Big Game!

About half an hour ago I got back from a trip to Mikumi National Park. The Peace Corps was kind enough to give us Saturday off, creating our first completely free weekend, so we organized a trip to the nearby park. It was AWESOME!!! We saw lots of impala and monkeys, some baboons, warthogs, zebra, water buffalo, wildebeast, plenty of elephants (with babies), giraffes, a couple crocodiles, and hippos. The hippo's didn't seem terribly hungry, though.

We also saw lots of cool birds. I think my favorites were the zebra or the giraffes. We took one drive around the park last night near sunset, and then one more this morning just after sunrise. Unfortunately, we didn't see any lions or cheetahs, but what we did see was really cool. It was also really nice to get out and have a break from things.

Recently, I've been playing my violin a bit. It's really nice whenever I do. My family enjoyed seeing me play, but they are not sure how to react. For them it seems to be a novelty. Awareness of music beyond hymns and what is on the radio is nonexistent. In the past week I've played for some teachers who live near me, and they liked it quite a bit, and I took it over to Jacob's house (another trainee... Hi Jacob's mom!)and played for his family. His baba liked it a whole lot and sang some hymns with me. I also brought the violin along on the trip which was a lot of fun for all of us.

I haven't reread my last post, but I think I made it a week ago when Idii was still undecided. The holiday turned out to be on Tuesday and Wednesday, so I got to teach my two double periods on Monday. The students now are taking a school-wide test, so I don't get to teach for my scheduled final week of teaching training, so I reviewed what we had gone over the previous week and gave them some practice problems. Class went very well, with many of the students successfully solving the problems, and I think understanding what they were doing. I had an observer in one of my classes, and he seemed impressed by how many students were making real attempts at the problems and were working together and such. It was a very nice final note to this small teaching segment.

I'm gonna cut this post off here. Feel free to leave comments if there's more stuff you want to hear about or if you have questions you'd like me to answer. Oh, and a note about pictures: I haven't yet been able to successfully upload any, sometimes the Internet is slow, sometimes the computer I get to use has an old OS that can't recognize my camera, and once the USB port was just broken. So, I will eventually get some pictures up, but as for now it's too much of a hassle and I don't have any fantastic pictures yet. I'll get there eventually...

Salama,
Gregor