The School

Here it is, another morning in Arusha! Most of you are sound asleep back in the states, but I’ll give you an update to wake up to. I’ll start from morning and work backwards. Well, I fell asleep around 10pm last night and awoke in complete darkness, thinking that surely I slept longer than I had the night before…but when I looked at the clock, it was only 1am!! The power had gone out in the neighborhood and to reserve fuel, Annette didn’t turn on the generators. So, in darkness I lay for some time, thinking about what to do. I’ve gotten much better at keeping myself entertained due to the last 2 nights of being awake for hours with no computer/power. As I was reading around 3am, suddenly my American phone (which I didn’t even realize was on) buzzed!!

I hadn’t gotten a cell signal at all since I’ve been here, and suddenly three older textmessages came in! Hello to mom, wendy, and greg woodward! I was so excited, and quickly texted Tristan, and then mom. Well, mom being the awesome lady that she is, soon actually called me…and that was super surreal. I could hear the Norcross train go by in the background where she was and it felt so close! We talked for probably 15 minutes and I hope it’s not going to be super expensive L so sorry if it is! But, then there were several more hours to kill, so I got out my flashlight, Shosty piano prelude/fugues score, and ipod and listened to about 15 of em’, sol feg-ing the melodies as best I could as I went along. I think I’ll start doing harmonic analysis on the pieces if I wake up in the middle of the night again. Thanks to Tristan for introducing me to the pieces, and to Matt for buying me the score!! Well, needless to say, my bed became quite an activity center by morning. I did manage to fall asleep for a couple more hours, thank goodness.

bed activities:

• Ipod, Shostakovich score for listening
• Journal for reading, journaling
• Listen to This for lots of reading
• Tanzania book to plan safari plans
• New planner to plan my life
• Cell phone(s) for those apparently awesome 3am phone calls from my mom!! Haha!

Ok, now for yesterday. We went to the main school where we’ll be teaching (International School of Moshi) to scope out the rooms, move a piano, and get organized. We’re going back today to do more preparation there. The campus is beautiful and they make vegetarian lunch we can order every day!

[ISM]

[One of the main buildings]

[Music department sign]

[Alison and Annette scoping out the violin room!]

[3 very helpful men moving my teaching piano!]

The kids at that school are expatriates, or citizens not originally from Tanzania. It’s a remarkably diverse school where we met just one group of girls hailing from Cyprus, Holland, and Russia! It’s been gray here, but it’s very dry and not too cold. This is the coldest month of the year right now, their winter. Other activities of the day included exchanging currency and getting a TZ cell phone!

I’m in communication now, and a big thanks to my daddio for giving me his Egypt/Haiti phone to use here!

Today we’re going to go look at apartments to rent, so I best be off!