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Monday Feb 12, 2007

1 month in...

its been a long time!


I've just had an extra half an hour added, so please forgive spelling cause its slightly hurried writting.

To be honest cant remember what had happened since last time i wrote, so ill write about my last week or so.

Im still learning kiswahilli in Iringa, so 6 hours a day in a class room, but over the last few weeks weve been able to get some other activities going as well, on wednesdays we go to a local youth center and redecorate. the last two weeks have been spent marking out and painting a netball and volleyball court, which was really rewarding, and I cant wait till we get to play on it against the iringa netball team.

Also being in homestay I've managed to get really intergrated into my family. I try to help cook, but unsuccesfully, and entertain the 3 and 4 year olds with my blonde hair and crazy disney songs. Added to that is that now the group of 15 of wazungus have bonded, and so Im constantly round different peoples houses making fruit juices and cornflake cakes! At certain times i almost forget im in Tanzania when we listen to western music, eating chocolate and chatting ,that is until i need the loo, or wander outside for the 1 smoke a day that I still cant stop myself from having, even with my current chest and sinus infection!

Last week I taught my first lesson, which was really exciting. We were in groups of 3, and luckily the girl in my group called val is REALLY good at swahilli. We arrived at the school with a lesson plan due to last 40 minutes maximum for 10-20 children, but being africa our group got the 52 strong class and told it had to last 80 miunutes to make up for the extra students! all I'll say is my game of "simon says" lasted a very long time, and the children spent a long time trying to do the splits and lick their elbows!  but  Nathan, Valerie and I all walked out after just over an hour with huge grins on our faces. We did it!! I danced like a chicken, jumped up and down, and hopefully taught them something new about V.V.U/U.K.I.M.W.I (sorry, as my swahilli improves, my english gets worse!)

This week is our second to last week of swahilli, which is daunting, but all that is left to do is for us to practice, we know almost all the theories and grammatic rules (not that i use them much) and i need to continue talking to random people to practice vocab and sentence structure. which should be easy to do in the week holday weve been given, and the following month with our fellow tanzanian volunteers.

I think thats about all for now, except to say, aswell as everything else im getting a bloody good tan!!

em x

P.S unfortunatly no photos uploaded yet, but hopefully next week i can steal some from another volunteers camera as i forgot my lead!

x

Posted by Emily ( 3:28 PM )
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