All Sweared In!!

So today was an extremely successful day...and maybe one of the best days of my existence.  This morning, we made the short bus ride to the United States Embassy for our swearing-in ceremony.  We all got "pertied" up in our Tanzanian finest and became official Peace Corps Volunteers, or PCV's.  There was our honored guest, a member of the ministry of education, and even the U.S. Ambassador himself, Ambassador Lenhardt.  We sang a little song and did a little dance, well maybe not a dance but we did have to sing, and then said our oath.  After that, they shoved us full of food and patted our heads for a job well done during training.   We had a bushel of samosas and meat on a stick, and man was it delicious.  After that, we went back to our hostel for free time, a.k.a. try to nap in my room, but really just lay there in a puddle of my own sweat.  We piddled around for a couple hours, packing, talking, cutting hair.  Yes, I cut more hair today. I think I might have a new profession in my future.  After that, we had to get dressed back up and loaded a bus to go to the Ambassador's house for dinner.  When we got there, we hung out with his wife Jackie who may or may not be one of the sweetest ladies ever, and talked a bit.  Then the food was unveiled.  What lay before us literally brought a tear to my eye!  Ladies and gentleman, the good Ambassador Lenhardt and his wife managed to wrangle us up an amazing Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of Africa.  I ate so much mashed potatoes and stuffing that I was in physical pain and continued the self-torture by serving myself up a plate of pumpkin pie.  BEST DAY EVER!! Tomorrow, we have to get up at 3:45 though and head to the bus station so we are thinking we might not even bother going to bed and soak up the last bits of togetherness before we get separated.  Despite the awful waking hours, I am extremely excited about tomorrow and to finally get to my home for the next 2 years!!

Sorry its been like ten thousand years since I've posted.  Things are still great.  So since last time we found out our sites.  I will be moving to Mtwara and teaching at Newala Day Secondary School.  Mtwara is in the far south of Tanzania, on the Mozambique border and along the coast.  I am supper excited about my site!  I have a 2 bedroom house, pretty much already furnished, with a courtyard.  There is a passion fruit vine, mango tree, and papaya tree in my courtyard.  And the best part? ELECTRICITY!! Yes friends. I will be living on the coast, able to see Mozambique pretty much, with a plethra of fruit and electricity, so basically in the lap of luxury.  Anyone want to visit?
In other news, I am done with training!  The week before last week, we went to shadow current volunteers.  I got sent to Singida.  I was told that Singida was the desert of Tanzania and was dreading it.  It turns our Singida is absolutely beautiful.  It is dry, basically sand, but the sky is huge because the land is so flat.  Our adventure began with the always exciting Tanzanian bus system.  To start, the but was almost an hour late.  When we were getting on, we basically sat wherever our bag was thrown by the conductor.  I sat in between Doug and a gangly, rather pungent Tanzanian man.  Most of the ride, the bus was flying.  To avoid hurling all over the extremely crowded, swerving death-trap of a bus, I tried to stay passed out the entire ride.  I was so unaware of my surroundings most of the time, I had no idea, until told by Doug later, that apparently my stinky friend next to me monopolized on my current state and used me as a pillow.  After a whole 8 hours on awful roads, and at one point no road at all, we reached Singida Town.    After getting to town, we met up with some PCV's.  They had gotten hotel rooms and we went and dropped our stuff and went to the next door bar for drinks and dinner.  They are all well acquainted with the owner who just loves "wazungu," or whities.  He made us maybe the best meal I've had since arriving in country.  The next day, we hung out in town, grabbing breakfast going to the internet cafe and later on lunch.  After all this, it was time to catch our bus to her village.  The ride was ridiculously bouncy.  Imagine riding a charter bus across a field.  Consequently, I spend the ride ready to stick my head out the window to hurl.  I was in a better boat than my fellow volunteer though who was having stomach issues and about to poop his pants the entire ride.  Apparently, this is not an extremely uncommon issue in Peace Corps.  Our host said she had pooped her pant four times in the last 30 days due to a gnarly stomach issue.  We finally reached her village and walked to her house.  For the next 2 and a half days, Colin and I pretty much did nothing but work on a puzzle and occasionally help cook.  It felt pretty awesome to just do nothing.  While we were at Amy's house, we celebrated her birthday, making banana pancakes, omelets, and mango.  Uma, Jordan, Doug, and their host Carol walked from their village, bringing chocolate cake.  After vegging out, we spent the day laying on the concrete talking/reading/playing cards/puzzling.  It was pretty wonderful.  That night, Amy, Colin , and I went into the village to visit and eat dinner.  We hung out chatting with her village, drinking what was meant to be homemade mango wine.  After what seemed to be too much yeast, too little sugar, and too little mango, you get pretty much mango vodka'ish jazz. There are really no words to describe.  The next day, we hiked 2 hours to Carol's village to spend the night with Jordan, Uma, and Doug.  We played games and drug mattresses out on the front porch and slugged around all day.  The next day, we again had bus adventures.  So buses might bery well be the most interesting/scary part about my Tanzanian experience.  We took a bus from Carol's village to Singida Town.  We get smooshed on, fighting for our seat and breath in an often exhaust filled bus.  This particular bus ride, I literally saw a man shove two live chickens into the overhead bin.  Apparently the chickens just shut their eyes when the bus starts moving. Maybe we share the quality of getting motion sick and they just close their eyes to avoid tossing their little poutlry cookies.  When we reached Singida Town bus stop, we then had to fight off the hourds of people selling mangos, water, baskets, and plastic crap.  These vendors are all over the new buses rolling into the station like stink on poo trying to sell their goods.  After a bit of confusion, we figured out that our bus did not leave till 1:30.  It was currently about 8:30.  We then went into town to waste time, avoiding the usual children screaming "give me money mzungu."  After wasting time in town, we went to the bus stop and our bus was actually there.  the bus ride seemed off to a great start: a normal amount of people, no animals, and actually leaving on time.  Well then, we stopped 10 other times before leaving town and crammed as many people on as I though possible.  Well I was wrong.  The bus then stopped on the highway the entire way to Manyoni, cramming more people on.  At one point, I had about 4 people half-sitting on me.  Another time, some lady literally sat her baby on my shoulder.  I am thankful I wasn't in one of the other volunteer's seat where he had to stay our of pecking reach of the chicken held right at his eye level.  After a day in Manyoni, we headed home.  It was then that I saw yet another sight that was extremely unusual.  I saw a petroleum tanker with a live goat tied on top.  Strange.
This last week, we had to go to CCT everyday.  We had numerous tests, over teaching technique, security, etc.  Thursday, we learned to make a permagarden.  I really enjoyed this from about 8 to 3, but after that lost all concentration.  I was entertained by playing with a machete for most of the day though.  We would take pieces of banana tree and throw them at each other, trying to slice them out of the air.  Basically it was like that Wii game, but real life.  Friday, I had my final language test, which went awful.  Friday night, we had our family good-bye party.  My family gave me a dress.  I am so ready to move on to my site, but will miss my host family so much.  Tomorrow, on Sunday, we head back to Dar es Salaam where we will stay until we are sworn in at the embassy on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday, I move to MTWARA!!

Up in flames...

So yesterday, I got up bright and early and went to church with my host brother Felix and Mama Happyness.  The music was greta, but I understood absolutely nothing.  There was the long sleep-filled sermon and then the entire congregation got up to give a donation.  After that they auctioned off kitangas (Tanzanian cloth) and a pair of shoes to raise money for building the church.  Right now, the church is basically just a cinderblock building with wooden benches.  Pretty much, the auction was like half-time entertainment.  I was actually pleasantly suprised when chuch only lasted an hour and 40 mintues considering my friend Doug's experience a couple weeks ago when church lasted 7 hours.  After church, Doug came over and ate breakfast with my family.  After we finished breakfast, we went to Veronica's and sat in the shade while she finished her laundry.  Then, we picked up our friend Eric and went to the local market.  Going to the market is definitely my favorite way to practice my Kiswahili.  You just feel so good about your skills because everyone is so excited that the whitie can speak Swahili at all.  I even ran into some of my students from my school and talked to them for a bit.  We then went back to Veronica's and Eric, Veronica, and I cooked lunch.  We made guacamole, chips, sauteed potatoes, and an omelet.  The chips we made were from plantains.  We sliced them and fried them in oil and they were pretty much the greatest thing ever.  The potatoes we sauteed with pepper, salt, and fresh ground cumin.  In the omelet we put onions, pili pili hoho (bell pepper), to tomato, and spinach.  Over everything, we poured pili pili sauce (just hot pepper sauce) that Veronica's host sister made.  Overall, I was pretty impressed with the way everything came out.  The most entertaining part of the day happened right before we cooked the omelet.  We washed a bowl and put it on the jiko (charcoal stove) to let the water sizzle off.  Well, there must have been grease or something on the bowl because all of a sudden, the entire pot went up in flames.  Veronica pulled it off the jiko and I was doubled over laughing.  The flames were huge, like almost as high as our heads at points.  She kicked to bowl and it skidded across the floor, coming to rest beside a wooden table with a tablecloth hanging off.  I grabbed the bowl and put it away from anything flammable.  We were looking for baking soda when Eric decided that flour would work-WRONG.  That just made the flames even bigger.  We then just decided to ignore the "don't use water to put out a grease fire" rule and problem solved.  The pot was pretty charred, but still usable and thankfully, Veronica's host sister had run to the store so we still had our pride.  By the time we ate and cleaned up, the process had taken 7 hours.  It had been a long day so Vero and I went to the bar with our friend Colin.  There, over beers, we had a long discussion about how Physics is far superior to Chemistry.  Essentially, they believe that Chemistry is the bastard child of Physics.  Overall, a good, but exhausting day.