Oh the joys of staying in a guest house with guests that insist on getting up (noisily) at 6.30 abd have the television (not 20 feet from my bed) put on full blast. But it’s the weekend because nitakwenda safari so no class tomorrow!
So ended up (thanks to my early alarm) in the internet cafe at 8am. My class was a timing disaster thanks to the over-bossy daughetrs of Mama Mmassy. We had a debate today and rather amusingly Blanca and Jackline (the aforementioned over-bossy daughters) were correcting my ladies’ pronunciation! Okay in most instances they had a point but these are people who say “firsty pointy” – grrr!
Anyway came back and foolishly dressed in white – mostly because they were “new” (ie kidnly donated) clothes but also because I wanted to look “chic” and lovely. Hmmm…not even the Virgin Mary could remain white in Tanzania (excuse any blasphemy).
So got to the house (took a taxi in an attempt to preseve my whiteness) and began the laborious retyping of lessons process. Basically the text books here are full of mistakes so I spend ages retyping and a small fortune photocopying most of the exercises.
Got roped into teaching what is allegedly the Maasai class but has actually become the victim of its own success. Word has got out that there are free English lessons going so all sorts of people are turning up including an increasingly large number of unruly and frankly quite unpleasant children so Duncan and I got roped in to keeping them quiet whilst the class was being taught. Perhaps it was the white trousers, perhaps it’s the whole reason I’m teaching adults not children, but I absolutely lost it after about 40 minutes. They were just rude and disruptive and wouldn’t respond to any “quite”, “sshh” or “shut up”.
So this evening we got our DVDs of the sky diving which is good because I’ve been having problems believing I did it, apart from my parachuting injury, which is a burst blood vessel in my left eye – oh so attractive. Strangely watching the video was even more scary than jumping out of a plane and – as usual – I was horrified at how horribly posh I sound. However, the evidence is there I jumpred and it’s still amazing when I think of it – video evidence proves I said: “I want to do it again” when I came down.
After that went for a swift drink at the pub and it’s so amusing because all the young people think I am a complete alcoholic whereas most of the older people are also rather keen on a drink as soon as it gets dark!
Dinner was nice (a bit pricey – I mean I think I paid over £5 for a starter, main course and wine!) and then a few of us went to Pub Alberto which seems to get more and more disappointing every week. In fact the only exciting point was a text from Felipe that Jose Mourinho has left Chelsea – boo!
Still, on safari tomorrow which is very exciting but again – like most things – I can’t actually believe it’s happening.
I forgot the rat – how could I forget the enormous rat that ran across the balcony tonight? It was funny, argh and “thank God U don’t live here” all at the same time.
