Shadow and Site Annoucements

Thanks for the bday wishes! I got them. :)

I spent the last week shadowing a fellow PCV in the Pare Mtns and then going to Dar for Site Annoucements. The Pare Mtns site is absolutely beautiful and the work she does is awesome. Her students are real smart as they are Form 5 and 6ers. I can definitely see the difference between them and the Form 1-4er's we taught in Morogoro. Her secondary project that week was to get the students HIV tested as HIV/AIDS is a problem in TZ- they call it UKIMWI over here. Later we met up with some other PCTs and PCVs to go hiking near a waterfall and to see another PCV's site. Then we headed out to Moshi to eat some Italian food, go dancing, and to catch the bus the next day to Dar. We stayed at Backpacker's Hostel in Moshi which was pretty clean and had real showers that were hot! :) My first hot shower in TZ, boy did it feel good.

For Site Annoucements: We had dinner in Dar and celebrated two bdays. Then the next day we had site annoucements. I am going to Mbeya to teach computers at a higher institution of learning (like a college). In case you didn't know Mbeya is in the Southern Highlands area of TZ so that means mountains! I am excited! And apparently there is lots of fruits and veggies there. Yummy. But it is similar to Seattle weather right now: rainy. Half the year is a very cold, dry season and half of it is rainy and less cold but overall it's much cooler than most of TZ. It can get to zero Celsius there! I would say about half our training group will be living in Southern TZ. After site annoucements we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at one of the staff member's house in Dar. It was absolutely beautiful house..I felt like I was in the US again.

On another tangent or two:

It is funny to finally meet people's whose blogs I have read before coming out here. It is interesting to finally meet the people behind the writing, some are different in personality than I expected and some are similar. It makes me wonder will the reverse happen when new trainees come next year?

Learning Swahili I find that a few things may carry over when I come back to the States like pole instead of sorry. Bei when someone calls my name. Haya when I want to say ok or when I want to end the conversation.

And here are some pics from shadow/site annoucement week:

Shadow Week Pictures