Teaching In Morogoro

Well, today I have finished my second day of teaching at the Wesley Primary School here in Morogoro. Here is a picture of the school. (of course I will have more pictures and ones with kids in them before long!)

Teaching English has not been too bad of an experience so far. I have my lesson plans made up through Friday and I am set to go. The students are very shy and it's hard to get them to speak up in class, but I think that with time, they will become more comfortable with me. The most successful activities that I've done have been speaking in pairs and completing written activities. However, I did not realize that I would need to grade their work EVERY day, so I'm a little bit behind in that. By the end of today, I will have finished grading Class 6's work. Hopefully by tomorrow I will have caught up with Class 7 (which only has 10 students), so that shouldn't be too bad. However, Wednesdays are my heaviest days. Instead of only teaching 1 period of English for classes 5, 6, and 7, I have to teach 2 periods each (so 6 classes total). But, I have high hopes for being able to get everything I need to done. Before I know it, I'll have my definite routine down and things will run more smoothly.
Yesterday, Nadina and Nathan brought me to the International School where I will be able to run in the afternoons. Today will be my first day running in over a week and I am SOOOOOOOO excited!!! We also went into town and hiked up to the Rock Garden. However, we got to the rock garden too late, so we decided to save our money and pay to visit it sometime over the weekend.

It looks gorgeous from what I could see, and I'm very excited to go. We hiked a little further up the mountain after the rock garden before heading back. Here's a picture of where Nathan and I raced up to the white fence before turning back.

Last night was rather uneventful, until it was time to take a shower. Oh my gosh, I've never seen so many tiny flying bugs in the same space at one time. Not sure where they came from, but were probably a product of all the rain we has yesterday morning. Anyways, They were all over the walls, the ceiling, the sink, the toilet, my room, the floor. I took the fastest shower I could manage because they kept landing on me and it was terrible!!! I couldn't wait to get into bed and under my bug net after all of that. This morning, I woke up and most of them were dead. I should've taken a picture because it was the craziest sight you've ever seen. The bathroom floor was littered with their little dead bodies. I swept it up as best as I could this morning, but had to sweep again this afternoon because some had still been alive in the morning and were dead by afternoon. I'm just glad they didn't last too long.

Today teaching was better, but of course it will continue to get better as I settle into a routine and learn all of the requirements for the school. This afternoon, it's raining and I'm guess I'm glad I haven't left to go run yet because it would not be fun to get caught in a storm. However, I hope that I don't have a bug problem again. *sigh* I do have to say that was quite a traumatic experience.

Well, I'm going to leave things here for now. Here are some pictures of the pastor's house and my bedroom/bathroom(sans thousands of dead bugs)/closet.

Pastor's house. My room is just inside the door on the left side of the building.

 View from outside my door.

 View from the front porch.

 My sitting area (right inside the door). I've been known to open the door (because there's no air conditioning) and sit reading here.

 My bed with the roses some ladies from the church gave me.

 The roses from the ladies of the church.

 My desk and bed covered up by the bug net (aka, the best invention EVER). :D

 My desk.

 My closet is a series of shelves that is 3 high. The bottom level is shoes and my yoga mat, the middle shelf contains the small number of clothes that I brought, and the top shelf is my toiletries/bugspray/first aid kit.

Well, I hope that gives everyone a small peek into my life so far here at Morogoro. In spite of the no air conditioning, the crazy bugs that attack me in the shower, and the rain that wakes me up at 4am, I am very happy and excited to be here. The good things that I have far outweigh the bad and I am looking forward to having a very nice time here. I pray that you are well and that you know that God's walking with you wherever you are.

"The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58:11

Blessings, love, and peace,
Christine