So, I have been in Tanzania for about 10 days, and at our training site in Morogoro for just over a week. I'm staying with a small Tanzanian family, just a Mama and a 16 year-old dada (sister--who is actually my Mama's niece), as my Baba (father) works in Dar es Salaam. My days are extremely busy, and my Kiswahili is improving very rapidly.

The other day in class were writing sentences about our days, mine went something like: Kila siku msikiti inaamsha mimi saa kumi na moja kamili. Every morning the mosque (1 house down) wakes me up at 5 am. Getting up early hasn't been much of an issue because I'm normally exhausted at the end of the day and I go to bed around 9:00 or 9:30. We Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) are spread around secondary schools in the area, 4 of us at each school. My school is out in the boonies and has 5 completed classrooms, and 2 that are under construction (though I haven't seen any indication of work being done). The week after next I will begin teaching Physics at this school, as they only have 1 physics teacher. I will teach here for 3 or 4 weeks during training to get some practice in before I go off to wherever I will go.

The food has been very good. My mama, I think, is very happy to have a son again--her youngest child and only son is at University in Iringa, 6 hours to the south. I normally have chapati, which is sort of like a crepe crossed with an omelette, for breakfast. Lunch and dinner can be lots of things from a cinnamon rice pilaf to various stew-like concoctions sometimes with boiled bananas or plantains. I haven't found anything I don't like yet, and the tomatoes (nyanya) are especially good.

Ummm, what else? I feel like I've been here for months already. I'm making good friends, and my language teacher is amazing. I haven't been too homesick yet, as everything is still new and exciting. I'm vaccinated against more things than I ever thought I would be. The staff is wonderful and friendly, and the medical staff is especially funny. My time on the internet is running low, so I'm going to wrap up this entry. I'll try to post a picture or two next week.