Dance Dance Revolution

Been a hectic week. First off, I began teaching this week. I am interning at a school where I will be teaching 150 kids physics for 3 weeks. Really, its just kind of a warm-up for when I reach the site which I'll be at for 2 years. They don't want me to look like I don't know how to teach, I suppose. Teaching here is challenging, although I don't have any true comparisons from back home. It's really hard to get a group of kids who hardly speak English and are brick-layers in their free time to become enthralled with the subject of static electricity. Well, I had trouble motivating myself in college for a lot of subjects, so I can understand their disinterest. Nonetheless, I am trying to present it by being as fun and exciting as possible. We have done a few experiments with charging pens and moving nails with them. That's something. Anyway, I can tell that it will take an insane amount of work to get the students motivated to learn here. On the upside, they all seem truly taken with us Americans at the school, and outside of class they are very happy and welcoming. I'll be walking in town and someone will shout out "Masanja!" from down the street, its pretty nice.
So that's the working week. Last weekend, I had my first foray into the nightlife of Morogoro. I went with a couple other volunteers and their siblings to a club/bar/restaurant/hotel. The lounge was outside, which was really nice, and they had some live band playing all night. Everyone was dancing to their tunes, so of course I had to join. The truly excellent thing about Tanzanians is that they are really lazy dancers. I wouldn't say bad dancers, because they can keep rhythm, but they just don't move around much. The whole dance is to keep your arms relaxed in front of you, at the waist, and then make small steps back and forth. First, you step with the left foot forward and back, then the right foot. Really, that's it. I have found a culture in which I am a good dancer. In fact, as my foot-alternation techniques were so amazing, I got challenged to a dance-off. By some guy who was like 60 years old. He came up in the middle of a song and stood across from me, measuring my skill I think. Then, when he felt his chi, he came a little bit towards me and then slowly turned in a circle to the music. Then he went back to his side to wait for my response. I could tell that a lot was at stake, so I felt inclined to defend both my skills, and the skills of America in general. So I dance-replied by giving him a circle right back, which I think might have stunned him. He had to recuperate his strength for a bit before his next circle. This time he came at me with his arms behind his back. However, I'd had time to plan, so I came with a circle with a dip in the middle. Yeah, I know. This move was unprecedented. He got a big old smile on his face, and then the song ended. I got maybe a 15-second hug, which I assume meant I was the winner. We got a smattering of claps, and then I sat down, confident I had proven myself.
That's not all the dancing I did this week. Last night Mama Mipawa asked me if I wanted to go to a send-off. I was like "sure, what's that?". So it's like the first half of a wedding, with the presentation of the bride couple together with a bridal shower (I am assuming here, I have not yet been invited to a bridal shower...). The ceremony started at 7pm, with the introduction of the bride. Then there were speeches and singing for maybe 2 hours. This was alright, I was practicing Swahili with the old guy sitting next to me and we had a good time. Then we ate for awhile. All ok by me so far, it was all fun and new. At around ten we began giving the bride gifts. The way you do this is you have to dance your way to the front of the building and stylishly put the gift in a basket. There were about 200 people there, so it took awhile. I danced my gift(money, I'm lame) to the front right away, not knowing how long it took for this gift giving. Here is where I became unsure of what was happening. For the next 4 hours, everyone just stood in the center of the room and did that slothish dance. I was all down for the dancing at first, because of my success with the dance-off, but after an hour of it I'd had enough. I don't know if I mentioned my general bedtime is 10pm or not. Mama said we would get home at 11pm. We stayed until 2am! I didn't know people could half dance for that long. And it was strange, at some indiscernable cue, all the ladies would make that sound with their tongues "Ayiyiyiyiyiy"... Then everyone would half dance a bit faster for a minute or two. Anyway, I ended up called my brother at about 2am just so I could remain awake and complain about the excess of half dancing. He was very understanding, although he laughed at me for not having the half dancing stamina of my 50-year old mom. So maybe I have the style, but they've got the endurance.
The only really crappy part about getting to bed so late was that today I was getting up at 5am to go mountain climbing. This hike was a bit more strenuous than the last one with Claude. A group of maybe 10 of us made it to this remote little eco-village called Morningside. I don't know what eco-village means. However I was tired when we got there. Hiking on no breakfast and 3 hours of sleep = evil. Anyway, the view was pretty nice, and I had a good time talking with some of the other volunteers I don't get to see every day. I took a few pictures from this place which I am too tired to describe, so maybe in that future imaginary date when I upload all my pics here, you can see a nice mountain view to go with the nice sunrise.
On the whole, things are pretty awesome. I asked Mama Mipawa to let me help out around the house more next week, so I will know how to cook and clean. Family's good, school's good. I have made some pretty interesting observations about the way of life here, I will have to write later about that. One last thing, I got a cell phone now (thanks dad!), so you can call me if you don't like cheap phone calls. It's free for me to get incoming calls though. My number is 011 255 748 254 271. The first six are for Tanzania, the rest is my number. If you want to call, awesome, just remember the time difference. Take care and rock like a hurricane.