Kituo Cha Kazi

-work sites
Site announcements were yesterday! There was a lot of energy and enthusiasm as we were about to learn what we have all been wondering about for the past 8 months. First off that morning we had to take our final Swahili written test. I must say that I contemplated whether I could still pass without writing the final essay, as we were too excited about site announcements to sit still for long (I ended up writing a ridiculous story about how my language trainer was going to have to come to site with me since I hardly know Swahili, and of course about how we are going to play “Baseball”). After this the energy built up as there was a drum circle playing leading up to the announcement time. As the time arrived and the staff filled us in on the detail of how the unveiling works, Hannah (and everyone else, but mainly Hannah) went nuts when we found out that we would get candy bars! Apparently they were way more exciting than where we were going to be spending the next two years. The unveiling was exciting but many stressful as it was done in almost a game show format with people coming up one at a time revealing where they are going. I might have proposed to a friend who is going to be right next to Mt Kilimanjaro, so that I could move to her site (she even paid a dowry of her Mars candy bar!). It turns out that I am going to be about 100km east of the capital city of Dodoma in the Kongwa district (if you want more details on where I'm going to be send me an email). I’m getting the feeling that it is fairly rural  I will have running water but no electricity and it describes “a village neighborhood some 11km from site.” (a google search for the school returned no results and the village neighborhood returned a one line wikipedia article in Swahili saying the population).There are about 4 volunteers who are within about 2 hours from me. Im hoping to get a bike and be able to go visit them on the weekends. One of the really nice things is that I am fairly centrally located so Ill be able to go visit everyone else! I am excited as I get to go visit the site this coming week and am sure Ill have a full report when I return.
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Our last day at our internship school was very hectic. I ended up not teaching what was supposed to be my final period because school elections were going on. Welcome to the Tanzanian school system! I wasn't really that upset as I was supposed to teach significant figures. After saying bye to the teachers and receiving traditional Tanzanian wraps, we went out to say bye to the students. They smiled and laughed as they saw us come out in our wraps. We received a very warm reception from the students, and it was amazing how crazy they went we we had our cameras. Don't worry we did make sure to get some stereotypical pictures of us surrounded by Tanzanian children.

We then got to go to a friends house who has baby ducks! They were adorable. Mama duck didn't seem to be too much of a fan of us picking them up but luckily seemed too afraid to actually do anything about it.

Also our CBT (training group) got awesome matching Tanzanian shirts and skirts. Our trainer was ecstatic when we surprised him with it (we snuck to his house last week and got a shirt from his wife).

I cant wait to go check out my site and to hear about everyone else's!