Will you have my scabies?

Scabies
So, this is actually a bit of old news, but considering its been about 2 monthes since my last post, I guess it will be new to you guys. So since about the first week at site I had like little bug bites between my fingers and on my arm. THey reallyyyyyyyyy itched and especially at night. It kind of went away, then came back, then went away again. Didnt really think much about it, but then my friend had the same thing on his fingers and and i said, oh ive had that too........ so turns out it was scabies, which are apparently little bugs that get under your skin and lay eggs. So now, its the running joke that i spread scabies around our region. (lie, not my fault) Boiled all my clothes--really annoying---and got some lotion for them. Well, its been almost three monthes since that first outbreak,,,,and the scabies have decided that they are sticking around. It's actually not so bad, kind of like mosquito bites. I think i might be ablt to get some more medicine sometime soon.
CAt.
I have a cat. her name is matako. that means butt cheaks in kiswahili. i did not name her. i inherited her. So, little miss matako is a calico and is pretty small, shes also pretty prettyh. She was probably the most annoying thing at site for the first monthe. Attacking my feet, arms, anything that moved, keeping me up all nite, crying to come inside crying to go outside. i dont think she liked me very much-she missed her old mama, and most ppl can attest that i didnt really like her either. Then one day the fundi (school carpenter) cut her a cat door in my back door. This cat is awwesome now. SHe is so sweet and loves attention. unfortunately she has brought in a live in boyfriend, and with the cat door he cant stay out. THat may be the reason shes so happy now. who knows? im a little scared she pregnat, but we will see. THat will be fun. not. maybe.

garden
my garden is a bit of a laughing matter. i spent a lot of time digging. its just really small. but corn and beans and pumpkins are growing,,,

school

so school finally started and im pretty sure all of the students have arrived. its an all girls boarding school, fyi. so im teaching chem , bio , and math to form 1. chem to form 3. and physics to form 4. Hvent started teaching physics yet bc i just inherited the class from another teacher. a lil scared for that one, but i LOVED physics in high school, so hopefully it will be fine. So form 1 i actually havent started teaching any science yet. We ha ve 6 weeks of English orientation aka "baseline". about 1/5 of my students know a bit of english. some really didnt know any. All in all, I start teaching actual science in a week and its goonna be a lil scary. BUTTTTTTTTTTTT (one t) I loveeeeeee my students. OF course there are some annoying times in class when i have to call someone out for talking too much, or like that first week when i felt like all the stuff i pulled in high school was coming back to haunt me (passing notes, talking, playing jokes, "helping" other student s w/ homework., chaeatiing on quizes (although i dont think i ever did thata).

Other wise I really like being in the class room and trying to come up with fun activities. So one day i planned to have my students write me letteres. just about anything they wanted , i kind of wanted to see just how much english they could pull offf without a whole lot of structure. So i get to school on Valentines day, look at my lesson plan, and realize that V-day is the day i planned to have them write me letters.....Didnt have time to come up with something else, so i got over 50 Valentines day cards, with some great lines, I dont even know where they got them from. My neighbor is pretty funny teacher, and likes to give me a hard time. So of course he noticed that alll of my students were writing me valentines and got a kick out of the fact that i had to assign ppl to write me valentines. it was pretty funny. Thank goodness i go to an all girsls school. Otherwise that could have been bad. For the record, i did get other valentines, so ASANTE SANA to those who sent them.

SAturdays
When school first started, i was exhausted on saturday mornings. The end of my leisurely life style made me a lil tired. But a few weeks ago, I started getting a lil bored on my saturdays. I really wanted to hike up the plateau, but had no one to go with, because most of the people i hang out with are like, whiy would you want to do that? A lot of ppl have to hike it to transport things from other villages like for business, so i can see why they think its crazy that i just want to hike up it for fun. Well, i decided to see if any of my form one students might want to go with me. on friday i was like, "so tomorrrow im gonna climb the mountain, if anyone wants to come let me know". I figured i could talk a few students into going. Well, i was in for a shock. EVERYONE raised there hands and were really excited to go....so what do i do? i thougth. I wanted to pick five of my favorate students, but thats a pretty awful thing for a teacher to do i think. it might even be awful for me to have favorate studints, i dont know what the goldent rules of teaching are yet. , so i had everyone write there name and i picked five names out of the hat. So we all climbed the plateau and it was super fun and we drew maps of everything we could sseee. even got some pics so maybe i can get those up someoime in the next 6 monthes. Gonna go every sat from now on. computer time is out..... miss you gusy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love getting mail and hearing from you alllllllllllllllllllllllll

goins on

wow its been a while since ive seen internet--merry xmas and happy new year everybody!!! ive been at my site now for a lil less than a month and so far it is pretty safi... which means i like it. School "starts" in 2 weeks though ive been told itll probably be later on till all the girls actually arrive... so im not feeling too rushed to get movin on the lesson plans. So what the heck have i been up to for the past month??? Surprisingly, ive been keeping myself fairly busy. i had this little list, yeah i know im such a nerd, of things i was really exciyted to do when i first got here. i thought id get lonely, so i wanted to have a plan of things to do. not really so. i have lots of visitors all the time----oh but back to the list... so i wanted to make bread, make a garden and a compost pile, make wine ( im a science teacher right? this is a science experiment), and try to learn a bit of the local language. there are 3 besides kiswahili. so hows that list goin? Tried it all. i made some friends the first week- a group of 13-14 yr old boys got really excited when they saw me start digging a compost pile behind my house and started to help me... so got the compost going, layer of dirt, grass, leaves/sticks/ more dirt/old mango peals... that lasted about a week till i realized the chickens would come and eat the food and the ants too. There are thousands of antssssssssssssssss. all over. they bite. i have to do a little jig sometimes when im unlocking my front door so they dont crawl on me and bite me. im sure its pretty comical.

im apologizing now. this post is gonna be so disorganized and more scattered than usual.

made bread.

made mango wine. waiting on it to age it for the next 3 weeks.

trying to learn some of one of the other languages. the older people get a kick out of it and its fun to learn.

first day i was here a goat had fallen down into the choo. I was walking around with Steph, the girl who has been the volunteer here for the past two years before she left, and we heard some baaing coming from a choo (outhouse). Sure enough, we walk in and its coming from underground. not much we could do but feel bad for the goat. thats a smelly place to spend ur last few da ys.

Tried to get curtains made for my room. Ended up with a skirt adn shirt. ----that is nottttt due to fumbling w/ kiswahili. i didint know the material i wanted to turn into curtains was nice enough to wear---oops. actually its a cute outfit.

tons has been going on in the past few weeks...lots of hangig out w/ neighbors...lots of playing lasti cardi,, Tanzanian version of "uno"....ive learned like 10 different versions of the game mostly id learn new rules that would "prevent" me from winning when i thought i would. but most of you know how terrrible i am at playing card games...

lots of walking around in the village.. by the end of the da y im wiped out. in bed by 9. its glorious. i can sleep in this country... well happy new year everyoneeeeee next time ill try to prep something beforehand becasuse im having a hard time decidiong what to say here!!!
miss you alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

bev

pics

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18851732@N06/

Site announcements

Hey everybody! Happy Thanksgiving!!! Yes, its been a while since I last wrote here. For no really good reason. A lot has happened and training is basically over. Last week they sent us to visit other peace corps volunteers who have already been here a year or two. We went to Tanga region which is just by the border of kenya. We woke up for the sunrise one morning and from the top of one hill we could see the plains of Kenya. The clouds hid the sunset, and the fact that the sun was actually rising behind another mountain made it hard to see. Other than that there was lots of hanging out and just seeing how a volunteer really lives.. Like do they eat chipsi mayai (french fries fried with egg) every other day like I have been doing for the past month or do they cook other dinners when they live alone. And actually the guy I visited did eat lotssssssssss of chipsi mayai, but I can tell you that I will be trying very hard NOT to eat anymore chipsi mayai. Dont get me wrong. ITs delicious, but besides the fact that my mama has told me that everyone in the village has told her that im getting nice and fat (for emphasis she holds her arms out and puffs her cheeks out) Id like to be able to make it up Kilimanjaro or Mt. Meru if I get the chance and not be the fat kid lagging behind. It was also FREEZING ok, no ice and maybe it was like 50 degrees in Tanga among mountains that reminded me of italy.

The trip was fun and rather uneventful besides riding the daladala (an overstuffed bus) around the sides of the mountains, on which at one stop I had to get out and puke. It was a beautiful ride though as long as i didnt think about falling over the side of the road and down many feet. I think the mountains were like 5000ish feet. Anyway after that we went to Dar Es Salaam the big city in TZ and had Thanksgiving dinner at our Country Directors house. The apple pie was delish. So after a pretty Americanized week and a few sort of boring saftety and security/finance/i dont even remember the other types of meetings they finally told us what we've all been waiting for....

WHERE WELLL be living for the next two years!!!! My site sounds great. We actually got to interview earlier during training and say what our ideal site would be. I had no idea and all i really said was that i like to run and that I like to eat fruit and play sports and then I talked to my interviewere about her kids for a while and some other random things.........
so where did that get me?/

Mtwara region. My village and school which im not allowed to mention on this blog and are down by the border of Mozambique. I am so excited!!! Ill be teaching at an all girls boarding school with about 500 students. The village that my school is closest to has like 800 ppl and is 55 km from the nearest bigger town. There is no public transportation but the school has a car and goes in like once a week. Its in a hilly area with lots of running and biking trails etc. The girl who was at the site before said that she used to run alot so that is goodthat ill be able to run. I tink i even have electricity and running water so that will make chargoing my cell phone a lil easier, besides that i dont know much but i think it soundg great---- We will leave next Thursday the 28th of november i think and take a nice long bus ride... Until then, keep me updated i love hearing from everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!

teachingggggg

So teaching is fun. Im teaching at a school for three weeks to get some practice before heading to my site later on. My students are really well behaved, adn they think its a riot when i say anything in kiswahili or do anything that is non lecture oriented. Im trying to learn their names, but whenever i call on them in class, i try to say their name, which most of them have been whispering, and that brings on more laughter, which is fine with me, becasue it makes me feel so much more comfortable and its not that hard to get their attention back, all i have to do is say, "attention" well maybe a couple times, but thats pretty good... (ive only taught each student once, because each class has biology once a week--that also makes the lesson plans way easier becasue i only have to do one for the week...at least for now). THe other teachers at the school are also pretty cool, and there is a group of them who are in their twenties. Last week I also observed a major battle of the sexes because we had a small group of girls and a small group of guys separately write down their daily schedule and boy were the girls getting after the guys for not making writing down that they made their beds in the morning, and then the girls were saying that they did so many more chores than the guys do, which according to the guys, isnt always true...and THEN of course we had to talk about how the girls had better handwriting on their poster, but they didnt have pictures so the guys poster is better.

Then there is kiswahili time.

It is so confusing for me.

6 oclock am, is 12 am in kiswahilie time. The clock starts when the sun comes up (6am). But you say 12 am. Sorry if this is confusing. Im still confused. So every different time you have to add 6 hours to, so that you get kiswahili time. Then you have to say it in kiswahilie. My mama was really trying to teach it to me, and would ask me what time it was every 10 minutes.

More on mama teachign me. She is a funny lady. when I was learning how to count in kiswahili, it turned into teaching me how to draw numbers, like one looks like a stick. 2 looks like a swan. i forget what 3 is supposed to look like, but i had to remind her that i did know how to write numbers... sometimes the line is blurred. but im starting to think that i should maybe say i dont know how to do things more. Such as ironing. I know how to iron. But she will be so impressed if she thinks i just learn really quickly. And cutting onions...

And then there is still the fact that I have to wash my feet. Im starting to wonder if mama thinks my tanlines from my chacos are dirt. She checks my feet after I bathe. There is a lot of laughing that goes on there.. Speaking of chacos,, im getting a free pair. They broke a little and so did my friends so we emailed chaco... yee haaaaaaaaa. oh , and i passed my kiswahili mid terms. til next time....kwa heriniiiiiiiii

Gold toenails are INNNNn

Hey guyssssss,
I hope everything at home is going well and id love to hear about it... Things here are still going well, the usual highs and lows of being in a new place and just living everyday in general, but throughout the week i kind of think about random things i want to say here. So here we go.

1. THankssss to everyone for the birthday wishes---It was a great surprise to read them today-yes a week later- and we did get to celebrate tanzanian style, dont worry, nothing too crazy, just a lil gathering and some dancing, and maybe i learned that when dancing with little kids spinning in cirlcles NEVER gets old...

2. Gold toe nails are innnnnnnnn HAaaaaaaaaa. So to catch everyone up, Ha and I had gold and bronze tonails before the final four, which we got a few comments about, but here, gold toenails are the way to go.

3. Im really excited about teaching!!! Yes, even about the KINgdom Monera, we have been practicing all week in our little kiswahilie groups , which consists of five recent college grads and our awesome teacher. Anyway, we tried to simulate a real classroom, which ends up being ridiculously hilarious because we are using "special-or verrrrrrrry slow" English ( we will be teaching in English, and yes, the kids im gonna be teaching have only officially been learning english for a few months. Try sounding excited and interesting whhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeen youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrreeeeeee taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllkkkkkkkkkinnnnnnnnnnhg llllllllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikkkkkkkkeeeeeee thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss. Ok, get the picture a little bit, it should be interesting and hopefully easier when im not teaching smart mouthed american friendssss.. ANother thing about teaching, is that here, we rub the board.


yeah, im definately NEVER going to be mature enough to say it with a straight face, especially if there are any americans around. (fyi, rub the board... means erase the board). More on that, but im sure you can imagine the other one liners about this subject, but im trying to keep this PG ( okay Mom)


3. ALLLLLL the dogs remind me of TURK (my friend sloans or maybe its steves dog from FandM) Anyway, i just want to go up and pet them and be like "heeeeewwwwwoooooo puppy", but I cant. Not only is it culturally inappropriate, but they probably have mange/rabies. Which reminds me, i got my last rabies shot yesterday and my arm is killlllling me. (yes, im sure you all feel so bad)

4. I forgot to mention that last week when I was talking about how the primary school students sang the "in the jungle song" the song that we sing back goes a little like this...to the tune of frerajacka(i have NO idea how to spell that)

avocado avodcado
cucumber cucumber
watermelon watermelon
fruit fruit
......

So im sure the primary school students get a kick out of the "american teachers" level of song.

5.
Lows-- Peace Corps has to tell us EVERYTHING about anything, which is good, but it just gets a little boring, like I think Ive sat through a million lectures in my life about drinking and why its bad.

Highs--- the dance party i had w/ my lil bro and sisters the other day
Thats that! Miss everyoneeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

the way i liveeeeeee

So its been about two weeks since the last update...or almost 3. its already going so quickly--i apologize for no capital letters, but i cant quite figure it out on this keyboard--. Soooo much has gone on since then and ive already learned soo much kiswahili!!! So the place im living is absolutely beautiful...green mountains, which were not allowed to hike until training is over...green everywhere and very friendly people --or at least i dont know enough kiswahili to know if theyre not being friendly...We have been broken down to groups of 5 for kiswahilie lessons/teaching lessons--everyday 730-5ish. We are all staying w/homestay families....\okay so top ten list--not in any order---
1. First of all, my homestay family is awesome! i have a mama, a baba -dad-, 4 sisters and one brother. The first day i walked in, had some chai, attempted to chat a bit, was shown my room, shown my bed, shown the basket for dirty laundry and told with a big smile that the shirt i was wearing belonged in that laundry pile....and that i needed to take a bath. now im telling you all, that i knew that i needed to look my best the first day. i washed my feet and my face and wore a nice clean shirt, and i dont know what happened, but i guess by the time i got to the nyumba -house- i needed a bath.
2. Every day, for the past 5 days, ive been "running" with my homestay sis and bro- ages 8 and 10. \its really fun though and ive even gotten a little closer to the mountains that were not allowed to climb--ahh the mountains are soooo gorgeous!!!!!!
3. My mama, who has tons of energy even though shes up before 5 and in bed at 12 loves to talk and show me everything--and she also loves to tell my 8 and 10 yr old bro and sis 'if you dont finish supper, bevy will leave; or if you get to school on time --bebby or bevy and the occasional BEVERLYN-which i dont mind at all--will run with you- i hope they dont stop eating/getting to school on time on purpose--no they are so fun..\

4. Everything is kinda tiring---but it kinda feels just like the normal end of the school day at the end of school, so by the time i have a little drink with dinner, im ready to sleep by like 930. That part is awesome. i love being able to sleep when my head hits the pillow.

5. Yesterday i threw our frisbee over the bushes we usually play near and it fell into the garbage pit of the primary school. The pit was like 6 ft deep---no garbage was actually in it... just some bushes, but the frisbeee was like 4 feet down. so im trying to reach it and making no progress, and my friend tries to help me by holding my hand as i lean down into the ditch to fetch the frisbee--at this point were laughing so hard that i am weak and can barely hold on, and finally snag the frisbee. and barely make it up to the top of the ditch w/out pulling my friemd in with me. \i dont think any of the primary school kids saw---

6. The primary school is right outside our class room. They sing some form of where the lion sleeps tongith..... and everytime the hit the 000000000000wweeeeeeeeeeeeeee it is hilarious and awesomeeeee

7. i am teaching a class next week on the kingdom monera. i cant wait. i mean isnt classification soooo excitin? but hopefully the being in the class room part will be good...

8. i dont think im gonna make it to 10 bc i have like 1 minute left on the computer--- send me your snail mail addresses.......

miss everyoneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee