Ticket to Ride (Zug um Zug) Tanzania

All aboard the Tanzanian Express! On my way up to Dar for our Close of Service (COS) Conference a couple of weeks ago, a few other volunteers and I decided to take a ride on the Tanzanian railroad system. Despite what you may think, the trains in this country are actually considerably slower than the buses (no small feat), only run twice per week to a very limited number of cities, typically arrive hours after schedule, and, aside from 3rd class tickets (think standing only, rush hour subway - esque sardine packing for multiple days) are even more expensive than your average big bus. So why would anyone in their right mind actually choose to ride the train rather than a bus? Well, as far as Tanzanians go, very few actually do take it aside from those in 3rd class who are simply looking for the most economical way to travel, since those tickets actually are very cheap. But for we foreigners, why the heck not? As long as you have a 2 day time frame within which to reach your destination. There's much more leg room than a bus, a small fold-out table to watch movies on, "concessions" being sold by mama's along the way, and a rare chance to see some of the more stunning scenery in an already inspiringly beautiful country.

The train starts in Zambia and passes through the town of Makambako, which is about an hour north of Njombe, my banking town, on its way to Dar es Salaam. There are two trains in each direction weekly: an express train and an ordinary train. Unfortunately the one we needed to take was the ordinary, but then again, we were in it for the experience and to get to see the country in a new light, so longer wasn't necessarily worse in our case. The station gets very busy on the train days, and seems to turn into a free hotel for a lot of people. Outside there is a sizable shanty town of various vendors and child salesmen, selling things like hot tea, roasted corn and blankets, since this is now the winter season in the southern highlands. We found a small plot of wall space to set up camp and wait an unknown number of hours for the train to arrive.

The arrival time itself was quite ambiguous, but we ended up waiting around 4 hours until our train rolled in at around midnight. Not too bad given our expectations. After waiting for them to attach the car that contained our actual train cabin, we were finally settled in around 2am. The cabins had 6 fold-out padded benches for beds stacked in 2 columns 3-high. In between was a fold-down table and above was a good amount of storage space for luggage. Even though it was only four of us travelling, we bought out the whole cabin to ensure our privacy.

When we woke up the next morning, we were a good ways farther north into some much hotter weather, but there was plenty of breeze in the cabin - another major plus over the buses. We entertained ourselves by playing some card games, including the Ticket to Ride Card Game, which, being played while travelling on a train, could only be likened to playing Settlers of Catan on the Old Settler's Trail in the Smokey Mountains. At various stops along the way, children would come playing around the train tracks (right in line with typical Tanzanian children's standards of safety). We gave them paper cranes and airplanes made of colored post-it notes, which they got really excited for.

The train arrived in Dar almost exactly at midnight, so our full trip was right at 24 hours. We then went from looking like homeless train bums to staying at a schnazzy beach resort in Dar for our COS Conference. The hotel had its own beach, swimming pool and air conditioned rooms, so a big change from what we had just gotten used to on the ride up. But undoubtedly the best feature of the hotel was its thrice daily buffet meals, each consisting of about 8 courses, linked together by intermittent chai and snack breaks. I guess they were trying to compensate for all of the volunteers who have lost too much weight over the last 2 years by fattening us up over a week of binge-eating.

The week was a great vacation and final opportunity to spend time with the remaining volunteers from my training class. Although it wasn't quite as relaxing for me, since I am still trying to figure out if my extension will work out. At this point, it sounds like it would be very easy to extend at my site and just change the focus of my service from teaching to doing other secondary projects like these science competitions. There are a couple potential partner organizations that I could end up extending with, but those obviously take more time to figure out and to see if their needs match up with what I want to do. Nonetheless, I am trying to remain patiently optimistic to have my plans for the next year settled before long.

Since finishing our COS Conference, I have been staying in Dar for our Shika na Mikono (Hands-on Science Group) handover meeting to the new class of volunteers. We have been helping them to plan the upcoming trainings for the Education volunteers coming in July, as well as handing off all of our training resources and brainstorming new ideas for the future of the group. We are hoping to put more of an emphasis on science competitions along with doing more practice "practical" lab exams similar to those given for the national exams, to help the PCVs get a feel for what preparation duties they may have at their schools. Of course if I end up extending, I will still remain a part of the group and hopefully be able to help push the competitions and confereces aspect myself. Woo science!

I am now on my way back home, where I will be for one night before taking a handful of students to Wino (the nearby volunteer's school) for another mini science weekend. One of the original students that I took to Njombe in March came up to me and asked if we could do another competition there to get more students involved, so we will do that Saturday and Sunday. This time we may try out some new ideas like building gliders, paper helicopters and probably more JEOPARDY games. More on that to come!

Meanwhile, using the magical powers of Dar internet, I've been able to upload my video from the science weekend at my school in April. One of the teachers at my school was able to take some great video footage, which was a great help in putting this together. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-ZGmLOfKQ&feature=youtu.be

Wilima Science Competition

First off, I would just like to take this opportunity to wish everyone out there a very happy Tanzanian Union Day! And how exactly does one celebrate this festive occasion locally, you ask? I have absolutely no idea, but it means a day off of school for me, and therefore an opportunity for soon-to-be-leaving PCVs from the area to have a "final Chani weekend" in Njombe. And so today, to clear out some space and make some extra cash, a few of us took to the streets of Njombe to sell all of the old clothes that have been accumulating over the last couple years. My haul was mostly supplied by the things that the volunteer before me left at my house. But hey, finders sellers. It was worth it just for the entertainment to be honest, seeing the crowd of Tanzanians following us around town to see what we had in all of those big fancy suitcases. Can't wait to see a few more people walking around town with their fashionable bike helmets!

The big news since my last post, however, was that I successfully completed my second weekend science competition, this one at my own school, Wilima Secondary, along with students from the nearby Wino Secondary School, which also has a PCV from my class. So he, along with 8 Form III and Form IV students, made the walk to my school on a Friday, making for a total of 6 teams of 4 students competing.

Form III parachute - based egg drop device

This competition was different from the first one in Njombe during March in that it contained twice as many students, was hosted by my school and therefore took place in front of a crowd of a couple hundred cheering students (wild and crazy kids if you will) throughout the weekend, and also featured a couple new events that we didn't get to try out in Njombe. Many of the competitions were the same, although it was interesting to see the differences in some of the design techniques compared to the younger students from the Njombe seminar. These students, for instance, actually were familiar with the parachute concept (to my surprise) and a couple of them used it in their egg drop devices. I also tried to incorporate more mini lessons into the activities to help the kids relate their classroom content to more practical applications (e.g. thinking about center of mass for building tall structures and Archimedes' Principle for building rafts).

A Form IV student presents his group's tallest jengo, or building, made from only paper and tape.

This seminar also saw the introduction of the JEOPARDY quiz bowl competition. Rather than testing them strictly on classroom facts, we decided to focus the JEOPARDY categories on things like completing number sequences and picture patterns, and presenting engineering-style scenarios that required them to use simple formulas to meet certain design specifications. Some of the problems were pretty challenging, even for the top students that we had participating. But they all really got into it and once again really impressed me with their abilities. The one disappointment, however, was that none of them seemed to appreciate the value of Final JEOPARDY. Only half the teams were even willing to gamble any of their points after my pulling their arms, and then only bet the minimum. I need to find a way to teach them about the value of high-risk-high-reward gambling and extreme thinking - someone has to set a good example after all...

Creating a fresh batch of Sudoku maniacs.

The bridge building competition again was saved for last, though this time it got to be a little ridiculous. I guess the bamboo sticks we gave them were bigger, so the groups were cutting them in halves and using multiple rails of bamboo on their bridges. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves in terms of the results - myself standing on one of the bridges while holding a cinder block I think was actually a reduction in the load compared to what we used while testing. But the kids certainly enjoyed seeing how they could make such a strong bridge with such few materials.

Each of these cinder blocks easily weighs 50 lbs.

Overall, I was extremely pleased once again with how the competition went, and it definitely seemed like the students appreciated it as well. That and the fact that, after using some leftover materials from the last one, this entire competition cost somewhere around $12 to put on. Now that's what I call a Peace Corps budget! And the added bonus was that one of the new teachers at my school has a video camera, and was able to take some great footage of the whole weekend, including plenty of my jumbled, babbling Swahinglish. So I'm currently working on making some kind of video / slideshow trailer that I can use to possibly further my extension hopes and maybe get more funding for doing future competitions. I've already gotten a good amount of confirmed interest from other volunteers in bringing things like this to their schools, but I'm still waiting to get more information from the Peace Corps staff about what is going to happen with my extension request. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying getting to do these small-scale seminars for the kids at my school. One of the Form I's that I took to Njombe actually approached me and requested that we hold another similar competition at Wino soon for the younger students who didn't get to participate this past weekend, so it's really cool to see how excited he is getting for these competitions!

The other exciting thing at my school has been that I've found a couple teachers who are also big basketball enthusiasts, and so I've shared with them some of the old Bulls playoff games and Michael Jordan videos that I got while I was home. We've started having evening screenings for some of the basketball playing students as well, so I'm happy to say that MJ is quickly becoming a household name around Wilima!

Next week I will be heading up to Dar for our class's Close of Service (COS) Conference, which basically means spending a week on vacation at a nice hotel on the south beaches of Dar. I guess it's Peace Corps' way of saying congratulations on making it for two years, now enjoy a free week in Dar. So check back soon for more updates on that and hopefully some good news about my extension finally! Thanks for stopping by, San Diego.

Karibu Kwangu (Welcome to My Home)

The week before Easter, I had my week-long break from school, so I decided to take the opportunity to get a closer look at my home town of Njombe. For the beginning of the break, I took my tent on the road to a small lake a few miles outside of town, where other volunteers and ex-pats sometimes go for water skiing and other fun things. But most of the time it's just an empty space that offers a quiet retreating point with a beautiful backdrop. A very nice Tanzanian man keeps up the place and provided a roaring fire each night, which was much appreciated during the now-beginning cold season of Njombe (which actually is COLD, go figure!). Aside from the hordes of raging siafu (vicious biting army ants), it was extremely pleasant, and a very nice way to regroup after the first few months of teaching. Why haven't I been taking advantage of this place more over the last 2 years?!

After that, I visited a village called Uhekule near Njombe, where there is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who has stayed in Tanzania for seven years now, and has built an orphanage for kids in the village. I had been meaning to pay a visit for quite a while now, and so it was really nice to finally see the place. The kids provided a warm welcome by literally jumping all over me and asking me to do Spiderman impressions. I guess they don't get enough visitors... The orphanage is fantastic, though. It's been up and running for 2 years now, and gives a home to 11 kids from the village, and the other village members seem to have taken very well to it.  There is also a fantastic kitchen, so we made some very tasty fajitas, and I paid for my stay by making my own specialty - banana pancakes.

Following these small excursions, it was back to the Chani Hotel in Njombe for the 2nd Annual Njombe Jam. For those who didn't read about it from last year's blogs, Njombe Jam is Peace Corps Tanzania's newest Easter tradition, started last year by myself and a few other Njombe PCVs. Volunteers from all over the country compete, representing their home regions, in a decathalon of events seeking the right to claim nation-wide superiority among Peace Corps Tanzania.  Events include basketball, bags (cornhole for those from Indiana), Mario Kart, a relay race, egg toss, and of course the Easter Beer Hunt. And if you think I indulged myself by making over-elaborate poster-sized brackets for each event, then you know me all too well. There was a great turnout, and even better, Njombe came out victorious! I was particularly excited that we won the one event I really cared about, 3-on-3 basketball. I believe our victory can be credited to a pre-game viewing of Michael Jordan highlight films, followed by a mandatory screening of Space Jam. For two straight years now, we have tried to make a Stanley Cup-esque trophy for the tournament, and for two straight years now it has been lost/stolen. At least this year I was able to get a picture!

Since my return to Wilima, I have been teaching my normal classes, and was very pleasantly surprised to see a Form I student of mine get a 100% on my Physics midterm exam, and another get a 98% for math. I was particularly happy because both of them were female students, and girls in general tend to get more easily discouraged in math and science in this country. Over the last week, I've been getting through the greatest predicament of my life - too many avocados!! I got a gift from the school of a 10-liter bucket full of them, which is just the tip of the iceberg of how many the school has gotten this year. So I've been averaging about 4 per day for a while now... and loving it!


Next weekend is my second installment of science competitions - this one will take place at my school and will be a 6-team competition including students from the nearby school that also has a Peace Corps teacher. I plan on trying out some new variations, like Jeopardy-style academic competitions, together with some of the activities that were a big hit last time in Njombe. This competition however will consist of older students, Form III and IV, so it will be interesting to see how their designs compare to the Form I and II students from last time. I've sent in my application for Peace Corps extension doing these kinds of competitions around the country for the next 6 months to 1 year following my end-of-service time in mid-July. So now I play the waiting game to see what they have to say about my idea, but I will be sure to keep the updates coming as I find out more!

Njombe Science Competition

A couple of weeks ago, myself and two other Peace Corps teachers held a science competition weekend in Njombe. Only two schools were able to bring students, but there were 12 in total - 6 from my school and 6 from another near Njombe. Last year, some older volunteers got in touch with a group from MIT which agreed to make a $500 donation to support some kind of science-related activity or conference in Tanzania. We were finally able to make use of the money for this conference, using the funds to cover all the costs of the venue, materials and supplies for the competitions. The students' contribution was covered by them paying for their own transport to and from Njombe.

The competition was a great success! We split the kids up into 4 teams, mixing schools and allowing them to make their own team name and flag. Throughout the weekend, we awarded points to the teams based on their performance in each of the competitions and kept a running standings board to keep track of which team was in the lead.

Density Column Demonstration

In addition to the acutal competitions (which I will describe in more detail shortly), we set up some short science demonstrations that highlighted certain topics which are covered in the syllabus, and also introduced them to some math and logic puzzles like sudoku, which they loved. Students here don't really get exposed to many (if any) critical thinking activities like this, which are so common for young students in more developed education systems, and have a huge effect on learning development in general. But it was great to see them all have so much interest in the puzzles, and I was very impressed with how quickly a lot of them were able to pick them up. All of the students were Form I and Form II, so they were pretty limited in their knowledge base and English ability, but they all were very excited to do the activities and went far beyond our expectations.

As for the events, here's a brief rundown on some of the competitions we put them through:

Egg Drop - given a bunch of junk, design some kind of container that can keep an egg safe after dropping it from 8-10 feet. This one was very interesting actually - apparently the students (and even Tanzanian teachers) were not at all familiar with the concept of a parachute, which is usually the standard approach used in making egg drop devices. So all of the teams just tried to pad the containers as much as possible in order to protect the egg, and 2 of the 4 teams still succeeded. It made me realize that without TV and textbooks, there really is no reason why they should know of parachutes, so after we tested their designs, we made a quick example of one with a parachute and showed how much of an effect it had on the outcome.

Jenga Jengo ("Build a Building") - build the tallest structure possible, as quickly as possible, that can withstand a book-waving wind test by using only sheets of paper and masking tape. All of the groups seemed to go straight for house-type buildings as opposed to sky scrapers, which again was an indication of how little they are exposed to. Though some of them were very tricky and gave themselves an advantage by putting their scissors inside of the buildings as a weight to keep it from tipping over. Clever girl...


Raft Rally - make some kind of boat out of a small piece of aluminum foil that can hold the most weight before sinking. A couple groups did me proud by making origami-style boats, but quickly learned the difficulties of doing such things with aluminum foil... especially since they weren't allowed extra sheets in case of rips. Whammy. But the winner held up 2 large rocks and a potato!

Drop Zone - make a plastic bag parachute to safely drop a paper clip passenger as close as possible to a target on the ground. After their brief introduction to parachutes earlier, the kids did a great job making some themselves.

Bridge Challenge - the grand finale and my favorite of them all. Design and build a bridge using limited materials, BUT instead of being given the materials, each team gets 15 Science Shillings and must buy everything from a science shop. All kinds of materials were available - straws, toothpicks, wooden skewers, bamboo sticks, tape, rubber bands, glue, etc. but the kids had to decide which materials were most important becuase bonus points were given for each Science Shilling leftover at the end. Again, I was incredibly impressed with what they were able to come up with, and the winning bridge held a bucket with 18 giant rocks. In fact we didn't have enough to start with and had to run outside to grab massive bricks just to see how much the thing could hold.

All in all, I couldn't have been happier with how the weekend went, especially in terms of how excited it made the students participate in these competitions and put their science knowledge and intuition to the test. It would also be great to be able to show this to all students, so that they could all see some fun and interesting applications of science subjects, which is why I'm hoping to replicate it soon after the midterm break at my school.

Helping to organize and put on this science competition reminded me of why I had originally had thoughts of trying to continue doing hands-on-science-related work in Tanzania after my 2 years of service runs out in July/August. It really inspired me to look into the options of extending with Peace Corps, with the hopes of being able to travel to different parts of the country and put on similar conferences and competitions for other Peace Corps schools. This event was so cheap and easy to plan and put on that there's no reason why it can't be duplicated for any other school. The only problem for volunteers is finding funding sources and going through grant-writing processes and preparing venues to hold these kind of conferences. But I feel like if I can continue as a volunteer with a primary focus on making those kinds of arrangements, there can be a ton of similar and improved science competitions all over the country, which can hopefully help to raise interest in science among Tanzanian students and possibly increase the incredibly low percentage of students who even bother continuing to study science subjects through Form IV. I'll keep the updates coming on whether this idea actually seems feasible, but in the meantime, I'm very excited for the success of our first science competition, and also for the hope of doing another one at my school in the next couple of weeks!

"Kili"-ng Me Softly

Not literally "killing" me, granted, but still, I'll go for the pun at the risk of sounding a bit over-dramatic. It is of course in reference to the Kilimanjaro Marathon which took place last weekend on Sunday, March 3rd and which became my second completed marathon over two continents!

I successfully completed my lone goal of finishing the race, after having done foolishly little training beforehand. Considering the lack of preparation, though, the run could have been much worse. The weather in Moshi right now is still very warm and sunny with little rain, but the race started early at 6:30am and was at a high enough elevation to be fairly breezy throughout the length of the course, so overall it still felt plenty cooler than the hot and humid Chicago Marathon of 2010 that I can compare it to. 

The course was very interesting and varied in terms of its environment. The first half marathon took place throughout a series of side streets passing through villages, where runners were able to take in the wonderful scents of Kilimanjaro (a.k.a. Wake up and smell the burning garbage!). It was fun to run by the crowds of villagers on the side of the road and actually greet them in Swahili, which was not common for most of the foreigners that were running the race. And because the early part of the course was "down-and-back," I was able to see the leading pack of world-class Kenyan runners as they whizzed by me in the opposite direction and left me in their wake of clouded dust for good. If only I were able to run one 5-minute mile, let alone 26 consecutive ones, I might just have had a chance at that prize money...

The second half of the course was a tarmac road that goes up closer towards the base of the mountain, and so the stretch of miles 13-19 ish (the funnest stretch by far) was almost completely uphill. Woo. My greatest motivation during this part, however, came from a couple small Tanzanian children who started running alongside me carrying bags of cups that were being used to give water and the alternative "energy" drink, coca-cola, to the runners. So I kept telling myself that if a couple of 5-year-old boys in flip-flops carrying bags of cups could run this, then I guess I can go on a little longer. I did stop a few times on the uphill part to stretch my legs though, which I think was very necessary for my lack of preparation for the race. But the one boy stuck with me the whole way up and back down, which was very impressive. It was kind of sad though, at times I would still technically be "running", based on little more than the fact that I was swinging my arms slightly while moving, and yet the walking child beside me was still slowing down to let me catch up to him.

Near the end of the race, I met up with another Peace Corps Volunteer who was running, and we decided to finish together. Naturally this warranted some sort of finale, so we did a little routine over the last hundred feet or so involving leap-frogging, circle-swinging, and finishing with a human wheelbarrow across the finish line, which got some applause from the crowd and also got the attention of the cameraman who apparently had little work cut out for himself in between recording the exciting finish of a group of Kenyans and the goofy antics of two 6-foot-plus white people stumbling across the finish several hours later. But hey, maybe it was enough to make the Tanzanian nightly news...?

Overall, running the Kili Marathon was an experience I'll certainly never forget. Being able to look up and see the massive snow-capped peak of Africa's tallest mountain while running 42 kilometers amongst Kenyans, Tanzanians, Americans, Europeans, and others of many more nationalities in the midst of a country and a group of friends that have defined what I've called home for that last 21 months is an experience that I am extremely lucky and grateful to have had. Although, despite having added a new member to my collection of marathon medals, I have to say, a better souvenir would have been to take home a glowing piece of that radical rock.

How Steve Got His Groove Back

Hello all, and greetings once again from the land of Tanzania! It's great to be back after a short, yet

refreshing 3-week visit to America, and now finally after about 5 weeks of getting back into my Tanzanian groove, I am able to use internet and let the updates rain down, not altogether unlike the weather I've been experiencing in what is now the full-on rainy season in the southern highlands of Njombe/Songea. It makes for some exceptional scenery, especially around my school, but of course carries with it the occasional whammy of getting caught in the village for hours on end in the afternoon before being able to make the sloshy hike back to my house on travelling days. It still remains one of my favorite pasttimes though to sit in my house or on the porch during a heavy rainstorm and just see how calm and quiet it seems to be all around, amidst the thunderous and fierce showers.

Unfortunately we had a pretty bad lightning attack a few weeks ago, which not only scared the living bajeebus out of me after lightning struck no more than 20 feet outside my front window, but also caused some pretty serious damage to our generator, leaving us without our typical electricity benefit in the evenings. But all is well (and I am still able to take regular advantage of my incessant movie- and tv show-downloading in America) because our solar power is fully functioning. Another teacher has brought his own inverter to use in the staff room so that teachers can keep their phones and computers charged during the day, and there is still enough left to keep the classrooms lit from 7-10 at night so the students can still have their nigh studies. It's great to now be seeing the real advantages of our solar grant! The school is putting the finishing touches on the new administration block that has been under construction since before I arrived, and when it is fully done we will be able to move on with the next phase of the solar project and make one of the new rooms a computer lab / photocopy room. Can't wait to finally have that!

As for teaching, I've begun with my Form I students, teaching an introductory course called Baseline, which is supposed to get them all up to speed on what they should have learned in 7 years of primary school. I have actually just finished with those topics, so next week I will start with their regularly scheduled programming - math and physics. I am really loving teaching the Form I's. They are all very impressionable and actually haven't given up on math and science yet, so they are all really excited and participating in class and it's great. I can tell a lot of them are able to build up their confidence by doing relatively easy topics to begin the year. And I am definitely beginning to see who the standout students are going to be, so that is keeping me very excited for the rest of my time with them this year. I'm also teaching Form III Physics, and these are the same kids that I taught Physics to last year. At the end of last year, they took their national examinations to see if they would be allowed to continue on to Form III or have to repeat Form II. Surprisingly, only 11 out of 120 or so failed, which is awesome by normal Tanzanian standards. All of the results were quite impressive. They finished 3rd out of 22 in our District and 108 / 408 in the entire Southern Highland zone, which includes Iringa, Njombe and Songea. I was particularly impressed by how they did in Physics also. For the class, they averaged a C and there were actually 3 A's!! Another one of my teachers said he had never seen an A in Physics since he had been at our school, so that is definitely an accomplishment. They certainly deserve a lot of credit because with the shortened schedule last year for the census, we had to rush a bit at the end of the year to fit in all of the topics, so I knew it would be on them to make sure they studied their notes well, and apparently they did, so I was very pleased. Now in Form III, Physics is no longer mandatory, so I just told them that whoever wanted to continue should come join my class, and over 40 of them came, which is fantastic (Usually there are 10-20). Although I'll only be with them for half of the year, it is a great motivation to teach them having seen the effort that they have made so far.

In other school news, my All-Star Girls Conference girls have continued with their life skills teaching, this time teaching the new Form I girls. It was great sitting in on their session (I've never had to say a word in any of their sessions, which shows how prepared and superb leaders the girls are) because you could tell that these new young girls were really looking up to the leaders who are now Form II's. So I think they got a lot out of it. And as always, they LOVE playing musical chairs, which is pretty great entertainment for me as well.

Outside of Peace Corps stuff, there are a couple trips coming up that I am really looking forward to: next weekend we are saying goodbye to Songea's beloved Paul, who was the Dumb to my Dumber (or the other way around) for our Halloween costumes last year and will greatly be missed. So we will be going to Mbamba Bay one more time, which is the nice campsite on the beach at Lake Malawi that I have been to a couple times before. Then a few weeks later, on March 3rd, is the Kilimanjaro Marathon, which, despite having done next to zero training for, I consider myself sufficiently prepared to "run". Of course my only real goal is to finish the race, and put myself one step closer to the ultimate goal of a marathon on every continent (watch out, Antarctica!) so I won't be too disappointed if I end up with a terrible time. At least it should be cooler weather near the mountain than it usually seems to be for the Chicago Marathon.

Now that it is already February, I am really starting to see what little time I have left in Tanzania. Officially, we can begin to COS (leave) in mid-July, though I don't know that I will necessarily be trying to take the first plane outta here since I haven't exactly made any...what do you call those...plans for after Peace Corps. Not to say that I don't have ideas. As I have mentioned, I've been involved in a hands-on science group with Peace Corps, and if it could work out, I could see possibly sticking around to continue with that, perhaps doing things like preparing inter-school science competitions and conferences. It is something that I have really enjoyed doing at my school and at our Girls Conference last year. Myself and 2 other volunteers are planning a small-scale competition like this in mid-March in Njombe, and depending on how that goes, I think I will have a better feel for whether I think it is something I would like to continue doing in this country.

That's all I've got for now, I promise the next update won't take as long to deliver, but thanks again to everyone who continues to check back and take interest in the goings-on of Tanzania! Hope everyone is doing well, and an early Happy Birthday to Mom!!

This was a semi-decent attempt at capturing probably the greatest rainbow I've ever seen. An entire semi-circle with every color vibrant and visible, and from the right viewpoint, my house could be seen perfectly centered underneath it. Pot(s) of gold pending...

A Change of Scenery

Top priority after 1.5 years...

Well I am very happy to say that I have successfully returned home to the greatest place on earth, Tinley Park, and have officially begun my holiday vacation in America. Still, I wanted to give some updates on what I had been up to in Tanzania just before coming home.

Dating back to Thanksgiving, I have to say that it turned out to be one of the greatest and more memorable Thanksgivings I've ever had, mostly because of how smoothly it went despite having so few "typical" amenities. We were able to cook a turkey (to perfection, not by me of course) in an aluminum pot charcoal oven, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and some amazing pies made from scratch - pumpkin, mango, chocolate pudding-pineapple, and apple. I continue to be blown away by the cooking prowess of many of the other people here. My endeavors were not as difficult or complicated, but were equally successful and appreciated by all. I ended up making a 10-liter bucket's worth of guacamole, which turned out to be a great secondary gravy, and the egg nog was a HUGE hit and went off without a hitch. I think I've influenced a few more people to make it a twice-a-year tradition like it is for me. With 20 people at a single Peace Corps house with no electricity, the fact that we were able to get all of the cooking done and actually eat by 7 o'clock may have been nothing short of a miracle. After eating, we all gathered around a 12-inch netbook computer screen and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.

Mr. Turkey finished to perfection.

The "jiko" oven used to cook the turkey.

Thanksgiving gang, mostly residents of Njombe / Songea.

Truly classic-looking Thanksgiving pies - pumpkin, mango, apple.

Following Thanksgiving, I traveled to Morogoro to help with the in-service-training of the new class of Education volunteers. I led two sessions related to teaching Math in Tanzania, and I was part of the Hands-On-Science team that led activities all day on Saturday the 1st. We talked about ways to make science seem more exciting for students, and demonstrated this by doing an egg drop competition for the volunteers and their Tanzanian counterparts. We also made homemade gunpowder and stuffed it into a giant paper crane and then ignited it for an enticing fireworks introduction. So essentially our message was: if you can't break or blow something up, it's not science.

Testing out an egg drop contraption.

Cooking up a delicious batch of gunpowder.

Upon finishing my work at IST, I had about a week of time before needing to be in Dar for my flight home. Before he left, an old friend of mine in country told me about his site in a place called Lushoto, which is a small town in the mountains slightly farther North than Dar. I had my tent with me, and so I decided to go check out that area and see if I could do any hiking. From my guidebook, I learned about this place called the Irente Viewpoint, for which the book used some pretty intense descriptors such as: heart-pounding, breath-taking and gob-smacking. After seeing it myself, I have to say I agree with all of these, though I might also add on one more - scrumptulescent. It was really incredible, and I felt like there needed to be some Lord of the Rings background music just to stand and look out at the view. There is a very nice hotel right at the viewpoint, which was far outside of my budget range, but luckily they let people set up their own tents on their front lawn for cheap, and so I was able to wake up to the incredible sights seen below.

There were a lot of chameleons in the forests of Lushoto.

After my hike through Lushoto, I made my way to Tanga, a coastal town only a few hours away. There is a beautiful beach called Pangani that can be reached by a short 2-hour bus ride from town. I stayed there with a friend for 2 days and enjoyed the soft sandy beach, slightly warmer than desired but still refreshing Indian Ocean waters, and unbelievable views of the starry night sky. The temperature was very hot since this is the middle of the summer season, but with a nice fanned room it was nothing unbearable.

Finally, after leaving Pangani, I went on to Dar with a day of preparation before my 4:30 am flight on the 12th. On my last day before coming to America I decided it would be worthwhile to get into the proper mindset for the next 3 weeks and go to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. 6 plates later my stomach was sufficiently stretched out to accommodate for all of my eating plans at home.

Now that I've had a couple days to be back and start catching up with friends and family, I can definitely see how seemlessly some things like driving came back to me, and yet everything I do seems to cause me to draw comparisons to my life in Tanzania. I'm sure I will be looking forward to returning in January, but for now it is nice to be completely unburdened and to actually understand everything that's being said around me! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you for your continued interest in my blog and activities over the past year. Be sure to stay tuned next year for even more wild and wacky Tanzanian adventures!