25% down and "The year of the Magpies"

Yesterday we completed 25% of our stay in Tanzania.  Three months down - nine to go.  It's gone so quickly and we really have to think about what we  want to achieve in the remaining time before it is gone.

Today we learned that Collingwood has won the 2010 Australian Rules Football grand final over St. Kilda.  They did it easily in the end but this was a replay as the scheduled grand final last weekend was a draw.  Congratulations to the our family and friends who are Magpies supporters and commiserations to those who barrack for the Saints.  Go Bombers and Demons in 2011!

We have a more active social life here than we have at home.  There's a group of expats working with a number of organisations (not all volunteers) who seem to hook up most weekends.  Most of them are young folk but Jenny and I manage to keep up with them.  The usual thing is to meet for a drink down at the lake on Friday evening and then have meal somewhere or on Saturday/Sunday for lunch.  There's a good range of hotels that serve cold beer and sodas and tasty (if not too varied) food.  The food is usually some combination of chicken or fish with rice or chips and salad.  One or two places do quite nice pizzas for when we need a cheese fix. 

Last night a group of us, representing Australia, Canada, USA and Denmark, met at the Kolping Hotel to celebrate Terri's 15 month anniversary of being in Bukoba.  Terri is a US citizen from Maryland and Texas and she works to empower womens groups here.  She will be leaving probably in a couple of months so felt like celebrating this milestone.  We even had a cake that she had organised to be made by one of the indian supermarkets in town (don't think Safeway or even IGA or Aldi's - they are more like the little markets in the shopping strips in Heidelberg Heights).  The cake was surprisingly tasty and was nicely decorated with masses of icing.  People here really like their sugar.  The Kolping is one of the largest hotels in town and is a 15 minute walk from our place so we have been there a few times now.

Tomorrow we are off to Katoke about 50 km down south for lunch with a couple of VSO volunteers who live and work there in a teacher training college.  This time we will be representing England, Scotland and Australia.

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