I've finally moved into the hostel, my new home for the next 9 weeks, after almost 2 weeks of problems that prevented me from living there. First, the hostel was under construction, then the city of Tanga turned off the water supply to the whole town for a weekend while they apparently worked on some pipeline construction or something. No one in the city had water for 3 days, yet no one complains to the water department so they never hurry their work and it took much longer to get water running at the hostel than first anticipated. Can you imagine what would happen in Vancouver if the water was simply switched off for 3 days? Complaicency is rampant in this country from what I've seen so far.

Complaicency has also been an issue in my volunteer project. I am teaching children aged 4-6 in the mornings from 8am-12pm Monday to Friday with the help of 2 local teachers. In theory, I should be teaching English to these two young women each day, however, cutting the day short and heading home for a nap in the afternoon heat is usually a much more appealing option for them, and I haven't tutored either of them all week. I'm trying my best to get the teachers at the community centre to try to think outside of the box a bit and help develop new teaching methods, but in a country with a traditional and often dry education system, this remains a foreign concept. So, every day, I stand up all by myself in front of 15-20 students (attendance varies greatly from day to day) and sing songs and act like a crazy mzungu (white foreigner). I get tons of laughs from the kids and teachers alike.

The game/song, "London Bridge is Falling Down" has been a big hit; Two of us hold hands to make an archway and all the others walk through single file while we sing the song. In theory, one does not want to get caught under the bridge when it collapses because then you must make up the bridge, however, when 'London Bridge' falls down at the end of the song, I end up with a mob - all 15 kids - under the bridge in a giant, screaming and giggling group hug. They are pretty hilarious.

Another big hit has been "Duck-Duck-Goose" but modified to "Tembo, Tembo, Simba," which translates to "Elephant, Elephant, Lion." I look like a moron doing the "hokey pokey" but now we can tell our left hand from our right hand and understand how to turn around in English. If anyone has suggestions for childhood games like these, please pass them on to me! I need all the help I can get in my attempt to make the kindergarten curriculum here more interactive and fun.

Over the weekend I went to Peponi Beach Resort, about an hour south of Tanga for one night. Mohamed gave me a 'tent,' put me on a bus and sent me there on my own, which was fine until I discovered the tent was really more of a mosquito net and offered zero privacy. Luckily, I met up with a big group of Norwegian Nursing students from the Tanga area who are also volunteering for a few months, and they let me crash in a spare bed in one of their cabins. It was SO NICE to have a few English-speaking friends for a couple days and we got to exchange some amazing stories about our experiences in Tanzania thus far. Some of the Norwegians are living in remote villages with pretty crappy living conditions - two girls now refer to the mosquito net above their bed as a 'rat net' because it is the only thing that keeps the rats from crawling on them during the night. For some, a shower is a mere bucket of water dumped over your head. I'm starting to feel extremely fortunate about my hostel, which comes complete with a housekeeper - Zuliati (Zoo-Lee-Ah-Tee) - who cooks and cleans for us! Two of the nurses came by the school yesterday to check on my kids and fortunately, all of them were healthy save for a minor skin irritation or two. Hopefully I'll get to meet up with all the Norwegians again before they head home...

Anyways, it's been a long day in the heat and I need to head home to the hostel before it gets dark. There is so much to tell about this sleepy Tanzanian town and my experiences so far but never enough time in front of a computer. More later :)