The Big Day!

Today we found out what sites we will be living in for the next two years while doing our service in Tanzania! It was a very excited buildup, with the people shouting "come on down so and so to this village!"...though towards the end the people who had not yet gotten their sites were a little more than stressed out, we were just plain giddy to know where we were going!

I found out that I will be going to the Deep South (the DEEEEEEP South) and that I have a very large, new house (with no electricity) right next to the school where I will be teaching Biology. I am one of the only volunteers (if not the only one) in the Health Group that got placed in an education site, mostly because I expressed that I would be able to teach, and this was what the community was really searching for. I will also be the first volunteer that this community has ever had, which will probably make for some pretty good pampering! I'm glad to be a teacher, because I will have a schedule and a lot of intergration into the community right away, and I'll get to know a lot of the teachers and community members!

I will not have an address for any of you until I am able to actually move in and see my banking town (which will probably be about 2 weeks), but promise that once I have it I will be posting it here for all to see - I would still love to get mail from everyone! :)

We have been spending the past several days before finding out our sites in Dar es Salaam - which is sort of like the capital of Tanzaia - EVRYTHING is here. My mission once we arrived (from our very small villages) was to see a movie and eat ice cream. There was something very surreal about sitting in an Air-conditioned theatre drinking a slushie (after eating Ice Cream) and watching Batman (which I highly recommend) in AFRICA! It was crazy, but I was very glad to get to go after such a long time in my small village!

We move from our villages in 2 weeks, and because of the distance from everyone in the Deep South, we will probably be the last to move. The Deep South appears to be the farthest from all of the other volunteers - but is VERY close to the beach, I can't wait to get rid of my already awful farmers tan!

If I haven't written you an e-mail - please realize that my time on computers for the past 10 weeks is very limited, I will be writing all of you very soon when I have a little more free time at my site - I really do miss everyone!

Peace

The Disclaimer

Just so everyone is aware...with the exception of the blogs typed expertly by my father, all of my blogs are written in a window of 5 minutes, without a spell check. Its not that I'm forgetting the english language (though there are a lot of words that I forget and replace with Kiswahili) its just that I am pressed for time and don't have the keyboarding expertice that I used to.

I will be sending the new post information as well as a ton of pictures soon...stay tuned, and write to me after you get the new address...I miss all of you, but I'm still lovin Africa!

Baadaye!

Tanzania Tidbits

So, I've been living my blog vicariously through my father for the past 7 weeks, as I have had no access to internet in my village (in fact, my village doesn't even sell toilet paper), so a special thanks to him.

For this past week, I have been living in a smaller village (and also harder to get to village) of L'angata, where I have been shadowing an education volunteer for the past week in the hopes to learn of the wisdoms of peace corps from his wise experience. Unfortunatly for myself and the other two volunteers who shadowed with my, Eathan had a TV and DVD player, so whereas I really did enjoy visiting his village, I also enjoyed watching almost an entire season of Heros, followed by a lot of Brad Pitt movies.

Actually, we did learn a little in Eathans village. This village is in the Kilomanjaro region of Tanzania, whereas this is usually a lush environment with lots of vegtables and a cool mountain breeze, God seems to have forgotton about L'angata, and thus all that is here is dirt, thorns, and TONS of donkeys. I really can't impress just how many donkeys there are in L'angata, and though they cannot be used for anything but hauling heavy objects (apparently its hard to farm in bedrock in an area where rain doesn't exist) they are well respected members of the community, as any given day you see a donkey from your back yard to inside the school buildings.

This week I will finally find out where my site is, my site being the place where I will live for the next two years. Once I get this information, an new address and of course stories describing where I will live will quickly follow, as well as the TONS of pictures that I have taken while in Tanzania but have been unable to share. I would like to point out, that I have recieved 7 letters and have re-read them each at least 10 times. For those of you who have written, spot on - I will re-write you as soon as I find a post office where the workers decided to show up for the day. For those of you who haven't written...seriously? Write me letters! I like being entertained by American news...and I really do miss being an intricate part of everyones life!

I need to post this before the internet crashes again...for more, see new post 2...