(How are you doing?) Habari gani...
I'm in the Peace Corps training (PCT) phase right now. We're cruising
through Kiswahili...I think we've been in Tanzania for 8 days and
learning the language for 5 days...

We have covered a lot of ground in the 5 days. We are all pretty much
on hyper absorption these days. My community based training (CBT)
group consists of 4 people. We live "close" to the school. I believe
I'm the furthest out of all of the volunteers. it's pretty cool. I'm
at the base of one of the mountains. people have said that it's like
hawaii. beats me. i think the areas of tanzania i have been through
remind me of Taiwan. excuse the lack of appropriate punctuation,
grammar, etc.

two CBT groups live in Bigwa. i am in one of the groups. I have
attached a picture of my family that i am living with for 10 weeks, 9
weeks now. They are the Semgombas. The picture includes some of the
neighbors that were playing at the house. There is no electricity so
we have kerosene lamps at night. we close the doors and windows so
that the malaria-carrying mosquitoes don't get in. i also get a
mosquito net over my bed. pretty slick. i got to iron with an actual
iron iron that you put hot coals into...awesome! ^_^

one of the pictures has an awesome snail we saw at our stay in the
capital. there are some other pics in there from various things that
might be entertaining. the morogoro training place was neat. there was
an open courtyard in the middle of the place. Oh, so Bigwa is a
"suburb" of Morogoro.

the most important thing i learned was that what's in black and white
in the book means noooothinnnnggg at all. so whatever you read that
you think we (peace corps volunteers) should have, you should just
disregard it.

although i did find out i will be teaching chemistry in
english...thank goodness (as opposed to kiswahili), but i do have to
survive in the community for 2 years, which is why we have to learn
the language and pass the language assessment. depending on which form
i get (grade levels are divided into forms here), i can have somewhere
between 8 and 40 students, ages 12-30, when i get to my village.
currently, we do have running water.

because of my awesome slow internet connection and my remote location,
i have not gone through any of your emails. forgive me if you do not
get a personal reply.

i just wanted to let you know that all is going well and i hope all is
well with you. ^_^

take care,
katy