Hello hello,

Well I know i've said it before but it's truly bizarre how quickly the week's gone! I finished last weekend at a new nightclub in Moshi called La Liga...what a strange place. More popular with the locals than the tourists it's this neon madhouse, with massive electric palmtrees dotted about and bizarre glow-in-the-dark paintings on the wall...very disconcerting after a bit of local cane spirit....Still, nearly all 36 volunteers from my group were there and we spent a really good night dancing to the ever popular 'Bongo Flava' songs that seem to follow us everywhere.

Teaching this week has been pretty tough, I've been trying to explain Relative Pronouns and the kids absolutely hate it. It is fairly difficult to make 'whose, which, where, who, that' fun but small tricks like penny sweets for the brave students that come up and try and write the answers on the board seem to be working.

On Wednesday I had the afternoon free so I went with my housemates and some of the other volunteers to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Couldn't have been more interesting and it's only a short dala-dala ride from my school. I met a Tanzanian journalist called Nicodemus there who'd been covering Rwanda for 14 years, he knew EVERYTHING. We watched part of a case involving the former Rwandan ambassador to Switzerland testifying on behalf of other ministers to the fact that they had no way of stopping the genocide. Then it came out that whilst he was ambassador to China, he'd signed some sort of suspect arms deal that would have aided the murderers during the genocide....Insane. We're definitely going back the minute we have some free time, it's free to go and pretty much guaranteed to be interesting every time. Plus, the tribunal only has a year more in Arusha so it's definitely worthwhile to go now.

On Thursday night we went back for Via Via's live music night, it was quite a different experience from last time given that it was dry. Another fun night spent dancing away with the rastas, then back home to try and get a few hours sleep before school. Two of my housemates didn't start teaching until mid-morning which was fine, but sadly Catriona and I had first lesson on Friday, which was fairly horrendous as the kids decided to stage a mini revolution...

On Friday afternoon when we'd finished teaching we went over to a friend of ours, Mama Issa aka Joyce's house to learn how to cook traditional Tanzanian food. Joyce is 24, she's been married since she was 20 and now has 2 kids, farm animals, a garden and a house to run. It's weird to think how different our lives have turned out. She was our neighbour when we were living at New Life and constantly brought us over big pots of amazing stews so we felt, with our time here drawing to an end that we needed to learn how to reciprocate. We spent 3 hours over a charcoal stove making Wali (slightly like fried-rice), Mdezi Choma (green bananas cooked in spices), Cassava leaves with coconut and garlic, Pili Pili (a hot pepper sauce) and Chapattis (a delicious cross between pancakes and tortilla wraps, easily the reason why none of us on the trip have lost weight). The result was amazing and we can't wait to try them out in our house. On the way home we met some of the teachers from J K Nyerere and gave them the left-over chapattis. They definitely approved and were amazed that us Mzungus (westerners) had managed to make them.

Not much else to report today, apart from the fact that I got a new phone from Moshi for 40,000 tanzanian shillings (about 20 quid) and am currently enjoying the old school pleasure of playing Snake. Well I was until my housemate Kirsty borrowed my phone and set an IMPOSSIBLE high-score (it turns out she's a bit of a Snake geek) which I don't really ever see myself beating. You never know I suppose, I do have nearly 2 more months out here.

I'm spending the weekend in town doing the usual internet, lunch with other volunteers, saturday night at Masai Camp and then we're having Sunday lunch at one of the teachers from J K Nyerere's house. She's a lovely old lady who's been planning what to cook us all week and keeps double-checking that our fragile western stomachs will be able to cope with rice, soda etc...She has basically no english though, so conversation should be interesting....

Well, lots of love to you all and i'll speak to you soon!

- Ruby xxx