August 5th -- On the plane from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro

            As we get closer and closer to landing, I am getting more excited.  I think that Sharon’s email threw me off a little bit because I ended up being more nervous in the past week than anything else.  Plus, 

1. I was not looking forward to the 16+ hours on a plane and
2. I have absolutely no idea what to expect.  I guess it helps that I have been to East Africa (even though it was ten years ago) because I can at least imagine what it looks like and the cultural shock might not hit me so hard.  Cross Cultural Solutions has made a big effort to warn volunteers about culture shock and help them be prepared.  I am hoping I will be able to adjust more quickly than other volunteers who have never been out of the country.  Maybe I won’t be as surprised as I was when I was eight years old if the kids decide to touch my face and make sure that my white skin isn’t a pull-off mask.  I know what the Maasai warriors sound like when they get together in a circle to chant and jump up and down.  And I expect to be hassled by people selling over-priced and touristy looking items as I clearly look like a foreigner.  But after receiving Sharon’s email and realizing that
1. There is no structure to the teaching I will be doing and
2. I could be teaching my own class on the very first day and
3. There is going to be a considerable language barrier…

I am definitely nervous.  My plan is to just try and make it through the first day.  Hopefully I can get through the first day and then things will become more and more familiar.

            I am excited for the challenge – which I definitely think I will find.  For a while I was wishing that the Tanzanians spoke Spanish (so that I had a better chance communicating with them) but besides the fact that they don’t (and never have), I think the language barrier is going to add to the experience.  Swahili actually seems to be a language that was crafted in a seemingly logical way.  The basic structure is fairly easy to understand now that I have taken a semester of linguistics.  Maybe I will be able to pick up on it?  It is too bad that you actually have to know the Swahili words to form some type of syntactically correct sentence.  You can’t get very far if you only know the different tense forms and pronouns.