Wait, did I say LAST week of training??

So you've already heard about some of the big changes that have occurred in the SPW Tanzania program due to funding issues, well heres another! We were getting all prepared to leave for our village placements this Wednesday, the wazungu were stressed but ready and then yesterday in walks Clare (our program manager) looking kind of scared and nervous and says "So I have some news...some of you will like it and some of you wont." - from this point on our imaginations went wild, thoughts like "omg only some of us are going to placement, they are sending us home, the program is cancelled, we're having another month of training" flashed through peoples brains. Now it's not quite as extreme as that, only that we are having another week of training because our villages want us to wait until after Easter to come in, which is understandable. After this announcement all the Tanzanian girls were cheering (some of them are even more scared of village than we are!) and all the wazungu's looked a bit perplexed. We all went a bit loopy afterwards but decided it would be awesome to spend Easter together (mimi na Nathan are planning an easter egg hunt...wait shhh...i shouldnt write that here...dont tell anyone!). So we're in Iringa town until April 11th now!

Besides that we have heard that some of the villages aren't being very receptive to SPW at the moment so we can't find out our placement villages yet as it may all change. Lets just hope there are enough villages for us all!

Oh and bigger news, our placement partners were announced on Wednesday afternoon. I was pretty nervous about the announcement but wasn't feeling too bad as SPW had said "don't worry we'll try and give most people someone from their top 3 and if not we'll come and talk to you about it first". Well when the first two names were read out - Adella and Elizabeth I knew everything was going to be different as we had all expected Elizabeth to be placed with Rose (they both chose eachother!). So I have been placed with Neema who is really nice but we have been questioning whether she really wants to be here and she was one of the Tanzanian volunteers who was called in from the other group of volunteers (who were all tanzanian) to be with an overseas volunteer so she didnt choose to work with a wazungu. Hopefully I can win her over though! At first I was a little bit scared but there are definite perks, apparently she is a good teacher (if a little unco-operative), she speaks the local tribal languages and her english is not perfect so hopefully my swahili will improve alot. Its good to finally know who I will be living with for the next 5 months. We will just have to make it work.

Other than that, have I ever mentioned our obsession with the dubbed phillipino soap opera "Timeless"? Well a few of us are quite obsessed with it and on Tuesday night we were alerted to the fact that we couldnt watch it at the Baptist Centre as we usually sneak into the boarding school next door but they were having a disco so we couldnt. So we passionately (with much screaming and high-fives) decided to trek it into town to watch it at an Indian restaurant (Sadha was in her pyjamas at this time too!). So we flagged down the worlds slowest taxi and an "undercover, private" taxi only to arrive at Saju's and discover Timeless was not on because of the soccer!! We held onto the small hope that it might come on afterwards so stayed until the soccer had finished, but were sadly disappointed. We felt stingy so decided that the 9 of us would just catch one taxi home so wedged ourselves into a taxi - 3 in the front seat and 6 in the back. Wasn't the most comfortable ride home but the taxi driver didnt make any comment even though he had peoples arms and bums in his face and every time we went over a speed hump it sounded like the entire bottom of the car was being scraped off.

BASI!!

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