Behold, the power of science!

Apologies in advance for how disjointed this post is. My time at the computer today is very limited, so I'm going to mostly focus on getting my photos to upload, (which is a serious task).

The big excitement last weekend was my (I like to think) courageous attempt at baking a cake. We don't have an oven, but by putting a smaller pot inside a larger one, and by putting coals on top of and beneath the large pot, I was able to make a convection oven. The name sounds a lot more complicated than the contraption actually ended up being. The family was definitely amused while I was putting the thing together though. I managed to buy some Pillsbury cake mix at the local import store, (cost me a pretty penny), so mixing the cake was really easy. I was not entirely confident that the baking process was going to work at all though, so man oh man was I relieved when the yard started to fill with the smell of chocolate cake. It took forever to cook. The shack was hot as hot can be. The cake itself ended up being a little burned around the edges. But damn, it was so good. I wanted to cry it was so good.





So, definitely something to check off on the list of things I never expected to do in my lifetime: baking a chocolate cake in a pot on a charcoal stove in the middle of East Africa.

While I was waiting for the cake to bake I took some pictures of the yard and family. Here's a shot of my host mama washing dishes:



Last Saturday we had our weekly group training session, and afterwards we got a chance to go to a local pub and hang out for awhile. We get very few chances to unwind, so the chance to just sit around over a couple beers was pretty great.



We managed to get a group shot of most of us last Saturday. We've only lost one trainee so far, (and he left within 12 hours of arriving in Dar es Salaam), so we're at an even 40 now. Not bad at all.



Our Saturday training sessions have a habit of dragging a bit near the end. Here's a shot of me and Cynth messing around in the back of the room. I think we were trying to be thugs or something. Honestly, who knows? Let's see YOU try to be attentive after 9 hours of lectures on cross cultural exchange.



This coming weekend's looking like it's going to be awesome though. To celebrate the half-way point in training Peace Corps is giving us the weekend off. Tomorrow we're all going on a safari in Mikumi National Park, which is I'm told about 3 hours away. I am ridiculously excited. I've been in Africa for over a month and have yet to see any elephants, zebras, or lions. Tomorrow, that's going to change. Hopefully I'll have some good photos to upload next week. Wikiendi njema kila mtu! (Have a great weekend everyone!)