Pictures! And Bribes!

Ok, so I'm not sure what is more exciting to write about first. Just for your viewing pleasure, I'll entice you all with pretty pictures.

 

 

These are the two views of our kitchen, this is where we walk in. The stove doesn't actually work, but the fridge does!

 

Our living/sitting room, with Christine demonstrating how we sit in the sitting room.

 

Behind the chairs we have the bathroom sink that doesn't belong in the bathroom.

 

My bed! I included the frame to give some sort of dimension to the bed- it's huge! As you can see, I have a lovely mosquito net. I believe this bed is a sign that God answers prayers. I wanted a canopy bed when I was little. God gave it to me :)

 

My cabinet! It literally took six men to bring this in!

 

You can't see the toilet, but this is the bathroom. That green bucket is our spare water for when the water isn't on, which is most mornings. So far, I've only had to do one bucket shower.

 

 

 

Eventually, I'll get some more pics of the school and what not on. In the meantime, I feel it necessary to share the full story of how I got my residence permit so quickly, as I learned it today. I was told I needed $500 US to get my permit. I had some on hand, but not enough, so when I Christine and I were in town one day, we tried to get schillings to exchange into dollars. I didn't realize I didn't have enough schillings to exchange, so we went to SIX banks to try to get more! I don't know, God just didn't think that was the time or place. Every bank either was closed, the ATM's didn't work, didn't give me as much as I needed, or I got declined (which was weird because I haven't had that problem). We got pretty close, and just figured the pastor could bring the rest of it when he went to get the permit, and I would pay him back. Well, a few weeks pass, I get permit, and I start looking at it. It says it only cost $250. I never actually asked pastor because I forgot, but I didn't expect him to keep money from me that was mine. He didn't. This afternoon, he, the other pastor, and a trustee came over to our house. They explained that my permit had cost a lot of money to get so quickly, they had to pay for transportation for people and documents to certain places faster, etc.,

 

Western translation: The pastor used the extra money to bribe people to get my permit done faster. And it worked. I feel somewhat dirty right now, and that's not the usual dirt on my feet.

 

I hope your worlds are as interesting as mine! :)

 

God bless!

Kjirstin

 

One month?!

Yep, you read that right. One month. It’s been one month since I got here. That’s so mind blowing to me; some times that feels wrong because surely I’ve been here so much longer, and other times I can’t believe it’s only been one month. Ironically, today I got my official residence permit, which was comforting to have! Apparently, sometimes that takes a while for those things to go through, so I was quite happy to know that mine came through before the three month traveler's visa I got to enter the country ended. It was a somewhat strange feeling to look at it, good though!

I actually preached last week for the youth service and Sunday school. Now, I was a Sunday school teacher for four years, but I always had a curriculum, tons of neat things to go with it, etc. This time I just had a bible and my brain. I also was under the impression that I would just be giving the message to the older kids since most understand English quite well on their own (although we still did translate). Otherwise, I expected I would be with the other teacher for everything, and we would combine the kids. Nope. I was kind of just on my own all of a sudden. Thankfully, the oldest kids are 12-13, so they helped with everything. And now that I have this warning, next week should go a little smoother.

The message I think was ok. It's really hard to preach here! The closest thing I have done to preaching was to give oratories which weren't biblical. Now, I have to preach to people here, but I have no idea what the issues are here! Like, in America, I know what things people my age struggle with in their Christian walks. I know what kids are taught and what they are not taught, so I would know what would be review, new material, too much, too little, and so on. I'm really terrified that things I'm talking about which makes sense to me aren't even considerations here. I tried to stick to really basic things or things that I thought my small knowledge base of culture here could relate to. For the Sunday school kids I just talked about 1 Timothy 4:12 which is "don't let anyone look down on you because you are young but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity." Here, respect to elders is mandatory and unquestioned. To do otherwise results in corporal punishment, something I've just had to harden my heart about when I see. A kid here once asked me what to do if an older person (I think the example was parent because he was talking about the 10 commandments) asked you to do something you knew was wrong. I didn't talk about that situation specifically, but I did talk about how we aren't practicing being Christians right now. We are Christians right now, and we can set examples for even people older than us. No idea how it went over. Maybe it was just a seed to plant now anyway, and it has to grow.

For the youth service (youth here is defined as 12-30ish) I talked about how to put our plans with God's eternal plan. I talked a lot about how we need to have faith in God's plan and trust in him rather than making our own plans. I pointed out that that is incredibly scary, but even a scared faith is still faith. The verse I really tried to tie it to was Malachi 3:10: "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." I think this is one of the coolest verses I've ever read, mostly because it's one of the two places in the bible we are actually called to test God. Of course, this test is different because we aren't saying something like "God, if you're there, throw down a dancing snake on fire so I can prove it to everyone else you're there." [In case you're all wondering, there is no dancing snake on fire in my room at the moment. Pretty sure God's still there though. =)] This test is a test of faith in God; if we give him our lives, he will give back so much more to us. No matter what, that's terrifying, but at least God's given us his assurance that he will care for us (Jeremiah 29:11). Again, I have no idea how much anyone else could relate to that, but I feel faith is so universal it could be understood.

The good news at school this week: I gots a classroom!

The other news at school this week: Exams! Which means my classroom was put to little use this week. Oh well.

Every month, the students take exams to gauge their progress and to prepare them along the way for the important exams, Class IV and Class VII. Class VII is the most important because those determine if students go to secondary school. Class IV exams must be passed in order to go onto Class V, so I guess students get passed without question or at least not many until Class IV and then after Class V. Class VII exams are done, but Class IV exams are happening in November, so they took a mock exam this week. The other classes were supposed to take their usual monthly exams while Class IV took the mock exam.

However, the monthly exams weren't ready. We didn't know that until we got to school, as did most teachers. Basically, there weren't many lessons planned, and the students were quite bored; Christine and I spent a lot of time entertaining them with the exception of Class IV since their exams were ready. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun; sometimes, even the simplest thing can provide so much entertainment. I use a stopwatch when I read with them so I know how long I'm taking with each student; they had a blast with us timing them to see how fast they could run around the building. Exams did start on yesterday, but Class IV was done with their exams so we completely reversed the problem. At one point, I was in Class IV playing a game with them where they had two teams, one student went up to the chalkboard, I would call out a math problem, whoever got it right first got a point. Then today we have a holiday because it's a Muslim holiday. So we have a three day weekend, and tests will continue on next week. My very new, fragile schedule more or less flew out the window this week. We'll see what happens next week!

I've tried to reflect on my time here at this first major milestone, but I'm really not sure what to say. I'm here. I know that much. I've learned tons, grown a lot already, and done things that I never imagined doing usually with little warning and less than ideal circumstances. I still have no idea what's to come though, so in some ways I feel I'm no further than I was when I got here. I'm just leaning on God and trusting him with all I have. Honestly, I feel like the sermons I gave he had me do just so I could hear them. If that's so, then I think there's part I forgot to include. Basically, I gave these six months quite literally to God. I came knowing little about what I would be doing, only asking that I would have enough time to study so that I could earn my degree (which would hopefully be used for God in some way someday anyway). Otherwise, I said I'll do what needs to be done. Even if you say that, God doesn't give you the entire plan. It's still scary, it's still hard, but I do believe that God will give back to me so much blessing, that I won't know what to do with it. I pray he does the same for all of you. :)

God bless,

Kjirstin

Baby steps

So I realized today that I haven't posted in close to a week, but it's been a fast week! That's always good I think. At least, for me, it probably means a bit of a routine is establishing. There haven't been too many big moments, just lots of little ones that I feel are noteworthy.

Last Sunday, Christine and I hosted our prayer service for the missionary community. It was quite nice to have everyone come to our house! I was pretty impressed, our little living room held 14 people. One of these days when I get around to taking photos, you'll be able to see why that's so impressive. We got even luckier because we had mentioned to one of the couples that our table didn't work (the top was not attached to the base at all, any weight was a questionable act), so they actually brought tools to fix it! All we need is a heat source of some sort, and our home will be quite complete!

Other than Tuesday, this week was quite normal. We literally live 20 feet from the school; you can look into Class I from our porch, so in the mornings, I often wake up to kids screaming and running around before school. On Tuesday, Christine and I were getting ready for school and we commented to each other that it seemed awfully quiet. We walked to school and saw maybe 12 scattered students and a lot of parents. The head teacher then informed us that it was an immunization day and there was no school. I guess this the Tanzanian version of a snow day because that's what I felt like all day. It was just weird to get to sleep in the morning and lounge around doing schoolwork. It was so relaxing!

On Wednesday, I went to the prayer service for the first time. It was very much similar to a mini church service because there was a lot of singing, praying and someone gave a message. It was nice though, and I hope to go from now on. I still have yet to go to the all night prayer service, but I intend to make that happen at one point. I want to at the very least say I did it once.

This week unfortuantely I had some miscommunications with the Math teacher so I haven't been able to start working with the Class IV and VI kids. I would have rather started this week, there's just a lot that could be done, but this may have been part of God's plan all the same. Right now, the spare classroom is being used, but that should end this week or next week. Then I'll have a place I can meet with the kids, actually have a chalk board, chalk, and be able to actually talk my class as if they're, you know, a class. Soon!

I'm getting to know the students better, and I absolutely love it! I'm here and there recognizing students, which considering I've been getting to know about 90 of them, I'm pretty excited about that! The other day, I for the first time just got to "hang out" shall we say with some of my students. During a free period one came up to our desk and proceeded to tell me all of the things we will do in our math class when we get a classroom (I think she's more excited than I am!). She also started grabbing all of my extra reading materials and reading for fun, we had a blast! Later that day too, a different student decided to just sit down at our desk and talk to me. She wanted to know where I had gone to school, my birthday, how old I was, (she thought I was 29), Christmas, how school works in America, how to play certain sports, all sorts of things! The kids have been so shy around me it's nice to actually talk to them.

It rained for the first time yesterday! I realized it had been three and half weeks since I had last seen rain. So far, that's been my one homesickness. My brain knows it's fall. The weather here is quite warm, but it sort of reminds me of really warm, early September days, and with me just getting here and arriving at school, I keep thinking it is September and this is a new school year. So wrong. The other problem is then my brain knows logically, fall type weather, smells, sights, halloween, cold nights, pumpkins, etc. should follow the beginning of a school year. Oddly enough in a tropical climate in the Southern hemisphere of Africa, they're not coming. So I'm just terribly confused some days, and in some ways, the rain made it worse. It really felt like a rainy day in Northfield for some reason, so I kept thinking about being back on fourth Burton my freshman year. That was kind of hard, and I have had a number of moments like that. Most days, I love going on facebook, but somedays it just makes me miss everyone back home and want to be with them.

This is a normal part of culture shock; bewilderment usually comes at the end of the honeymoon phase. However, I think they're mixing a little. I mean, I took my first solo dala dala ride today, which went well. I think I'm starting to understand town just a little. My English class went pretty well the other day. My days may have challenges, but they are filled with blessings as well. And life as a whole really is about appreciating the latter and accepting the former, with God along you every step of the way. So, I guess that means everything is just ok. :)

God bless!
Kjirstin

PS: I've heard some people back home are struggling to comment, and I've heard that some of tried but I unfortunately haven't received them, so here's a little tutorial on how to comment.

1. Click on the comments link directly underneath this post. There is one of these under every post. It will either say "no comments" or "1 comment" "2 comments" etc.
2. There will be a box labeled "Post a Comment." In the white space, write whatever you would like.
3. Underneath the white space, there will be a line that reads "Comment as..." with a drop down menu beside it. Click on the drop down menu.
4. There will be lots of options. The last two will be "Anonymous" or "Name/URL". You can do either anonymous and leave your name in the actual comment so I know who you are, or you can click name/url. That will bring up a box that will ask for your name and your URL. I think it posts without the URL, so just put in your name, leave the URL blank, and click ok. If that gives you problems though, just stick to anonymous and include your name in the messge.
5. You can preview the message by clicking preview.
6. You can then publish the message by clicking publish.
All comments are public, so if it went correctly, you see it underneath the blogpost.

Hopefully, this helps. I'm really touched that people are wanting to leave comments, and I'm really bummed that it hasn't been working!

If you guys have questions, my email is kjirstinalmos@yahoo.com and you can email me.

MATH!

I haven't posted in a few days, life here has been busy! Today should be rather lazy, and I'm quite excited about that.

School has been very interesting this week, and Monday was only the tip of the iceburg. On Tuesday, the head teacher asked me to teach Class Five math and Class Six science, as in become the class teacher. Students here are really struggling in math and science, so that's where the school really wants help. When they saw my high school transcript and saw some of the classes I took, (chemistry, physics, trig, etc.), they took that to mean I was certified to teach in them. We've had to explain many times that I don't have a college degree, so teaching for me should be somewhat limited. Furthermore, there are already teachers for Class Five and Six, and my job here is not to replace people, espcially temporarily. Someday, I will leave, and I want to empower people here so that something I can start here can continue without me. We've struggled explaining the idea of a teaching aide or resource teacher to the head teacher and other teachers here. We finally got through the idea helping the upper level math teacher in class, but then she turned around and asked me to teach a few periods a week.

Basically, I tried to do what I do with the English classes- pull out one student at a time, work with them for a few minutes, then switch students, repeat, etc. So I asked the math teacher for one of her strugglers. She asked me to explain even, odd, and prime numbers as well as GCF. So we went over to my desk. The student is basically fifth grade level in the US, so I was thinking, "All right, even, any number divisible by two." Here's basically what happened:

Me: Can you tell me what 2 divided by 2 is?
Him: 1
Me: 4 divided by 2?
Him: 2
Me 6 divided by 2?
Him: Silence and blank stare.

I was floored. He eventually got the answer, by drawing out six tallies and grouping them into two group, how you teach basic division at the beginning. Somehow, I was supposed to explain prime numbers, numbers that are only divisible by one and themselves, and the greatest common factor. I was prepared to teach a kid struggling with even and odd numbers, but I expected to have the building blocks. We needed to go back and redo some of our second grade basics!

Now, I don't pretend to understand the mind of God, but I think all of our frustrations were a build up to what I think needs to be done. My brain was whirring, trying to find some solution to what we were going to do. I had inadvertantly spent the entire period with that one student, and I'm not sure if we made progress or not, but then I thought, "What if we had a remedial class?" I asked the teacher how many students she thought were at that level in her Class Five Math, and she thought about ten. I think that's what we're going to try to do. We have an empty classroom at the moment because the Class Seven kids are done for the year (our school years run with the calendar years, so we'll end in December). I think I'm just going to pull them out and do my own math class with them. On Friday, I had the ten strugglers come with me, and I had made flashcards that for addition went no higher than 9+9, and subtraction that started at 12-1, praying I was wrong and they would breeze through them. I would estimate that the kids were only at a 60-70%, so there is a lot of work to be done.

From what I understand, Class Five is the worst at the moment. I actually ended up teaching a Class Four math period this week because one day the teacher was gone, and some Class Four students came up to me and told me I was teaching (?????). They said they were doing long multiplication, so I figured "Easy enough. A little extra practice won't hurt them." As a whole, they did ok. A lot of the mistakes were silly mistakes- if I would have made them check their work before handing it in to me,  I bet most of them would have been caught. I think they got the concepts, but again, when I would go around and say, "6 times 5 is?" they would have to pull out the times table to check. And if I would say "all right, you carried a 4, so what is 25 plus 4?" they more often than not had to count on their fingers before being able to tell me. I know I was blessed; school came very easily to me. But I do think this is behind where they should be. I remember practicing from second - fourth grade to learn our basic addition, subtraction, times and division tables. I remember math minutes and flashcards, so that when we were doing higher level math we didn't have to spend time redoing the basics over and over. We could just whip them out. And since our entire goal is to get these kids to secondary school (the tests that Class Seven just took are the entire point of primary school- seven years in preparation for one set of tests) I would like them to be able truly excel once they get there. Otherwise, why prepare them to simply get there? They have to get through it as well.

I feel like I'm preaching to the choir. Sorry! Because I can meet with each class four times a week, I think we're going to try to do the remedial class with Four, Five and Six. We'll just have to see how it goes. I'm just glad that I think God has finally given me a more clear purpose for being here. At first all I knew was he wanted me to go somewhere and do something; I got the Tanzania part, but I was never sure what he exactly wanted me to do. Again, it's a tricky balance sometimes. We want to do temporary things that just need an extra set of hands or things that we can start and have someone continue for us. We don't want to take over for someone already here, or do something that someone else here can. Unfortunately, because we're mzungus, we see an attitude a lot that we should do everything, regardless if I'm actually adding to or taking over. I feel like with this, if we do enough work in the six months I'm here, we can hopefully get these kids back up to where they should be. Then they can continue when I'm gone and my help wouldn't be necessary any more. Hopefully we can also make sure that the younger classes aren't where this is starting (there have been a number of teacher changes over the years, so this could have happened because of a former teacher no longer with us. At the moment, I feel pretty confident about our younger class teachers.)

I know this is already such a long blog post, but I've actually had a life outside of school this week. On Wednesday, Christine and I went to town to meet another missionary for supper; that was fun! On Thursday, we went to a congregation member's house for supper. It was really nice. The best part was getting to actually play with the kids! I think that was the most enjoyable tickle war I've ever been in! When you're teaching the kids, you don't get to just have fun with them. In all honesty, I think Christine and I had more fun than they did. Last night, I learned about another part of the mzungu community here in Morogoro. Some of Christine's friends were leaving Tanzania, so we went out to a restaurant. They were all researchers; one who told us about what she doing talked about studying deforestation and farming practices at the university (Sokione University of Agriculture in Morogoro). It was a very different group to be with. I felt like I was with a European group of Carls. It was kind of fun to nerd it out again :) Also, yesterday, I taught my first English class with the church ladies. We did lots of conversation practice, and they went fast! I'm going to have to prepare more for them to do next week.

Wow, so much! This week looks quieter, which I'm glad about. I took some intense naps this week to keep up with everything going on! Now, time to do some schoolwork.

God bless!
Kjirstin

I figure at least one heart attack a day can't be too bad...

Before everyone (or at the very least my mother) panics, no this is not a real heart attack. This simply refers to the moment of terror you have when you realize that the head teacher is asking you to teach the third graders in about an hour and a half. And yes, this is the first time he's telling you.

I guess God decided it was time for me to step up and be a teacher. At the very least, he sure heard about it the constant desperate prayer I was having of "Please Lord, let this go well!" Although the concept wasn't very difficult in principle (telling time) there was a reason I was being asked to teach it. In at least eastern Africa, there's something known as "Swahili time" where the day begins at 6 AM, not midnight. So if someone says two in the morning, they actually mean 8 AM. The hours are always six off, but the time reference (morning, afternoon, etc.) is correct. It's very strange to get used to, and actually some of the teachers have to ask us what times the books are referring to because the books use English time, not Swahili.

So, there I was, standing up in front of about thirty third graders with nothing but chalk and chalkboard. Ironically, there wasn't even a clock in the room. And we made it work. I worked a lot with them on what the minutes were because that's where they really struggle apparently. I'm not entirely sure how well they learned. I didn't have any exercises to give them to prove that they learned it, and since the book the head teacher gave me was for Class IV not Class III, they couldn't follow along with me. But I can confidantly say some progress was made. And, I loved it. Something felt really natural about being up there. There were a lot of things I would have like to improve or change, like having more time to prepare or actually knowing their names, but it was its own blessing.

In other news, the last few days have been good. Friday afternoon I actually slept through (four solid hours of napping) because I wanted to go to the all night prayer service. You read that right. It's an all night thing where the church literally prays, sings, preaches, etc. from 10 pm to 5 am. I'm naturally a night owl, so an excuse to nap, stay up all night, praise God, and then sleep in the next day is a complete winner in my mind. I was all ready, and the pastor's daughter was going to go as well, so I even had someone to translate for me. But then the pastor asked me not to because of the mosquitoes. So... that was a bummer.

But, it was most likely a blessing in disguise. For having slept all afternoon, I still crashed that night and slept in until 10 on Saturday. I think my body needed it- I wasn't napping as much last week, and while I've been making a fairly smooth transition to the schedule here and through the time change, I had hit my limit and needed to catch up. The next day was a very lazy day for me, and it felt a lot like being home. I hung around the house and did homework all day. Even that got long for me, but I knew Sunday was going to be busy, so I needed to compensate.

I was right about Sunday. First was church, which was long and is more culturally draining than anything. Church is done in such a different style here, which I'm still adapting to, and then it's all in Swahili. I'm still able to understand just enough to get by, although the pastor's family does help us. There's one part in particular which I can really connect to. It's called "Praising Songs" and five different congregation members get up front and each one leads a different praise song. They're a few lines repeated many times, but they're praises to God. Usually, they're simple enough I can figure out we're saying, and I really like that. The first four are pretty energetic and upbeat, and the last one slows down. The differences are amazing in church here. There's only one or two people beating a drum, no piano, no organ, except for the English choir's song which we have a keyboard for. It's weird to not have no screen lyrics, no program, etc. I'm just trying to say what everyone else says and hope it sounds close! Everyone even brings their own bibles to church.

Unlike last week though, during the sermon, I went and helped the pastor's daughter with Sunday school. We take the children about eight or so and younger out and sing songs with them, she gave a short talk about being kind, they did some memory work, and then they played a game. She's asked me to keep helping with that, and I think I'm going to. It was a blast!

That afternoon, Christine and I went to some other missionaries' house to have our prayer service and a meal. It was wonderful! I do miss worshipping in a style similar to what I'm used to- singing praise hymns and even traditional hymns I'm used to is really comforting. You would think that being here and doing this, it would keep God ever on your mind. I mean, if it wouldn't have been for him, I would be at Carleton right now working on philosophy papers. Yet, you can still drift. I'm thinking about the culture, the students, the school, my own schoolwork, my life here, etc. To have that moment to be pulled back to the real reason I'm here and the most important part, it was really soothing. After the service, we had a meal together. I really don't have complaints about the Tanzanian food; I'm doing fine. The western style meal was really good though! BBQ's, potato salad, and brownie's for someone's birthday! I realized I hadn't had that much sugar in my mouth at once in a few weeks. So good!

Today was back to business- Monday's are busy days for us even without suddenly being given extra classes to teach. The rest of the week looks comfortably busy- we're going to town on Wednesday to meet another missionary for supper and over to a congregation member's house on Thursday for dinner. Christine teaches a English class to some church ladies, and I'm going to be doing a second session of that every week, more for practice. That's going to start on Friday afternoon.

I hope all is well for all of you, and I miss you all lots!

God bless!
Kjirstin

Yesterday, I wore a curtain...

In my defense, it wasn't intentional. And for clarification, this is not a normal Tanzanian activity. Christine and I bought some kitanga matieral, which is just a long, cotton sheet meant to wrap around a woman, to make a curtain and for me. They're very handy for us westerners who like to wear shorts in our house (which are not acceptable for women here) to quickly make ourselves "Tanzania appropriate." Anyway, you buy them in sets of two and three and cut them at home. One was cut to be worn, the other to be a curtain. As you can all guess, a simple mistake was made. Thankfully, we caught it before we went anywhere that would have resulted in offenses.

The last few days have been busy, but not eventful. I'm still adjusting to everything that's going on and life here in general. I'm trying to settle into some sort of routine. So far, Monday-Friday is school from 7:30-3:00, then I usually spend the afternoon in my room with my fan doing schoolwork, sometimes there's something going on in the evening like a prayer service, and then over to the pastor's house for dinner around eight, devotions about nine, and then back to the house to get ready for bed. Since many people don't know, I feel I should quickly explain my schooling situation. The University of London International Programme is a long distance education system that allows students to study from anywhere in the world. There isn't any exact schoolwork, ie, no papers, assignments, quizzes, etc. Rather, studying is done independently and then students sit an exam in May in a number of countries (I think it's about 130 total). Tanzania is an option, but I'm planning to do mine in the USA. This exam is the entire grade. Somewhat scary, but considering that this allows me to continue my education while being here and giving back, I think it's worth it. Since I'm studying theology, I also think this keeps me connected to the reality of my degree while my studies are far more theoretical. I should also clarify, this degree is an academic theology. I could go on to become a pastor, but I could do a variety of things with this degree. Currently, I'm studying Philosophy of Religion, Religion and Science, The New Testament, and Christian Ethics.

Back to Africa, Tuesday was quite exciting- I got my cabinet! I finally got to unpack and feel like I moved in! The cabinet is huge. It was a six man job to get it in my room! Also, a lady in the church who needed some work is going to be doing some cleaning and came over for the first time. Christine and I were so excited when we got home! It is incredibly hard to keep clean, well everything here, your home, shoes, your clothes, you..... The roads and much of the ground is dirt. It's dry right now so it's at least not muddy, but the story of Jesus washing the disciples feet keeps going off in the back of my head. I have just accepted that my feet will not be clean while I'm here. Actually, I've learned here that my body can be quite colorful. From the reds and pinks of sunburn covering my arms and chest, to the at least twenty mosquito bites dotting my arms and legs and the permanent dirt stains on my feet, I'm just a piece of artwork! :)

Of course, all of those things stand out more because my skin is so white. Yesterday, we went to town to get my internet modem, which is great to finally be on my own internet. That trip was the first time I really heard the word "mzungu" a lot. Mzungu in Swahili literally means white person. I have yet to understand why it accepted or even thought to see a white person and just yell out "white person!" Especially in Morogoro, it's not super uncommon because there's a large missionary community here. It's not meant to be offensive or anything; ironically, yesterday afternoon, a little girl in class I yelled out to me "teacher mzungu" as I was walking back to the house to get my attention, purely so she could wave good bye to me. It was adorable! :) Like I said, I still don't understand what the lure is in yelling it at us. Half the time, they don't want to talk to us. I guess if all else fails, it's a sign my skin hasn't changed it's mind and decided to start tanning all of a sudden. (And even if it started tanning, I doubt it would ever become dark enough to blend in here).

There isn't much more I can say simply. Bits and pieces of the nuances of daily life I feel will come in the blog the longer I'm here. Everything is so different from home, but not in a bad way. Perhaps this is me just entering the "honeymoon" phase of culture shock, but I think it's deeper than that. My main job at school so far is to do hooked on phonics with the English students in Classes IV, V, and VI. This means reading the same ten sentence story over with 90 different kids, answering the same questions, and doing the same activities. This sounds incredibly repetitive, and there are a few moments it is. However, overall, working with the kids, getting to see them figure out the answers, and soon, start improving in their English, test taking, everything, this just makes sense. I keep thinking about where I was six months ago, a year ago, even two years ago. There's no way I would have believed that this is what I would be doing now, and although I've loved Carleton and England, I just know this where God wants me to be right now. :)

God bless!
Kjirstin

Edit: Please pray for one of our students- this afternoon, she was hit by a piki piki (motorcycle) as she was trying to cross the street. She's in the hospital with injuries and will be transfered to another hospital tomorrow near DAR to see a specialist. Prayers for her, her family, and her doctors would be very appreciated!