A quick post

I have a little time so I am going to do a quick post about various things I happen to have pictures of.

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At TCC (the Tanzania Children's Concern) the end of the semester is coming up soon and the children have just finished taking their tests. The testing took about a day and a half and covered subjects from math and English to art and Swahili. Once graded the tests go into a folder for each student that has all their tests and report cards. In standard 1 the children all wanted to show me their file's.

Once the tests were done there wasn't much planed for the students to learn as the teachers had to spend their time correcting all the tests. So, as a reward, I took the standard 3 class out to play for an hour instead of giving busy work. We went out behind the small school to a small dusty field where the children play soccer, jump rope and swing on a couple swing sets. I have discovered that my level of soccer is in fact third grade or there abouts. Once the kids grow past my shoulder I'm done, but for now I am awesome.

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One of our favorite places to hang out is a coffee shop in downtown Moshi called, aptly enough, The Coffee Shope (it's fancy because of the extra e). It's mostly a mzungu hang out and you can find people from all over the world there on any given day. They serve a great ice coffee with ice cream on top that on hot days (ie: every day) is absolutely wonderful. Whenever I am in Moshi by myself and want to run into some fellow CCS volunteers I go sit at The Coffee Shope, order an ice coffee and what ever cake they have that day (banana cake is the best) and wait. In less than half an hour there is almost a guarantee that a CCS volunteer will walk in.

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Here in the Moshi area we dont see all that many wild animals. It's kind of disopointing that I don't walk down the road and see giraffes eating from trees everyday. We do however have some smaller wild animals at the Karanga base, including todes, various birds, a copule bats from time to time, and our newest addition, a 4lb tourtouse named Kobe Bryant. It seems that John and Joe were given the tourtouse at their placement a couple days ago and brought it home. It's been wondering the grounds for a few days now and we see it every so often. when I asked why it's name is Kobe I was told that the swahili word for tourtouse is kobi, so it was only logical.

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Another intresting thing about Tanzania is the rainy season. Now, comming from Connecticut I really had no idea what a "rainy season" truly entailed. Well, yesterday I found out first hand. As Alex and I left the internet cafe we decided we would walk the four blocks or so to the coffee shope and have an ice coffee. Fairly standard. The day had been overcast and cool, and after about one block of walking a little rain began to fall. As people around us scrambled to get to dry places Alex and I just kept walking, we thought that since we would be inside soon we would only get a little wet and could wait out the rain. The flaw in that plan came a moment later when the little rain turned into a downpour. With no rain coats or umbrellas we had no choice but to continue. By the time we got to the Coffee Shope we were very wet, but not soaked yet. We steped under the Coffee Shope porch only to realize that on sundays the Coffee Shope is closed.

We waited for several minutes in the hope that the rain would stop, but it only came down harder. With no better plan we decided to walk three blocks further to the Coffee Lounge, known to be open on Sundays, and finaly get our ice coffee's. As we ran under what cover we could, jumping yard wide muddy streams in the roads, we got soaked. The Double road (more or less main street) was compleatly covered in water, it was more river than road. Car's were stuck with people inside them. We got to the Coffee Lounge and finaly had our ice coffee's. With all the rain we were actually a little cold, but it was the principal of the thing. In the time we sat and drank our coffee the rain cleared up and we were able to walk and get a cab with out drowning.

Well, I'm just about out of time, and I am going to head over to The Coffee Shoppe now, have an ice coffee, and see who show's up.