It's been extremes ups and downs the past 24 hours but it is finally up again. It all started with my seminar presentation. For each class we have a seminar which is a smaller group that discusses an issue from the lectures. Everyone in the seminar is supposed to present once in the semester and since my semester is short, I've been trying to get them all done as soon as possible. So I joined the group for presentations in Democracy and Elections and had the ultimate Tanzanian culture experience. What should have taken 10 minutes to come to a position and then divide up work ended up taking 2 and a half hours and in traditional Tanzanian fashion we had to talk all around the issue. Just when I thought we'd reach a conclusion someone would say something and we would go off on a new tangent and come to a new position. It was so frustrating! Then to make matters worse, when everyone brought their research back they decided we should only have one presenter and they picked me! Thus, I had to learn everyone's material and try to slow my language down and speak British essentially so people in the class could understand me. It was very frustrating, but it turned out well as I presented today on how Africa is not going through a third reverse wave towards authoritarianism. I think I scared them though as I used a banana as a visual aid and squished it. Oh well, who cares about taboos!



Also frustrating was pictures. I have been trying to figure out pictures and how to get them online and yesterday spent about half the day trying different computers and methods. Finally, Gerard helped me out and between him, me, and his computer we got the pics ready to go online! So scroll down and you'll find them!



The reason for hte push to get the pictures on line was that today was School Picture Day at school! It was so much fun. I took my polaroid camera and my digital and every student received a polaroid picture of themselves. They were thrilled and the best part was how they all did little poses for the picture. Very funny. I haven't downloaded those pictures yet, but I think tomorrow I'll put up all the students' head shots if you want to see the kids I teach! They have an end of the year test next Friday so that is the big news from Mlimani Shule!



Now I am going to head out to Mwenge to get some pants made for me! We'll see how it goes. The internet's being slow so the pics will be up later. Get excited. There's a lot of them!