Moevenpick Royal Palm Hotel Dar es Salaam

Swahili Greetings!: Hujambo! (Worries?) response Sijambo! (I am fine or no worries). Mambo? (What matters?) response Poa, Bomba, Safi (all variations of cool). Vipi? (What's up?) also respond with Poa , Bomba, or Safi. Habari za leo? (What's the news today?) Habari za asubuhi? (What's the news this morning?) or just Habari? (What's the news?) respond to all Nzuri (good) or Safi (cool or clean). However, if you were to greet your elders then you would not say Mambo or Vipi which is used in con...

So amid concerns and protests that I don't update my journal regularly =), here is the update for the past week and a half. This past week at the nursery was interesting. Each day the kids seem to become more and more comfortable with the "white" teachers there. Meaning that they seemed to hit each other and us with more fervor than the week before. Some kids were exceptional misbehaving, such as Rehema, who insisted on practically eating a pencil. But every time we took it away from her, she...

So teaching is definitely getting better and better, but I'm transfering to the high school anyway so I'm trying to make an impact on the primary school students while I can. I'll most likely visit them in the afternoon, depending on what periods I'm teaching over at the secondary school (History for Form 4 students and Geography for Form 2, and possibly some math classes, which I'll get details on tomorrow). Today and yesterday, I took over Quinn's English lessons. I think they're actually g...

This weekend was interesting. Saturday was Jamie's birthday, so we spent a night at the Movenpick, this nice hotel downtown. We got some hot water showers and a lot of pool time, and we even went dancing in the club downtown (except the music wasn't that great, apparently they usually have a better DJ). The hotel was nice until I started thinking over my purpose for being here, so I felt really out of place because I didn't come to Africa to stay in hotels and take hot showers and sit around ...

Mambo, I'minAfricaI'minAfricaI'minAfricaI'minA fricaI'minAfrica. I'm doing very well here in the Motherland these days. I've been loving my life lately. Where to begin, ok, I'm not in the orphanage these days, thats pretty big news. The trip there was over an hour and required a bike taxi, 2 dalla-dallas, and a 15 minute walk, and thats only one way. My knee was failing miserably. After a wonderful talk with the best fiancee in the history of fiancees and some common sense I decided to work c...