One month in

Well I have now been in Tanzania for exactly one month, and I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures of my apartment. I am starting to feel like I'm settling in. You will notice that some of the paint colours are....well....they leave a little bit to be desired! The school is supposed to be painting it at some point, so it will look much nicer then. I will post after pictures then!

The first picture is taken coming up the walk to the front door of our building. My apartment is upstairs. We hung out on the balcony for a while yesterday afternoon....very nice! The second picture is taken around back where the parking lot is. My apartment is upstairs. The banana tree is right along the front walk, but the monkeys will always beat us to the fruit! The fourth picture is of the guest house on our property. Right now a teacher is living there, but he will move into a house next week and they will use it for student teachers etc.

Still looking for a car. You will all laugh at me, but I haven't actually driven one yet! I was too chicken to try driving, so Shawna came along on the test drive and drove for me. I know, I am very lame. I have a lead on another one at the moment, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it might work out.

School is still very busy, and I should be marking right now actually. We start our co-curricular activities tomorrow after school, so I will have a group of "volleyball players" on our "volleyball court" for an hour. I sense it will be a different experience from my last few years of coaching!

We are without power today for the second day in a row (it came back on last night though). They seem to do rolling blackouts, especially during the dry season. Evidently this is a problem all over Africa as the energy grid hasn't evolved to meet increasing energy demands. I suppose it will become a bigger and bigger problem in the coming years. We seem to live in an area that has fewer power outages than other areas. This is the first time it has happened since I've been here.

We likely have a long weekend coming up in a couple weeks to conincide with the of Ramadan. We are planning to head out to Tarangire national park for a couple nights. My first safari! I can't wait! Until then though, I should tackle this marking.

Life as a mzungu

Well I have survived my first week teaching at ISM. I am exhausted! I have quite a hectic timetable with very little prep time and 8 different courses, so it is proving to be an adjustment! Today I introduced integers to my grade 7's, and I had to explain at length how they keep score in golf, and what +/- in hockey means. I'm not in Kansas anymore. I'm also confusing them immensely with my mathematics terminology.... exponents are called indices, irrational numbers are called surds, slope is called gradient, etc. etc. etc. The kids are absolutely fantastic though. They are friendly and they work hard. My grade 10's made pinhole cameras today, and one of them said it was the coolest thing he had ever done. A science geek in the making!

In more exciting news, I saw my first giraffe today! Not as exciting as it may seem though.... he was in the back of a truck. He and a buddy. Driving right through town. It made me quite sad actually. I will be much more excited to see them running free.

The weekend was pretty low key as I was pretty tired after the first week. Friday after work I went for dinner and a couple drinks with a two other teachers to a place called TGT. It is basically a country club.... soccer and rugby pitches, gym, fancy restaurant, and a bar. It is somewhere I would never go (and could not afford to) at home. Here, we are part of the elite. Unfortunately it seems that it is not really safe to eat in a lot of the restaurants where the locals would eat, so the foreigners (mzungu) all tend to end up at places like TGT. It feels weird to me.

Saturday was Barkley's birthday so it was a tough day for me, but I called him and heard him bark so at least I know he is still alive :) I plan to send him one of my shirts so he can smell me.... his version of proof of life!

Tomorrow I am test driving my first vehicle. I fear I will have an accident the moment I pull out of the driveway, so pray for me!

I am directionally challenged

For the first time in my life, I am directionally challenged! It's not that I have no sense of direction, it's just that I have it completely backwards. But who can blame me? The south side of our apartment building is shaded, and the north side is sunny. It's messing with me! So I've been carefully studying the map and constantly reminding myself of our direction when we are out driving somewhere. I will have to get used to using the mountains as reference.

Speaking of driving, I can't imagine how I will ever be able to drive here! Picture a city of 400 000 people without a stop light or stop sign to be seen. Only the main streets are paved, and the side streets are potholed, rough dirt roads. The traffic on the main roads is horrendous with motorcycles, bikes, pedestrians, and hand carts appearing everywhere and out of nowhere. Drivers of the daladalas (minivans that serve as the local transit system) get sick of waiting and turn one lane of traffic into three and then cut right back in front of you, even though there is no space. One of the other teachers at my school hit a motorcyclist the other night. Fortunately he is ok.

I have not had much opportunity to explore Arusha yet as I have been so busy preparing for school. MYP (Middle Years Program) is the IB program for grades 6-10, and the pedagogical approach and assessment procedure is much different so it will be a lot of work to wrap my head around it. We did however go camping on Friday night at Lake Chala on the Kenyan border. Several teachers from my school went on a bus and met other teachers from the Moshi campus. It was a beautiful campground with flush toilets and showers, a really nice area for food prep, and a bar. Apparently this is far from the norm! We had a great time. Last night, Eric who lives downstairs invited me to a BBQ with friends of his that work for NGOs in the area. People have been very welcoming.

My boxes arrived this week and I was happy to have more things in my big empty apartment, and to have coffee in the mornings! This morning I spent 20 minutes watching the monkeys in the tree outside my dining room window while I drank my coffee. Very cool. I didn't get any great pictures because they blink every time the camera clicks! They scurry around on the roof of my building so I an often hear them, but this was the first time I saw them playing in the tree. Still waiting for my first giraffe, and to see Kilimanjaro. It is usually clouded over, although I did catch a clear glimpse of the summit from a hill in town one day last week.

The first day of school is tomorrow, so I have much to do today to prepare some lessons for the week. Thanks to all of you who have been sending me little messages, especially to Dani for posting pictures of my Bug on facebook!

"Gina" means "name"....

Jambo! OK, so "name" in Swahili is actually spelt "jina" but pronounced the same as my name! This made for a very hilarious introductory conversation with one of our security guards who was trying to ask me my name, and thought I was just repeating the word back to him in Swahili. I didn't understand what he found so funny until later. I suspect this conversation will be replayed many times!

I have been here in Arusha for 4 full days now. My apartment is in a block with 3 other teachers and we have a gated yard. We have a gardener during the day and a security guard at night, so there is always someone here manning the gate and keeping an eye on things which is comforting. It is also nice to have the other teachers around. One of the others is new, but the other two have been here for a year and have been very helpful. My apartment is huge and very empty at the moment. I am hoping to receive my shipment soon and have a bit more stuff around the house!

It seems you can buy almost anything here in Tanzania, but anything imported is subject to very high tariffs and is therefore very expensive. We'll see if I become desperate enough for a $5 tin of pringles! The administrators at the school have been taking us out for meals, so tonight was the first time I had to cook for myself. I cheated though and used a spaghetti mix from home, so it doesn't really count ;) The milk is that super-pastruized stuff they keep on the shelf - blah - so it will take some getting used to!

Our school campus is absolutely gorgeous! I will teach in 2 different classrooms - one for math and one for physics/chem. The science lab seems quite well equipped. I am thrilled to have back in my possession a bottle of mercury and a container of potassium metal, both of which they no longer trusted me to have in Manitoba. I believe I laughed a devious little laugh outloud when I found both of them!

Haven't seen a giraffe yet... The TV shows and movies Jason put on my external hard drive for me have made me extremely popular, and perhaps I can use them to bribe someone for a ride into giraffe territory within the next few weeks! Here's hoping!

No internet at home yet, but hopefully soon. Sign up for Skype.... we'll chat!