hey Everyone

Still having a fantastic time in Africa. Am still in Moshi, I can't believe my placement is almost over - I finish on Friday, it seems to have flown by! Have had quite a hectic week with placement and various things in the afternoons - on Wednesday we went to paint one of the nursery schools. Well, we tried to go paint the nursery, but when we got there the school had provided us with 2 paintbrushes and one roller (no rolling try!) for 6 of us to use! Needless to say there wasn't much we could do, so I ended up watching the guys paint and helpng keep them cheery - probably best that way as I don't think I'm the best painter in the world! On Thursday we started our afternoon netball rpoject, which was really fun. Me and 2 of the other volunteers have started to do netball with some local children for an hour on an afternoon. There's only one hoop and not a proper pitch, but the kids loved playing nonethe less. We did some shooting practice and pasing practice and they were so happy to do it - it was lovely to see.

I had my last lesson with my secondary school class on Friday as they are on holiday this week which was quite sad, but I did a lesson where I taught them 'yorkshire dialect' - it was so fun! I taught words like 'ey up' and 'al reet', it was hilareous havinf 30 African children repeating 'ey up after me, complete with a yorkshire accent! I also taught them how to say 'ta' for thankyu and 'ta ta' for goodbye, and one boy said at the end of the lesson 'ta teacher for teaching us English and ta ta' - it was priceless!

On Friday I also got invited to 2 of the other volunteers teachers house for lunch. She had invited us as she had decided that she was too tired to teach, so she closed the school for the afternoon and cooked us lunch! Another teacher and his wife were there and, although they couldn't speak very much english and we can only say a few words in Swahili, we managed to have such a fun afternoon. We had to say grace (!), and then Sam had to be served first as in tanzania men always get served first. She then gave us so much food (fried rice, beans and veg - what we get every eve for dinner!) and insisted we ate it all - we all felt like we were going to pop! She then decided that the men needed more food so gave them a second helping! She also taught us how to balance things on our heads the African way, I managed to balance a glass and then a pot - I didn't dare try to walk with it aswell though, I thought the clumsy catherine side of me might come out! I think the lunch was my fave part of Tanzania so far, it was just so nice to be invited by a teacher to lunch, and then we had such a fun afternoon.

On Friday evening Phil arrived in Moshi, which I was really pleased about! Some other volunteers and I had gone to a hotel in town which has a rooftop bar to watch the sunset over Kilimajaro, and Phils bus pulled into Moshi as we were there so he managed to join us for the sunset, which was beautiful. We all then went out for dinner, which I think Phil was glad about after 3 weeks of eating Rice and Ugali, and then went to Glacier bar which was really fun, and gave Phil a chance to get to know all the other volunteers.

Phil is staying in Moshi for most of this week with me, so we spent Saturday andering round the town so he could get his bearings, and then on sunday we went on a trip with some of the other volunteers to some waterfalls in one of the villages at the bottom of Kilimajaro. We were guided round 3 different fallswhich were all really pretty, and the braver among us went swimming under the falls in the freezing water! We had a picnic lunch at one of the locals houses, then taken to another house and given banana beer, which is a typical drink of the chagga people. I quite liked the beer (i was the only one who did though!) and decided it tasted like a bitter smoothie! The area where the waterfalls were was unbeliavably green and lush, it looked like somewhere in Costa Rica rather than Africa, we were all so shocked - very different to what Moshi looks like. It was really good to go on the trip and see somewhere outside of Moshi, as the last 2 weeks I've not really left the town so it was nice to see some more of the local area.

Hope everyone is well and we will write more later in the week. Phil says sorry to everyone for not writing posts from malawi but the internet connection was too slow there. He will try and write something about Malawi later in the week, and we will try to upload some photos too.

Hope to hear from everyone soon

Love cat and Phil xxxxx