Today is Sunday and it is packed full of sessions. I have to be honest, we are right at the end of orientation and these sessions are killing us. I know were not ready to say goodbye to everyone but we definitely could do without a day full of more sessions. I would love one day to sleep in but breakfast is at 7 so we have to be up, the first session was at 8 and it was on Teaching with audio/visual aids. I learned that visuals contribute to 90% of learning and provides triggers for memory. After this session Kim gave us info about each of our moves on Wednesday (so soon!!). For Emily and I, Kim will drive us to the bus station, which is about 15 min. away from here at 8:15am and the bus shouldddd be there at 8:30am. Now if it shows up at that time we won’ know. Kim says the bus could be an hour late sometimes we will just have to wait and see. Our luggage will go on the bottom of the bus and our backpacks will go above our seats. Our bus ride is 16 hours long and it will be jam packed! She said sometimes there are chickens under your feet, babies on your lap. There are always people sitting in the aisles, rice sacks in aisle, buckets of water, etc. Be flexible!! I am so anxious for this bus ride! We will arrive in Mwanza around midnight and the district will pick us up and take us to a hotel. Then in the morning they will drive us 4 hours or longer depending on traffic to Bariadi. They will drop us off at our house and maybe even take us each to our school and introduce us to our headmaster. She said it just depends on what they want to do!

            After taking in all this info we filled out our immigration forms to become a resident in Tanzania for a year. That was fun! Then we had a session on setting up our classroom. Mainly this session was for us to realize that we will have extremely limited resources to set up our classroom but that is not what the students are going to remember. They are going to remember the qualities about you as a teacher not the physical things you hang on a wall to decorate with. We had tea break and lunch in between sessions and then we had our last session on community projects. World Teach encourages each volunteer to interact with their community and assess their needs, then try to come up with a community project that could help them in some way. This could be with your school, with your community, etc. People fundraise back in the states for this. She gave us many examples of this and encouraged us once we get settled in our villages to start thinking of ways we can help out.

            When we got a bit of a break I tackled doing laundry for the first time while I have been here. Oh my gosh was it a work out or what! It took me 2-3 hours and I only washed maybe 8 things plus lots of undies. We all bought bars of soap because the powder soap sticks in your clothes and make your clothes really hard and crispy. SO the bar soap you really have to scrub each item pretty good to get it clean. I hung all of them up to dry and they were almost dry before I went to sleep and then I woke up this morning to realize that it had rained all night. Typical that this would happen! So back to drying all day today!

            For dinner Kim took all of us to this Italian restaurant in town because it’s almost our last dinner together. She told us not to expect much because it is Italian food in Africa! Haha. Surprisingly, it was delicious! A Greek guy owns the restaurant and somehow finds cheese and everything to use for ingredients! I got spaghetti Bolognese. Tonight was one of the first nights that I REALLY missed home. I was sitting at dinner just really wishing I could be at dinner with my family. I don’t know if the dinner conversation wasn’t great that made me feel that way, or it was the good food that made me feel that way, but I was so sad at dinner! I missed my comforts of laughter and love the way I know when I eat with my family, not the feeling I was having with the group of people I was with. But I got through it and I fought back the tears! I keep reminding myself to be strong and this is only the beginning. Little things I do throughout my day remind me of my family so much but I have to remember this is all apart of a bigger plan. I have to keep faith in knowing that. I need to maintain my Christ centered confidence and cling to His promises for my life.