My first Place

This past weekend marked two monumental moments in my life. First a saga a decade in the making came to an end and I have yet to get my closure. If you guessed Harry Potter you would be correct. While the rest of the world gets to have some closure I am left wondering how the last movie was until Ican illegally buy it off the street. The second and more important event that happened was I moved into my first house. It took a week of living in Isoko but finally our place was ready. Without any further adieu I will give you the description of the place.

Our house is situated on the topish of the mountain and looks out to banana trees and the lush mountain landscape. Right across the street there is a primary school that provides me with a daily wake up call in the form of a two minute long ringing of a cow bell at seven am. Moving down the hill you come to the front door of our compound. Yes thats right I live on a compound, not everyone gets this lucky with their first house. Once you enter the front door you are immediately in our living room/ dining room/ den. It is complete with two comfy chairs, a wood table and 4 wood chairs, its pretty roomy if I may say so. Right off of the living room/ dining room/ den is my roommate Gretchen's room. As you continue to move throught the house you come to the kitchen and right across fromt he kitchen is my room. The kitchen is a piece of work. Our host school was nice enough to provide us with lots of food to start out with along with two stoves. Our counter space is lacking slightly as is our storage. My room is great it faces out toward the compound. I have a desk and my bed and a lovely place to keep all of my clothes. Moving out the back door to the compound you see our washing machine and dishwasher as well as our dryer. Many may question how i got so lucky in Africa to get a dishwasher and a washing machine, its because the people like me so much. There are also four doors which lead to our extra kitchen, storage area, shower and bathroom. My first house is one I am sure I will never forget. One of the most unique featurs of my house is that it has what I have termed the veranda which offers a great view of the mountains at sunset. One other fun fact is that this lovely piece of work does not have electricity. It is going to be a learning process but I will survive.

This week was also a long week at school. Lots of teaching and getting to know the students took place as well as the people in town. We now have a boy who comes over almost every night. He just walks in the front door and hangs out while we cook dinner. He speaks little english and my Swahili is minimal at best but I have found out he is 11, his name is Autpele and he loves Micheal Jackson and my headlamp. He helps me start fires and teaches me how to cook some of the local food.

Another fun event that took place was the school blood drive yesterday. No matter where I go I cannot get away from blood drives. Due to an unfortuneate experience freshman year of college at a blood drive, I refuse to give. The people in charge of the blood drive could not comprehend this. They kept telling Me I had good American blood and I should help the Tanzanian's who need it. The blkood drive consisted of one land cruiser pulling up with a huge load on top. Underneath the tarp on top were 2 normal chairs you would find a blood drive and all the other supplies. One look at that and all i could think was disease. Needless to say I threw out every excuse I knew and they finally left me alone.

Today I ventured to Mbeya to get some much needed supplies, seeing as how they are severly lacking in Isoko and because of this get to use the fast internet and can upload some pictures of my house and some other stuff. Enjoy!!!