Happy (almost) Turkey Day! I'll be spending mine proctoring and grading. I'll proctor the math final from 8-11, and after that I'll be trying to force myself to keep on truckin'... So, as you may have guessed, it's finals week! So from Mon-Fri the Form 1 and 3 students (Form 2 and 4 took the national exams earlier this month and last month, so they've already left) have an exam 8-11 and another 11.30-2.30. I'm only proctoring 4, so I have a lot of free time. It's nice to have a break from teaching, and I'm using the time to finish all the paperwork it's possible to do without grades, work on PC paperwork, prepare for next year, sleep, eat, read and cook :) it's nice. I plan to finish grading in 2 days, so that I can go visit Brian and celebrate our 1 year anniveresary together! :) woohoo!!!
3 new education PCVs are coming into the area and one of my duties as a warden is to have a little orientation for them, so I'll meet up with them and some other PCVs in Njombe next weekend. I'm excited to meet these new neighbors! Then I hope to go on a little trip either visit a PCV's school that I haven't been to yet or a town that I haven't been to yet. And what else is on the agenda? Reading, sleeping, eating, cooking, baking, teaching some health classes, organizing the library... it's going to be a relaxed December. Hannukah and Christmas plans are still up in the air, but I hope to stop and visit 2 PCVs on the way to Dar around that time. And on Dec. 29th I'm very excited to meet Brian's parents at the airport! We'll all spend a few days on Zanzibar (yay!) before I head to Paris (typical PC, eh?) to be stuffed with bread, cheese, wine and chocolate by my loving, indulging family :)
Since I last wrote, we (myself, Brian, Andy, Jill, Tally) had out girls conference and I finished up teaching for the year. The conference was really exciting and, I think, a success! We had 42 students and 4 Tanzanian counterparts; we (roughly) spent 2 days on HIV/AIDS and 2 days on gender equality. We talked about life skills and making healhty decisions; the importance of, and how to make, realistic goals; pregnancy education and prevention; HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention; women's roles in society and gender equality; role models; assertive communication; peer education and bringing the information back to our schools; and we went to an HIV testing center, where some students decided to get tested. We also invited 4 women from the Njombe area to come and speak on a panel -- to show the girls successful women from right here in Njombe! Two of the four were awesome -- wonderful role models of strong women. It was really exciting! Of course we had some rough patches, but overall it went really well. Our counterparts were (mostly) very helpful -- translating and answering questions and helping us run sessions. Many PCVs find that Tanzanians ask for their "motivation," monetary compensation, even when they've been told a million times that we can't pay them, but that didn't happen to us. We did give them a token monetary compensation, but we gave it to them in the last hour before leaving and they didn't bring it up before then, so I feel very lucky that we didn't have to deal with that! I was a bit disappointed with my students, because they didn't participate very much -- they talked to me and each other, and were almost boisterous when we met to plan for peer education at school, but in the larger group they simply were too shy to talk! But after getting back, one of the girls did stand up for herself in my class (a male student was saying that they didn't have their notebooks because it wasn't a math period, but she stood up and said that she had her notebook and some other students did, too) so I think they were just shy. Hopefully we helped them to begin to overcome that! I feel like my kiswahili improved in those few days but I also often felt like I was floundering when I tried to explain something. We had to wait for PC to approve the grant, so the conference was later than we wanted, and since it was so close to final exams and the end of school, my students and I decided not to start our peer education work yet. I'm hoping that waiting until next year doesn't mean they forget everything or lose interest and motivation...
The past two weeks have been full of teaching and reviewing (minus the 2 days that students were in the school fields planting corn -- the rains are starting, so now's the time to plant!), and I'll find out soon enough how effective I've been...
I also had 2 PCT (trainees) shadow visit me! Unfortunately their bus was really really late and they didn't get into Njombe until 10pm, but I had already arranged a taxi so we just rode back to my house when they finally did arrive. We enjoyed some bread and cheese with the box of red wine they brought, and although I was really enjoying talking with them, by midnight I had to excuse myself and go to bed -- I was teaching in the morning, but I usually go to sleep between 9 and 10 so mostly I was just exhausted. We hung out at my house for about 2 days (they saw the school and part of the village, but it rained a lot so we were just inside hanging out for a large portion of their visit), and then we went down to Jill's site to meet up with her, Andy and Brian. We cooked more and talked more and played catch phrase! It was a ton of fun! There are VERY few PCVs who I don't really enjoy being with, so I wasn't too surprised at how grea they were, but somehow I did still surprise me a bit :) After about 2 days at Jill's, I took them back to Njombe and showed them around before leaving them at the hotel. They were getting up before dawn the next day to go to Dar, and I wanted to get back to school so I could teach.
Other news... it's mango season! I got those sores in the corners of my mouth from eating too many mangoes and too much pineapple -- which is ok by me because I love the fruit so much! Plums and nectarines/peaches should be coming in soon, and then early next year apples and pears will be ripe! Yum! I love the mangoes, but they aren't keeping me from thinking about what people are cooking for Thanksgiving at home... Oh well, I'll make myself some mango salsa and then some mango rice! And maybe a chocolate cake... hmmm so many options! All this week teachers get rice and beans (and sometimes a green vegetable side) for lunch, which is hard to pass up but I had been planning to use some of free time to cook more elaborate things than ususal. Maybe next week...
Oh, and just so you know, I know of 3 letters that never reached me (it's been months for each of them) and of 2 that never reached Brian. So if you're wondering why I never responded, ask me if I got it!
I think that's all the news from the southern highlands -- take care and enjoy Thanksgiving dinner!
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