Sorry, I Forgot to Bring My Cows

It's my third week of training and as you can imagine life in Africa is definitely interesting! I was able to email many of you to let you know of a few of the daily incidents but let me re-cap a few of them here...

Last week a Maasai (tribal African) asked me if I wanted to buy his friend for four cows. I was confused about what he wanted, but luckily my teacher happened to be nearby to translate for me. Unfortunately I didn't bring my cows with me to the market that day so I was out of luck. HOWEVER, this kind gentleman offered to pay to rent a bike for me to ride to his home to see his children and cows. I was honored by this and perhaps one day I will be able to take him up on that offer...just kidding mom.

An interesting event happened in class the other day. While I was working on constructing my Kiswahili sentences I looked down and under my foot was a dead rat. That's right, it was UNDER my foot. We don't know when it crawled under there and from what direction it came...but suddenly it was there...dead. We screamed loud enough that a man walking past our classroom came in to retrieve the deceased member. I owe that man a Pepsi for his thoughtfulness.

I train all day learning Kiswahili and such...and in the afternoons I hang out with my fellow trainees. There are five of us total in my village and we like to spend the afternoons playing soccer with the kids, walking around town and greeting everyone, and getting offered to buy men by Maasai. The other day we decided to lay in the grass and relax. We were just hanging out when we suddenly opened our eyes and realized we were surrounded by at least 30 people. They just stood there looking at us. We burst into uncomfortable laughter...but when no one else seemed to mind or find the situation awkward we decided to roll with it. We were just laughing and attempting small talk, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

I know some of you are thinking this experience will help me mature and grow up...so far that doesn't look too promising. I laugh everytime we say the word for 'brother' which is 'kaka'. Recently I found out that the word for 'youth' is kijana...which means when it's plural is VIJANA...That's right, I'll be working with Tanzania's vijana...saving one group of vijana at a time. I know I'm making you all proud!

Every day is new and has it's ups and downs, but I can already tell this is going to be one amazing experience. In a few weeks we're going on a safari so I'll finally be able to see animals other than the chickens, pigeons and ducks that my family own and I'm really excited! Each week we have a PCV of the week who we can talk to and ask questions and they have been incredibly helpful. It's really comforting for them to reassure us that despite the hardships this experience will only better us! I'm actually enjoying training, but I'm also looking forward to my own place. I guess I should get back to greeting people! I love all of your emails and I'm sorry if I don't get a chance to email you back individually but I DO appreciate them! Love you all and can't wait to hear from you!

-Catherine