Nilishinda!

-I won!

We started our small group lessons last Friday at our internship schools. The morning that we arrived the schools headmaster took the five of us out in front of the entire student body and had us introduce ourselves. The students clapped and cheered as if we had put on an amazing show as we told them our names and what subjects we taught in semi-flawless Swahili. After our morning language lessons our teacher, Scissors, (his name is Makasi, which is quite similar to the Swahili word for scissors, mkasi) encouraged us to walk down the street, and talk to people at the local store. We set off down the street knowing little more than how to say our names, where we were from, and what we were teaching. We found a group of people and began to converse with them. After we had exhausted our topics of conversation, which happens surprisingly quickly when you only know how to say 3 sentences in Swahili, they challenged me to a game of pool. I agreed thinking that it would at least make a fun story as I wasn’t really sure what I was getting myself into. They asked me for 200 shillings, and thinking that it was for a bet tried to tell them that I didn’t have any money. I am not sure that it got through though, so we started playing without me knowing what was riding on the game. I figured that worst case scenario the 200 shillings are only worth around 12 cents (so congratulations if you won the math challenges! You won about half a cent in fake internet money!) It turned out the guy that I was playing was quite good, but luckily as far as I could tell the rules were the same as our 8 Ball game. At one point in the game he was down to only 1 of his balls left while I had 6 of mine left. He then struggled (or decided to take it easy on me) and I got down to 1 ball left while he was on the 8 ball. Then he hit the 8 ball into the wrong pocket! I won on a technicality but a win is a win! I’ll can now add “won first Tazanian/African/Southern Hemisphere/Eastern Hemisphere game of pool” to my list of first! Nilishinda!

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Alright so I finally managed to gain internet access! As you can see Ive had a couple of these piling up but just haven’t been able to post them. Training has been going well. We’ve just reached the one week mark with our host families. I’m making progress with my language but can still hardly use it. Almost every time I try to say something my host family gives me questioning looks as they try to decipher what I’m trying to say. Lets be honest, most of the time Im not even sure what Im trying to say, so we generally end up just not worrying about it and move on. Also Scissors started calling me Jackie on his own as well, so there is no use in trying to fight it at this point.

We had yesterday off to spend time with our families. So naturally I went to church with a Emily and her family. Its not my fault that my family wanted to go to church at 6am! The two of us went with all the little kids in her family. The youngest started crying as soon as we sat down; the same kid that started crying the day before when Amy asked him what his name was. I was confused throughout the service as they were speaking Swahili. Luckily Catholics are not the most creative people when it comes to their services so Emily was able to fill me in on what they were doing even though she also couldn’t understand them. After church I got a wonderful lesson in how to hand wash my clothes. I even managed to not rub my hands raw like many of my friends. That evening we went to a local music venue and got to listen and dance to the music that had been keeping me awake until 2am each of the past couple of nights.

Tomorrow we will be giving our first microteaching sessions as I am set to amaze my counterparts with how to solve for the perimeter of a rectangle!

Update on the ducks: There are 4 of them, and most of the family doesn’t like eating duck. The one member who did is gone and won’t be back until September. I told my family that I like ducks that are alive. I am hoping to soon be able to ask them if I can name them, but so far all attempts have just ended in them telling me that the ducks don’t have names.

Finally a couple of comments on my packing list:

-The Arsenal soccer jersey has been quite useful as everyone here loves soccer and Arsenal seem to be one of the most popular teams

-Thanks mom but the Peace Corps gave us med kits that have every type of over the counter meds around, including my favorite: “Non-aspirin”

-The headlamp has been perhaps the most useful item as the bathroom here is missing the light

-I slowly had trouble finding things that I thought I had packed such as toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and Nalgene. Guess where the dental products were. Now guess where the Nalgene is.