Welcome to Isoko....Be free

Well I made it to my site finally after the 13 hour bus ride and 4 hour off road adventure. My site is pretty much the furthest south you can get in Tanzania. On the ride here the driver stopped and made us get out at this skank bamboo bridge across an intense rive and said on the other side is Malawi. I have decided to refer to this area as the dirty dirty south due in part to its location and also because there is not a paved road in site, it is all red dirt roads. The area around here is AMAZING though it is absolutly beautiful. The mountains are extremely lush and there are banana trees and avacado trees everywhere. On the down side however, the person who has put the lies in our heads from a young age that all of Africa is perma hot needs to be put in their place. It is FRIGID here. I am rocking my sexy long skirts with leggings underneath a top and my patagonia and a scarf everyday and im still cold. The mornings are the worst on the way to school, but it does eventually warm up I am told.
I mentioned htat we had made it to our site, that is in fact partially true. This being Tanzania and all something had go wrong. On Sunday we arrived at our school and meet our headmaster who is extremely smart and conversational in English. He took us to our house and right as we were about to get settled informed us that our house was not done and that we would need to go stay at the hospital in town for 2 or 3 days. We had no other choice but to agree. They told us we should only take a few things and that we could come back to the house as needed. Our ride down the mountain was ridding three deep on the back of a piki piki aka a dirtbike, it was a scene. We arrived at our temporary home only to find out that it was actually a mission hosptial..that was weird in the first place. Before you go thinking we are sleeping in hospital beds I will tell you we are staying off to the side in this guesthouse like place that we have all to ourselves. It has electricity a tv and best of all internet at this point I don't even care that it is slow.
Monday morning we got to meet various peopel in Isoko town before heading up to the school. At school we were given our timetables I am going to be teaching form 2 and form 3, it adds up to 6 differnt classes of kids which have about 50 kids each in them. Tuesday was my first real day of teaching, I taught the form two kids and of course they found my name extremely funny and laughed at me multiple times during class when I was giving examples of words.
Today my roommate and I got done with schol early and decided to go exploring. On our way out of town we ran into a man who had been showing us around and his friend a pastor, the pastor infomred us there was a market and was going to take us to it. Let me preface this story by saying that today was a big eating day. So we get to the market and he buys us this huge bunch of bay bay bananas and makes us eat all fo them. Then he buys us sprites because he thinks we are thristy. By this point I am starting to feel real sick, but this is not even the end of it. We are walking and talking and he then invites us to his home because we were passing it. In Tanzania if someone invites you into their house you go in and they always must provide you with something to eat or drink. We knew this going into and were dreading it. We sat down and he is talking he intorduced us to his mother who looked like the the grim reeper was knocking on her door. He brought us this big plate of this starchy root and a glass that looked like it was filled with milk. I am not a huge milk drinker in the states, needless to say I am not about to drink milk at some strange mans house. Well he is urging us to drink it and so i took two sips. This was the CHUNKIEST and most SOUR milk iIhave ever tasted. My roommate vomed in her mouth twice. It took all I had not to projectile vom all voer the 90 year old mother. She knew what was up though and was tellling the son we did not like their milk. She then criticized me for writing with my left hand..I was over her.
We finally got out of the house and thought we were going to able to continue our walk alone...but no he wanted to show us more we met all these people in "town" one of whom was a lady with a beard (weird yet strangely awesome at this point), finally he left us on our own informing us to be free and enjoy Isoko. We got kinda lost and ended up at another house with people outside who again invited us in. My stomach was dreading another native concoction but they only served us coffee and again welcomed us to Tanzania and informed us that we just need to be free. Everyone here is obsessed with telling you to be free and enjoy things. They also have no idea where America is but the moment you mention Obama they freak out. They had Obama flashlights (which im thinking about buying because they also feature the American flag) Obama gum, Obama backpacks, Obama beltbuckles etc. Its craziness. Today has been one crazy yet typical day. I hope everyone at home is doing well and love getting emails from everyone there. I miss everyone and will update again soon.