Everybody's got something to hide

except for me and my monkey



Peace Corps Tanzania trainees are broken into groups of 4 for the majority of training. Each group is assigned an internship school where we take intensive language classes and practice teaching to actual students. The school I'm training at has a monkey that lives on the grounds. I had to work pretty hard to get a PG shot of the thing, as the damn critter has a delightful habit of performing unfortunate sexual acts on itself whenever someone stops to stare at it.



The school I'm interning at is really nice though. The kids are incredibly well behaved, and they are more than a little excited about us being there. Whenever I walk into a classroom you'd think I was the Beatles (yes, all 4). The place kids just get that excited. It is good having a chance to interact with the kids this early in the game though, and attempts at practice teaching have gone really well so far. I'm really looking forward to teaching on site in a few months. Every morning the really young ones are released to run once around the field by the school. It's called the daily "mchaka mchaka." The site of about 100 little African children in their red uniforms screaming and laughing while they blast around a school field is pretty much the most adorable thing I've ever seen. I'll try to get a picture of it soon.




In other news, the weather here has been scorching. It's the beginning of the summer, and while I'm lucky enough to be in a relatively dry part of the country, it is still painfully hot once afternoon rolls around. Summer in ecuatorial Africa... gotta love it. The walk home every day after school is pretty brutal, (it's about a 30-45 minute hike in the heat, depending on how many people I stop to talk with on the way... which is usually a lot, as Tanzanians are big on the greeting thing). It is a beautiful route though. Red dirt roads through villages and palm tree groves.



I'm pretty entranced by Mount Uluguru too, I'm really hoping to get a chance to climb it at some point. Apparently there's a cloud-based rainforest near the top. Far out.