Deficiencies

22 October 2009 2:27 PM

And so we finally meet again. I typed up two little blurbs that I’ll be posting at the same time as this. I’m using some free time I have right now to relax, listen to music, and try and catch up on this blog. We’ve been dealing with a lot of nonfunctioning water in our dorms lately and also nonexistent internet. The power hasn’t really gone out lately though so I don’t think there is really a pattern or way to predict when we will and won’t have things. Don’t worry though, I knocked on wood after writing about the power there last sentence. It was really nice to find out the girls had internet in their dorm last week and that we actually got respectable speed where I was even able to use a webcam with Skype, but it hasn’t really been the same since Monday so I haven’t been able to check emails, post blogs, etc. It took us about 10 days or so into the trip to realize just how little we know about current events and world news and since then we’ve been trying a little harder though this makes things difficult. Also, the only newspapers I’ve seen out of the hotels have been in Kiswahili and/or exclusively about sports and such. No TV, internet, or newspapers definitely make it a challenge to stay caught up on the latest things that are going on at home and around the world.

I still haven’t been able to register for classes and only today was I able to see an actual timetable that listed when and where classes will be held starting Monday. They apparently release like four more drafts of the timetable before things settle and I don’t know how long that will take. I’ve also heard that when the schedule changes, you find out just from some bulletin posted on a wall. I’m expecting quite a bit of confusion in the coming weeks and the best I can hope for is to just get into five classes or so that I’m satisfied with even if they’re not the best or coolest ones they offer. I also learned yesterday that we will not really be given a placement exam for our Kiswahili class, but instead we just show up to the intermediate class that we want to get into and if we are able to converse well enough with the teacher early on, we can stay in that class. If not, we have to take a written exam or something to prove ourselves or just give up and take classes with the people who are starting from scratch. I’m actually pretty nervous about this because I have quickly realized just how poor my Kiswahili is here and I went from being considered outstanding in a small class in Oregon to unable to get by without immense confusion or a fluent speaker. I can’t go back and take beginning Kiswahili again though because it is just too slow for me. My goal is to convince the teacher that I will be able to keep up in the intermediate class even if I don’t have same foundation that others do. We’ll find out on this pretty soon.

All of the first year students here arrived on Monday for their UDSM orientation. We were originally told that the first two weeks were CIEE orientation and then this week would be UDSM’s orientation for us but we haven’t really changed anything or done anything explicitly through the university. Tomorrow they have some special stuff for the international students but a lot of lectures are ones by the exact same people on the exact same topics that we had the week before or the one before that. There are more international students trickling in slowly though. On my floor we now have two new German guys on my floor in addition to the guy from Uganda (I think) who moved in the day we moved in. I haven’t really met him but the last room in the hall has a guy from Denmark who is pretty cool and he worked it out with this other guy from Milwaukee, Wisconsin so that they could room together. Oh yeah, and there’s a guy from South Korea who got a single room and has a cool setup where he has been cooking his own meals and he has a TV and a DVD player in his room. He’s been living here for more than a month though I think. The Dane and guy from Wisconsin have been organizing some pickup soccer games though for the last couple days and we’ll play again tonight. They have been a lot of fun so far and it’s good because I’m not the worst person playing. It’s also been a good way to meet people and learn names better.

Other than these things, this week has been mostly uneventful for me. I guess I’m just a little more experienced at taking bucket showers now than last time I wrote and I’ve done more laundry though I definitely am completely and utterly horrible at that. My socks were pretty much freestanding by the time they dried yesterday. We’re planning on taking an overnight trip to Morogoro for one last getaway before classes start up. It will just be me and maybe five other people from the program that I’m closer to I think though rather than the whole group. We also have to get someone from the links office to come with us but I think we have that figured out. I really hope this works out because it has the potential to be a really good experience. I think I’m ready to take a trip more on my own rather than just part of the program also. Hopefully I’m able to post these online sometime soon and hopefully I’ll get to head out away from the coast this weekend so I’ll have new and exciting things to write about next time.

I just remembered too that we’re going to try and start a group Flickr account or some online photo hosting thing so that we can all combine our pictures from this trip and share them with everyone else we know. I’ll get a url out once we figure it out and get internet again.