Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!
Sean and I decided to bring turkey day to Dodoma, and I think we were successful! Sean did most of the shopping and Jana and I spent all day preparing a meal for 9. We invited the Jesuit community and our tutor for our American tradition of eating a lot, drinking a lot, and eating a lot more. Our menu:
Cinamon sugar sweet potatoes
Homemade stuffing (Grandma Koch's recipe)
Peas and carrots
Chicken
Gravy
and in lieu of pies, we made a mango crisp and banana cake!
Everything turned out really well and we ate so much! (My stomach is still bulging today!) And like a real thanksgiving, we have leftovers - I'm so excited for lunch today! But the night was so much fun, filled with laughter and singing and dancing, too! We ended the evening with a "film" projected onto one of our walls - Martin has a projector and the whole set up. It was fun. So that was the main attraction for this week.
We lost power for most of the evening on Wednesday night, so we cooked dinner with our lanterns and candles. Our neighbors also lost water (I guess our house is on a different system), so I saw them collecting water into buckets from big puddles outside their homes. It's sad that their cleaning and possibly cooking and drinking water might come from those puddles until the water comes back. And that is if the puddles stay - the hot weather will evaporate them quickly, I'm sure...
I gave my first examination to my English class - identifying the correct pronoun. We played a game first in groups to help review; I think they enjoyed it. They did surprisingly a lot better on these exams than I expected, so I am very pleased.
Sean, Thomas, Jana, and I are heading to Moshi (near Kilimanjaro) tomorrow morning around 6am. We're taking a bus to spend the weekend with Fr. Shirima who is having his Jubilee on Monday. (A Jubilee is a celebration of being a priest for a number of years - his is 25.) He was so kind to invite us and we are very excited. The celebration will take place in his village, so we'll be staying there most of the weekend. I am excited to see northern Tanzania, Mt. Kili, and the village life. It should be an exciting weekend.
That's all for now. I need to nap - yesterday wore me out! Many blessings on the rest of your Thanksgiving weekend! And enjoy those leftovers!
Very impressed at your thanksgiving efforts Laura! Sounds like you're having a great time.
ReplyDeleteRe the water - Thomas fills your tanks at night which is why you have water when the neighbours don't! It took us ages to figure that out! We used to let the kids bring buckets & fill up from ours- we did have to ration it to 2/3 buckets per family in the end but it helped them out a bit. Sure they'll be paying you a visit soon if they haven't already been!
Take care. Cx