads (as one PCV that lives there put it...there's one kind-of-paved road). During dry season it takes 8-10 hours by bus to Dar and during rainy season it takes over a day. It is home to the Makonde tribe, which I've heard is one of the most "traditional" tribes (they also used to be cannibals) and also predominately Muslim, so it is a fairly conservative area.

Anyways, I'm so relieved to finally know where I'll be and to get down there!! Tomorrow I'm off to Mbeya for shadow week...hopefully I return with lots of good pictures!

Sorry for the delay, but PICTURES ARE UP!! Check out the photostream above or visit http://picasaweb.google.com/KathrynBAlexander/PCTanzaniaPST?feat=directlink.

LIVING:

My homestay family is still great. My mama has pretty much blown every conservative stereotype that PC told us out the window. I came home the other night and she told me that she had just remembered that today was her birthday. Remembering that she told me she was 25 the first day I moved in, I mentioned that she turned 26, to which she responded that no, she had turned 24. So I guess I'm still not sure how old she is, but it looks like she's just 6 months or so older than me which is amusing because homestay is conducive to being treated like a child (here's how you use the toilet, take a bath, cook, wash your clothes, clean your room, etc.). I also found out that her and my baba aren't actually married, but live together and have a child which is extremely untraditional for Tanzania. And after every warning given to me about how religious Tanzanians are and how they will not understand you if you say you don't have a religion, of course my Mama isn't religious at all. Of course village life will be much different, but it has been neat to see a broader picture of modern Tanzanians.

Flora, my house dada (house sister = live in housekeeper/cook) ran away about a week ago. It’s a pretty long story that I won’t go into because I still don’t really understand what happened myself. But long story short she is gone and now its just me, Mama Isaac, my kaka Isaac, and my dada Betty. It has been pretty crazy without Flora because she really did most of the work around the house and stayed home during the day with Isaac. I’ve had to pitch in a lot more around the house, which means waking up earlier and staying up later to help with the chores. My personal favorite (read: NOT) is sweeping the dirt around outside the house; I’m not sure I’ll ever understand the reasoning behind it, but I can say with pretty high certainty that I will not be waking up early to do this once I’m in my own house.

Most people are interested to hear that I eat dinner almost every night with my hands. Well really hand, because you're left hand is reserved solely for wiping yourself (don’t worry, I use toilet paper). At the beginning I was pretty paranoid about using my left hand for something I'm not supposed to and offending someone. For example, have you ever tried to peel a banana using one hand? I have, and it is not easy. Of course after a couple of minutes my mama's friend just started laughing and told me that I could use my left hand to hold the banana peel. I think about it a lot less now and so I've forgotten plenty of times and used my left hand to grab food. My mama and her friends also laugh at me a lot because I haven't really mastered eating rice and beans with my fingers. They're really good at like rolling it into a ball in their hands and eating it but I mostly just make a big mess and my hands are covered in food at the end of the meal. It is pretty amusing. In general, Tanzanians appreciate you even trying to fit into their culture and give you tons of slack because you aren't afterall Tanzanian.

About every other afternoon/evening I'll meet up with some of the other volunteers in the area for a (cold!) beer or soda. I know I won't have that luxury once I'm alone at site, but it's been really nice having other PCVs to talk to that know exactly what you're going through and to just be able to completely relax and be yourself.

TEACHING:

I’m about to finish my third and final week of internship teaching. It has gone alright, and it is definitely hard to take over a classroom for just 3 weeks, but it has been really interesting and I feel like I've learned a lot. English is by far the biggest challenge. Most of the students english skills are not where they need to be to be learning all subjects in English (most Tanzanian teachers teach primarily in Kiswahili which means that the kids can learn the concepts but then fail the exams which are written in English). The hardest part is definitely forcing myself to slow down my speech as much as possible, over-pronounce every syllable, repeat myself, and use really simple vocabulary. Students don't have textbooks and so everything you write (and only what you write) they copy into their notebooks and study from. It takes a long time for them to copy boardwork because they all want to write and draw really perfectly (they seriously use rulers to draw every single line). Besides the language barrier, you generally recieve very little feedback and it's hard to get a lot of class participation. Posing open-ended answers to students and having them feel comfortable answering them is a big challenge and a highlights a pretty huge difference between the Tanzanian and American educational systems; in general, Tanzanian students are not encouraged to think for themselves, but instead to memorize and regurgitate answers. But if anything, internship teaching has made me more excited to have my own class for an entire year, where I can set rules and expectations and really get to know my students. We've had some really great sessions given by current PCVs with really practical information about differences between American and Tanzanian schools, how to manage a classroom, how to encourage critical thinking rather than memorization, etc. Last week we also had a really cool session by a 4th year PCV (a lot volunteers here extend past 2 years) about hands on lab activities. It was a lot of fun and he gave us a lot of great information and ideas that have made me really excited to teach science as interactively as possible, and all of the cheap and local materials you can use to do so.

TRAVELLING:

Two weekends ago we went to Mikumi national park, which was about a 2 hour drive from Morogoro. It was a really great weekend and just the break we all needed from training. We did a late afternoon safari on Saturday and then a very early morning safari on Sunday morning. It was a really amazing experience and really the first time that it hit me I was actually in Africa and how lucky I am to be in Tanzania and experience the things I'm experiencing. I'm not even a huge animal person and I must say that it was so cool to see all of the elephants, giraffes, zebras, impalas, warthogs, a hippo, etc. Watching the sunset in the park was also incredible. We partied a bit on Saturday night and actually managed to stay up until like 2:30 in the morning which is really incredible when I think most of us go to bed around 9:30 every night. Anyways, the weekend went by way too fast but it was a lot of fun!

Training is starting to drag on and a lot of us are getting pretty antsy to move on to our sites, be able to cook and clean in our own houses, etc. Luckily this week seems like our last real week of training because on Sunday we’ll leave for shadowing current PCVs. I’m headed to Mbeya region, in southwest Tanzania close to the border with Zambia. It is one of the furthest sites and takes about 10 hours by bus from Morogoro. There are four of us going there, and I feel really lucky to be in the group I’m in (PC seems to like splitting us up completely arbitrarily); one of the guys is one of my best friends here and the other two are really cool and laidback so it should be a fun trip. I’m extremely excited to see some more of the country, and have heard good things about Mbeya (green and lush, cooler, tasty rice, etc.). It will also be really helpful to see how a volunteer lives, works, eats, sleeps, etc.

On Saturday we find out our site placements so it should be a crazy day filled with lots of emotions! I’m super anxious and it is pretty much torture waiting to find out where I’ll be living for the next two years and which volunteers I’ll be nearest to...stay tuned!!

Oh ya and it’s also been pretty crazy here lately with all the excitement surrounding the presidential election, which happened on Sunday. The current President, Kikwete, ran for a second term and won, which was expected. However, his party, CCM (which has dominated for a really long time) lost a lot of their seats in parliament to other parties which was also expected because there are a lot of people that think CCM has been in power for too long and want to see what other parties can deliver. Anyways, it was expected to be a peaceful election, but as a precaution we were on standby from Peace Corps (stay at home and don’t go into town and be ready to hear from Peace Corps with further instructions, etc.).

Ok, that's all I can think of for now...badaaye (later)!

Hello there! Alot of stuff has happened in the last week but I will try and remember the interesting stuff. Last week was much more oriented towards teaching prep, which has been interesting to say the least. I don't want to bash Peace Corps, so I will just say it was rushed and disorganized (especially compared to the extremely well thought out/planned language training). Last week I met with the teacher whose classes I will be taking over for the next 3 weeks at my internship school. I'll be teaching the form 1 (~8th grade) physics class. There are 86 students. In one classroom. You can imagine it is pretty cramped, and they have to sit two to a desk. It is surprisingly quiet and orderly, which goes to show how much discipline and respect for the teacher are taking seriously in Tanzania. I sat in on math and physics classes last week and it was a bit of an eye opener. Although I am sure that there are plenty of great teachers in Tanzania, both teachers I happened to observe made pretty substantial mistakes. I guess it puts less pressure on myself, because if I can just teach accurate information the students will be better off. Also interesting is how mismatched the physics and math curriculums are. I'll be teaching a unit on pressure, which starts off pretty simply (force/area), but then essentially goes into fluid mechanics (which I didn't learn about until my sophmore year in college). Meanwhile the same kids are just now learning about perimeter and circumference in their math class. Anyways, my first class in on Wednesday, so I guess I will gauge what they know and have to make some adjustments. Three of the PCVs in my group taught their first classes today, so I am already getting pretty excited for mine!

In other news, I was sick this weekend, but I'm all better now so no need to worry. We had the 3rd shot for the rabies vaccine midday Friday, and my body had a bad reaction. Spent Friday afternoon and night feeling pretty shitty (headache, nausea, fever) and was still feeling not so great Saturday but was all better by Sunday. I was well taken care of by my Mama and had all kinds of neighbors stop by to wish me well, phone calls from family friends and other PCVs, etc. I decided to pass on a big 8 hour hiking outing with a bunch of other PCVs on Sunday to climb a nearby mountain, which was a bummer but that's just how it goes. Instead I spent a leisurely Sunday morning cleaning my room and washing all my clothes and shoes for 3 hours (Tanzanians are very particular about cleaning)...needless to say my raw knuckles aren't too happy! Went over to the house of Mama Isaac's best friend for lunch and then went to visit her sister-in-laws. I'm still getting used to being the center of attention. I'm a source of endless wonder, and people just stare and talk about me right in front of me. They also like to touch my skin, hair, etc. Could you ever imagine going over to a stranger's house, where they'd take off your shoes and start painting your toenails with henna?! (you also need to understand how impossible it is to keep your feet clean of all the dirt and dust, and how grossed out I am by my own feet)

We got kind of scary news today. One of my fellow volunteers, Danielle, got in an accident involving a pikipiki (motorcycle) yesterday evening. I don't know the details, just that she was hit and she was taken to the hospital in Dar. Luckily she's fine, and just has some cuts and bruises on her leg, so hopefully she will be back soon!

Next weekend marks the halfway point of training, and all the volunteers will be traveling to a nearby nature reserve for a safari. Some of us were going to try to camp, but it looks like that might not work out. Either way it will be a nice break from training and I'm really looking forward to it!

Anyways, I just want to say thanks to everyone who has messaged, emailed, commented, etc...I wish I had enough time (and money!) to reply to you all individually, but I have read and appreciate every word!

AND NEXT TIME I PROMISE PICTURES!!!

Ok so I'll try writing this again. I've been with my host family for one week now. They are really great, although different than I expected. My Mama is only 25 years old, so she's really more like a friend. She's a primary school teacher, teaching English actually, which is good for me but bad for my Swahili immersion. But she's super nice and does try to speak to me in Swahili the first time, and then again the second time if I don't understand, but will usually switch to English if I really don't understand. Her husband, Baba Isaac, is 30. I just met him briefly my first day because the next morning he had to go to Zanzibar for work...he's in the military and their prepping for the upcoming presidential election on the 31st. He's nice though, speaks fairly good english, and I've talked to him on the phone a few times since he left. The best part of my family is my little kaka (brother) Isaac. That's right, his name is Isaac, just like my newest little cousin! He's only 1 year old and I'm already in love with him. It's awesome to come home and see his adorable, smiling face everyday. I also have 2 dada (sister), Betty and Flora, who aren't actually my sisters. I think Betty is the younger sister of Mama Isaac and Flora is the housegirl (cooks and cleans...which is awkward and deserves a long blogpost in and of itself...more about that later) and may or may not be related...not sure exact ages but I'd guess both are around 13. Everyone is really nice and I feel very comfortable in the house. We have electricity, but no running water. I've got my own room with a big bed and a desk to study. A lot could be said about training itself, but I guess it could be summed up as crazy and exhausting. There is very little free time, as we have class from 8 to 5 Monday through Saturday...I really don't think it is actually possible to shove that much Kiswahili in your brain every day. Then it's back home after class, where I am lucky to get in a pumzika kidogo (little rest), help cooking dinner (takes forever!), hand wash clothes (takes forever!), talk with my family, play with Isaac, etc. Eat dinner, bath, get in bed around 9:30 and try and journal for a few minutes before passing out anywhere form 10 to 15 minutes later. But don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds and I am really enjoying every minute of it. I am also happy to report I am cleaner than I ever have been, because in Tanzania you both TWICE a day, so I take a bucket bath every morning and night.

Swahili is going pretty well. Another girl in my group learned some Swahili before coming as well, so it's nice that we're at the same level and pick up new stuff at the same pace. It is actually a fairly easy language to learn, and the grammar is really regular once you get the hang of it. I feel really confident in class and talking with my language teacher, but everyday conversation in everyday situations is totally different. It is still pretty intimidating and I get easily flustered, but I'm sure I'll get more comfortable with time. The 2 oldest volunteers (60s?) are in my language group which has been pretty interesting. I really can't imagine trying to learn a language as an old person...they really have such a harder time picking it up. The woman is especially slow, and after just 2 days they brought in another teacher just for her. So it's better now that we're able to move forward at the pace we should be, and I do really like my language teacher. Unfortunately, none of the people I became close friends with so far are in my group or live anywhere near me, which was pretty disappointing but is probably for the best anyways as I can just focus on Swahili and integrating into my host family. All the volunteers get together once a week at our central training hub for broad training sessions, and it was really great to see everyone on Friday. After training some of us went to a nearby bar and had a couple of cold beers and pizza (first "American" food since arriving) which was a great way to end our first week of homestay.

The food with with my host family is awesome! A lot less fried stuff and more vegetables and fresh fruit with every meal (banana, watermelon, papaya). My favorite dish so far is matembele, which is made from the leaves of the sweet potato plant...it cooks down to something similar to spinach, but much tastier, and Mama Isaac cooks it with tomato, onion, grated carrot and fresh coconut milk...delicious! My dada also makes a wonderful homeade fruit juice. So I'm eating very well!

Today was a free day since it's Sunday. I slept in until 7:30 and then woke up, ate breakfast, and studied some Swahili. Then I went into to town (about a 10 minute bus ride...also another blog post in and of itself) to meet up with some of the volunteers for lunch. Went to a bar for a couple of cold beers after, and now I'm at an internet cafe as my last stop. Another long week ahead, but we're starting more teacher training and less language so it should be pretty different. That's all for now...hope you all are well!!

Well I just typed out a really long post and the computer froze and I lost it all. So I'll have to update later. Got a phone so give me a call +255 682240387

We finally arrived in Dar es Salaam after over 24 hours of travel from Philadelphia, and it felt great to get here! We have basically been kept in a gated compound since we arrived Friday night (not quite sure what it is, but it is a big center/school/hostel/wedding venue run by Catholic nuns). I think it is actually quite posh, as they're trying to ease us into our living situation (we each have our own little rooms and bathrooms, complete with a shower and flush toilet). We are also being fed very well, although it is mostly fried foods and starches (rice, fried meat or fish, a meat stew, fried bananas, potatoes, etc.). I can imagine that so little fresh fruits and veggies will get old pretty fast, although I think they are not so hard to find in markets. Today we actually had a training session on permagardens, and I hope to have my own little garden to grow fruits and vegetables (avocados, peppers, and cilantro will grow here!). Aside from all the food, we're also processing quite a few medications. We've had close to 10 vaccinations and began taking our malaria prophylaxis pills (I'm taking the one that I was warned against by a couple of people - meflaquin/larium - but no crazy side effects yet).

So far we've undergone some more basic training sessions about Tanzanian culture, greetings, the PC Education program, health and safety issues, etc. Our training classes start at 8 every morning and have typically lasted until late afternoon, with breaks for lunch as well as morning and afternoon chai (tea + a big snack). There has been plenty of time in the evenings for the volunteers to hang out...we've played ultimate frisbee or soccer the last couple of afternoons. The compound even has a bar that serves cold beer, and we've spent most nights with cold beers and card/board games. It's crazy that our group has only known each other for a few days, and many of us already seem like close friends...it's really easy to imagine how volunteers become so close by going through this experience together for 2 years!

We've met with our country director a few times, and I feel like she is going to be really great. She was a PCV herself in Benin, and has spent the last 25 years working in Africa. There will also be a couple of current PCVs joining us each week during PST, and they have been a great resource so far for all of our questions. Overall the PC staff and trainers, almost all native Tanzanians, have been so welcoming, warm, and helpful. Tanzanians in general are very friendly, happy people...you always see them with smiles on their faces and laughing, which is such a pleasure to be around!

Learning more about the Tanzanian education system has been very interesting. The number of secondary schools has increased from approximately 900 to 4000 over the last 10 years. While this means many more students have access to education, there is a severe teacher shortage, especially those qualified to teach math and science at the secondary level (hence the focus of PC/TZ's education program). Classes consist of around 50-80 students, and it is quite common for classes to have no teacher at all (students will literally just spend the class period copying down notes from a chalkboard). The Tanzanian president, President Kikwete, visited the White House last year. Although the agenda had to do with big security issues facing East Africa (Islamic extremists, pirates, etc.), the first thing that President Kikwete asked Obama was if Tanzania could get more Peace Corps Volunteers. It is really great to know how appreciated we are by the government, as well as Tanzanians in general (our PC doctor, for example, was taught by a PCV when he was in secondary school). PC/TZ is therefore expanding its education program, with the goal of doubling the number of volunteers over the next 5 years. Needless to say, it already feels so amazing to be a part of this program! I really feel so lucky to have been placed in Tanzania, and I can't wait to see what the next 2 years have in store.

On Wednesday we will drive west to Morogoro (~3 hours) to our actual training site. We'll stay there until Sunday, when we'll be split off into groups of 4 or 5 into nearby villages and move in with our host families. I'm really excited to start out Kiswahili training, as well as meet my mama and baba (mother and father) and dada and kaka (sisters and brothers)! I expect to be much busier as soon as our real training starts, but I can hopefully update you all in a few weeks.

Anyways, I'm doing very well and I am really loving it here! Hope you are all well! Kwaheri (Goodbye)!

Just a few pictures so far of our training class...

Danielle, Doug, Kat, Katie, Eric playing a combination King's Cup/Swahili vocab gameEric, Carly, Ghee, EulaMegan, Uma, Justin, Michael, Amanda, Ezra, Paul

Taking advantage of free hotel wifi to bring you a short update. Staging was yesterday and went well. All of Peace Corps' expectations were emphasized again, and we talked alot about our aspirations and anxieties as volunteers. There are 39 of us - 19 girls, 20 guys, 1 married couple, mostly people that graduated college in the last couple of years but probably 3-4 older people (in their 50s?), from pretty much all over the country. And guess what, 2 of us are from Austin! The other girl graduated from Westlake in '06 (but she said not to judge) and seems really cool. There's also another girl that has lived in Austin for the last 6 months. I'm sure we'll all bond over our love for Austin, and we'll try and test our tex-mex cooking skills in Tanzania! I got to know the table of 8 I was sitting at the best, and everyone seems really cool. As for the other 30 people, I'll have to work on learning everyone's names, but I'm sure there will be plenty of time today travelling to get to know more of them. A group of us went out last night for Philly Cheesesteaks, which were delicious! Then we headed to a bar to enjoy some last cold American beers. The bar tender ended up getting our group 2 rounds of shots, and we even played a little beer pong and flip cup. Welp, I've gotta get packing - we'll be checking out of the hotel in less than an hour, then onto buses to NYC. Adios!!

Wow, I can’t believe it is finally time to go! The last 2 months have really flown by. It seemed like I did at least one thing related to getting ready to go every day, but it was still pretty amazing how much left I had to do over the last couple of weeks. My biggest time commitment was doing Rosetta Stone Swahili lessons, which I am happy to report that I finished on Saturday! I think I put in about 150 hours over the last 2 months, and I can honestly say that I hope to never see/hear another Rosetta Stone lesson. But I’m happy that I stuck with it and have a good start on Swahili, and I think it will make my transition to Tanzania a lot easier. I also spent more time than I could have ever imagined on my packing list/preparations. Special thanks to my mom that let me take over a whole room of her house and two 6-foot long tables with all my packing stuff, and put up with my craziness during the whole process. Add in everything else you can imagine associated with moving to a developing country for over 2 years. So all in all, it didn’t turn out to be the stress-free last week I had envisioned, but I was still able to fit in plenty of time with family and friends, enjoying my favorite places and restaurants in Austin, etc. Thanks again to everyone that I got to see over the last few weeks and all of the support/kind wishes/goodbyes you’ve given me…I will really miss you all!

Check it out…my bags are all packed! I should have taken a 'before' picture, because then you'd be really impressed to see everything I managed to get into these 3 bags. Turns out I’m 2 pounds and 3 inches over my checked baggage allotment, but it should be fine.

So what’s next? Tomorrow I’ll be flying to Philadelphia. I will meet up with the other education volunteers headed to Tanzania (there should be around 40 of us) on Wednesday for what Peace Corps calls "staging." This is when I'll turn in some final paperwork, officially register as a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT), receive my special passport and Tanzanian visa, and go through an initial orientation. The following day we will all head to Tanzania together! Although I’m not especially excited for a few very long days of travelling, I'm really looking forward to meeting my fellow volunteers and finally arriving in Tanzania! I've also never been to Philadelphia, so I'm hoping to be able to see a few sights, and try a real Philly Cheesesteak.

And so you know where I am whenever you think of me, my itinerary:

Tuesday, September 21

10:30am - flight departs Austin

11:35am - flight arrives Dallas

1:05pm - flight departs Dallas

5:30pm (4:30 Austin time) - flight arrives Philadelphia

Wednesday, September 22

12:30 pm - Staging begins; turn in final paperwork, officially register as a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT)

2-7pm - Peace Corps Orientation (Who We Are, What's Expected of You, What You Expect, What's Next)

Thursday, September 23

9am - check out of hotel

9:30am - load bus headed to New York JFK

6:00pm (5pm Austin time) - flight departs New York

Friday, September 24

8:05am (12:05am Austin time) - flight arrives Zurich

9:30am - flight departs Zurich

??? layover in Nairobi

8:10pm (12:10pm Austin time) - FLIGHT ARRIVES DAR ES SALAAM!!!

My sociology professor showed our class this video, which I think is pretty funny. Enjoy!

Karibuni! (Welcome!). I've created this blog to help my friends, family, and anyone else interested follow my journey as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania, teaching secondary (high school) math and science from September 2010 to November 2012. You will find lots of info on the right sidebar, including links under "Frequently Asked Questions" where I attempted to answer some common questions about Tanzania and the Peace Corps experience. I'm always happy to answer questions, so let me know if there is ever anything else you'd like to hear about. In keeping with the Peace Corps mission's third goal, I hope this blog will help promote a better understanding of Tanzania and its people on the part of my friends and family back home.

I hope to be able to update you all at least once a month (and pictures, too!), although this will depend in large part on my proximity to a town with an internet cafe. Please note that I will not be sending out announcements as I update my blog. However, if you are interested in receiving an email notification when I update my blog, I've set up a subscription link through the website FeedmailPro. Simply enter your email address under "Receive email updates of this blog:" at the very bottom of the right sidebar; you will then receive a confirmation email from which you can activate your subscription (it's quick, easy, free, and only requires your email address). You can also add my blog to the 'Reading List' on your Google Blogger Dashboard by clicking on the "Follow" link on the bottom right sidebar, or subscribe to my blog using Google Reader or an equivalent RSS reader from the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of my posts. (Google Reader and Blogger Dashboard do not send you updates via email, they are just platforms for organizing and accessing blogs, articles, etc.)

On a related note, please please post comments! I don't want to feel like I'm writing all of this just for myself, and I would enjoy your feedback on my experiences. I also want to hear from you and keep up with your lives, so send me emails to kathrynbalexander(at)gmail(dotcom)! Or better yet, write me letters (see address under 'How do I mail you letters and/or packages?') and be my penpal! And speaking of letters, they take at least 2 weeks to arrive, so if you'd like to send me one now so that I have it soon after arrival, that would be much appreciated :)

Cheers and happy reading!Kathryn