I am in Tanzania (10/09/2005)

Hi All,
As many of you know, I am in Tanzania training for Peace Corps. I am able to check my email and write a little once a week. So it would be great to hear from you. I have been in Tanzania a little over two weeks and recovered from my first illness yesterday. Yesterday I woke up and had to take a trip to the bathroom about 3 AM. After several trips to the bathroom and experiencingwarm chills I knew I was sick. Fortunately yesterday was the day everybody meets at WAMO so I was able to talk with somebody who had similar symptoms earlier in the week and got Cipro. Cipro was able to stop the runs and after drinking a little over a gallon of water my fever went away in the middle of the night.

Tanzania is wonderful. The people are incredibly friendly. It takes about five minutes to say hello because you are supposed to ask how everything andeverybody is even though the answer is always the same nzuri. I am in Morogoro and surrounded by beautiful mountains. At night the stars are incredibly clear and the moon fills like water in a cup (up and down not sideways like it does up north). Yesterday I saw my first monkey, but thereare many birds that I have seen before here. Every morning I wake up to the roosters crowing the cows mooing, birds chirping and dogs barking, did I miss anything? Oh yeah every around five am there is a morning prayer person hollering in the streets. Time is distorted here some moments I can hardly believe I have been heretwo weeks because it feels like I got here yesterday, other times it feels like I have been here forever. Kiswahili is a fairly simple language and I think there are few irregularities. Of course I have only been learning for two weeks but already I know almost all of the 11 noun classes and all three of the verb tenses. So I have learned almost all of the grammar and a couple hundred words.

My time looks like it is about to run out. Things can be sent by to :Thomas CurtisPeace Corpse TanzaniaPO Box 9123Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It takes a couple of weeks and apparently things in envelopes take much less time than boxes. Also FedEx should not be done because I would have to pay extra for delivery to a remote place.