So I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted last. I actually had a blog post all written up on my computer and was just waiting until I went into town to post it. However, I just received a message from an old friend who is doing similar work as me and making some [...]
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So I think where I left off in my last post of returning home from my holiday break. In actuality I didn’t have much time to rest in my village before I had to jump back on a bus and head to Dar es Salaam for our Mid-Service Training. This particular conference was a lot [...]
So as I was browsing Facebook the other day, I found a blog post by another Peace Corps volunteer that has been floating around and being posted by various Peace Corps volunteers. The post does a magnificent job of capturing the essence of being a Peace Corps volunteers and the things that we feel and [...]
So I originally thought that I could write down everything that I did over my holiday break in 3 parts but as it turns out, that didn’t even take me until Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or New Year’s. After returning to my village for a week after the holiday party and seeing all of my [...]
The third leg of my holiday journey consisted mostly of time spent in town with other volunteers, ex-volunteers who now live in town working for various NGO’s, and expats. It also consisted of a Christmas tree hunt/Christmas party preparations, my discovery of the underground weightlifting gym, and me surviving my second bus accident by jumping [...]
I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time and finally did it. On the right hand side of my blog I’ve added a section called “Blogroll”. This is essentially a collection of my other friend’s blogs here in country. A good number of volunteers keep blogs and I’ve listed the ones I know [...]
So the last time I posted I ended at the conclusion of Thanksgiving. After having a wonderful Thanksgiving, I packed my bags and headed back to my village on Sunday afternoon to pick up the 5 boys and my counterpart for the boys conference, Joseph. After more than a week on the road, I only [...]
Wow, since I finished school on the 18th of November things have been extremely crazy. Since the 18th I’ve watched 2 Michigan Football games live, both wins, with one of the wins coming against Ohio (fist pump), been to 4 different cities, slaughtered and ate a real live turkey at a mountain resort, conducted a [...]
So yea, wow. As of today it has been exactly 1 year and 28 days. I swear I’m not counting. I know this because I just recently checked my passport to see when I entered the country and it was September 24th, 2010. The actual day of my 1 year anniversary was spent on Zanizbar with [...]
Just a few weeks ago, I had my first visitors from America come to stay with me for a little over a week. My friends Chris and Amber made the long haul over here to Africa to take in the sights and the sounds. We were able to coordinate our trip so that they came [...]
So I titled this post the good the bad and the ugly for a reason. I’ll start out with the more somber news, the ugly, continue to the bad, and then finish with the good. I think that will flow much better than ending with the ugly news. This past Sunday started out like any [...]
So it’s been a while since I’ve last posted anything but I’ve been extremely busy. That’s my excuse anyway. The other reason I haven’t been able to post is because recently electricity at my school has been hard to come by. The generator that usually runs from 7-10pm is broken. At first I was really bummed [...]
So I’ve been back in Tanzania now for a little over a month since the 50th Anniversary Celebration in Dar and my return from my trip back to America. There’s not much else to say about the 50th Anniversary other than it was amazing. Aside from the actual event, it was also great to be [...]
June 6-10 me and my fellow volunteers held the first (hope to be annual) girls conference in our region. This was the culmination of months of planning and hard work. However, up until as soon as a month before the conference we didn’t know if we were going to be receiving the money we requested [...]
So a few weeks ago, the teachers who were selected to attend the zone level competition returned. I was shocked, just as they were, to find out the competition only lasted one day. My good friend Charles told me that Ismani, our school, did extremely well. He said that we won the zone level soccer competition [...]
I know that my last post I promised to tell about the apparent miracle worker who has a cure for every known disease, but this last week was so action packed that I’m going to elaborate on the miracle worker in the next post, I promise. So for those of you who don’t know, I [...]
So as I sit here in the staff room basking in the glorious glow of electricity, it’s crazy to think that I have only 1 more week of actual teaching left in the first semester. The past month and a half since IST has flown by way faster than I realized. I’m also now less [...]
So as I promised, I’d have a post detailing my experience at IST, or In-Service Training. This is a time, 4 months after a volunteer has been at site that all volunteers for a particular class come back together to receive additional training. For me, the timing of the training was ideal since I would [...]
So for the past week or so Charles, my neighbor and fellow teacher who is in charge of all sports (soccer, volleyball, and basketball) at our school had been talking about getting a teachers vs. students soccer game together now that we have a “proper” field to play on. I told him that heck yea, [...]
So two new teachers have recently just been assigned to my school. Around this time every year the Tanzanian Ministry of Education assigns teachers to schools that request them. Now I’m not sure of the details but I believe newer teachers are usually required to start at the village schools, which are typically considered less [...]
So since it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve posted last, this post may or may not be longer than some of my other posts. I’ve thought about trying to cut down on the length of my posts but lately I’ve been writing these entries when the mood to write strikes me. Because of this, [...]
So I’ve finally discovered a new feature on Facebook that allows me to send anyone the link to a photo album so from now on when I create a photo album on Facebook I’ll post the link here so everyone can see. Below are some of the links from albums I’ve previously posted in case [...]
So about 3 weeks ago while I was returning to my house after a trip to town, my neighbor Charles came over to greet me. After exchanging some greetings, he recommended that I cut down all the flowers and bushes that were growing around my house. I looked at him and asked him why the heck [...]
So it has been exactly 4 weeks since I’ve started teaching. After the first week, which was to put it politely, pretty trying, is behind me think I’m finally starting to hit my stride teaching and finally getting into a regular routine. I never really thought of myself as one of those people who needed [...]
So it’s Sunday and I’ve completed my first official week of school. It wasn’t actually a full week as Wednesday was a national holiday and taking into account that the first two days there wasn’t any teaching going on, I only actually taught for two days. But I’ll try to take you through the first [...]
So I just want to let everyone know that my mailing address has changed; this is the last time. Instead of the mail now going to the Peace Corps main office it will now come directly to my banking city, Iringa. If you’ve already sent something to the old address, no worries. Just let me [...]
So as I write this, the date is January 3rd 2011. Here they say ‘Habari za mwaka mpya!’ (What is the news of the new year?) I’ve been at site a little over a month now but I’m still learning more about my village every day. I had a good Christmas, as good as it could be without [...]
So today is December 18th and since moving from Morogoro where training was held on Thanksgiving until now, communication with family and friends has been, to be honest, very difficult. The effort I’ve been putting in to try and just do something as seemingly simple as check my email has been crazy. I’ve been on several painful 3 [...]
So yes, it’s Sunday and I just returned from church, which lasted 4 whole hours. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s definitely a new church going record for me. Normally church only lasts about an hour, so I thinking this means I’m all square with the G-man for the rest of the month? (Just [...]
So I’ve finally reached the site where I’ll be working and living for the foreseeable future. Thanksgiving morning I woke up at 4:45am to help some of the other volunteers load up their ridiculously large bags of luggage. I also have 3 bags that weigh 100, 60, and 30 pounds respectively, but considering that is [...]
So I just recently returned from Mbeya where three other volunteers in my training group and I went to shadow a current volunteer. All the trainees were paired with a couple other people and assigned “shadow sites” so that we could all see how a real Peace Corps volunteer lives. This is the first time [...]
So it’s been quite a hectic, exciting, and stressful past 4 days. Wednesday was the final day of our internship teaching. I went into the class with what I thought was a great lesson plan to review all the material I’ve taught over the last 3 weeks. However, upon arriving to class, I discovered that several of [...]
So the following post is HUGE. It’s basically a collection of everything I wrote by hand when I couldn’t use my computer combined with stuff from recently. Like I’ve been mentioning though, I will be getting internet in the near future, so communication in general will be better. It will be much easier to Skype and [...]
So I finally have my mailing address! The address is actually the Peace Corps Office in Dar es Salaam. Once they get my mail/package, they will deliver it to me. If you do plan to send me mail, just shoot me a text message first to make sure I’m looking out for the package. Obviously [...]
So as you’ve noticed, I haven’t been able to post as much as I’ve wanted, but I’ve been keeping up with the good ole fashion pen and paper. I’m just going to cut and paste the entries that I was able to copy to my laptop then post them here. I apologize for any typo’s, [...]
So I don’t have much time today, but it’s really difficult to upload pictures right now. I’m working on getting a portable modem so that I can use my personal computer to do all this, but for the time being I’ll upload a couple pictures just so I can prove I actually made it to [...]
one = moja, two = mbili, three = tatu, four = nne, five = tano, six = sita, seven = saba, eight = nane, nine = tisa, and ten = kumi So while in Dar, all the trainees have taken to trying to start learning the language before we actually begin formal classes. Basically we [...]
So today was the first day of real training. It started with a segment called “Welcome to Tanzania” by our country director, and I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty inspiring. Apparently, President Kikwete (of Tanzania) was the first African president to visit with Obama in the White House. Many things were discussed, but the first [...]
Sorry for the delay in posting, but I haven’t had much access to a computer! I’ve been keeping my blog by hand and hopefully in the next week or two I will be able to upload my entries, but for now YOU CAN CALL ME! I got my Tanzanian phone. The number is 011-255-68-697-7473. I [...]
Note: Since I can’t access a computer for all of my posts that I want to, I’m going to back date some of them and post them when I can. After 29 straight hours of travel, we finally arrived in Dar. The total flight time was about 17 hours, and everyone is super tired. We [...]
Okay, so normally I don’t think I’ll be posting this often, but I’m going to take advantage of the reliable internet/electricity here at my girlfriends’ apartment and make one last post about what the next 48 hours will look like. I don’t yet know how often (a couple times a week?, once a week?, a couple [...]
So I’ve been telling just about everyone that knows I’m going to Tanzania that I’ll have a blog, so I kinda feel obligated to create one. This will definitely be a work-in-progress. This is my first time using a blog or writing a journal of any kind, but I figured that doing something as unique as going into [...]
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