hello everyone. i had typed this LONG message yesterday giving a witty commentary on the last few weeks of my life, when the electricty went out and i lost it all!!! so now it will be the shortened version minus any wittiness as i need to catch a bus back towards the village in a few minutes.

work is going well. though i seem to be back to a 40 hour work week. which i know i wont get much sympathy from most of you, but you dont have to walk a kilometer to fetch water, and cook everything from scratch on charcoal. in the snow. going up hill. etc etc etc.

thanksgiving: poor poor ambassador. for the peace corps, i would say we were VERY well behaved, though i thought the peace corps staff was a bit apprehensive putting so many volunteers together in one place with an open bar. we thought for sure we would drink them dry....but the ambassador kept the libations pooring! though only about a quarter of us got to eat thanksgiving dinner, they ran out of food fast! the rest got canned baked beans. (you KNOW i got food, i was in the front of that line FO SURE) i felt sorry for some of those guys (though not enough to share my turkey) some of them had not eaten for a day trying to save room! hee hee

the dentist: so i go to the peace corps office to check in with some medications and they ask if there was any other medical problems. i have had a mild tooth ache and thought surely it would take forever to arrange a dentist appointment and then xrays then return for filling so i should get the process started. within half an hour, i was sitting at the dentist office. so i have heard rumors that this dentist was CRAZY. but the volunteers love to embelish stories so i thought this might be the case. no. i walk in and the man is YELLING. violently. is is swedish and sounds like the swedish chef but i was not amused. at one point he shook his head so hard that his lips shook while he was moaning the gutteral moan. finally he barks at me to sit in a chair. i sit. he immediately grabs the drill and ask me whare my cavity is. i tell him it is on top but i am not sure if it is a cavity or what, but before i could get it out of my mouth "WWHHHIIIRRRRR!!!!!" i push my head against the back of the chair and he stops and says, "maybe i should give you some novacane!!!???" what the? so he does and while i am waiting for it to set, he calms down...to the far extreme. there is loud classical music playing and he is humming along. everything is completely white. i realized i had just walked into stanly kubricks A Clockwork Orange. i, for the first time in my life, actually made a happy place in my minds eye...and really went there. so he is drilling away and suddenly stops and says "oh this is not good. it has broken, not good at all!" again, what the? since i had all this stuff sticking out of my mouth, i was unable to ask what broke...and he did not seem to care to mention it. i still dont know what broke. the session ended with him saying that the filling would probabaly not last long and that i would need to come back soon....right.

allright i better jet. i miss you all and hope to have some quality email time soon to send everyone messages. but until then back to letter writing. thought that had slowed even with the workload growing...

hope all is well!
love
jane

bit o update

hey everyone. just a bit of an update. it is now about november 12th (maybe...been in the village too long) that means i have been out of the country for about 5 months now. one of tose things where it seems like forever and a couple of weeks at the same time. things took a turn toward the slower end of life since my last update with all the over acheiving jam making. (not sure if my new title of jam master jane is going to stick) but starting monday all that will change. i have to start preparing for my inservice training that starts the week before christmas. it will be in a national park though!!! apparently walks through the rainforest will be part of the training! hee!

so just intown for the day bout to hop back on the bus. the post office never opened though some of the other volunteers texted saying that i had "a *!&*load of mail" so i hope that is true!!!. i dont know why the posta did not open...perhaps the mail lady is sick or something...who knows. so i will be heading to the BIG city (dar es salaam) for turkey day. the new ambassador invited the entire peace corps to his house for thanksgiving...hee hee free food...and so far EVERY peace corps volunteeri have talked to is going...that poor man has no idea what he is in for.. about 150 someodd smelly dirty hippies giving free food. and he lives on the beach and told us to dress for volleyball! should be a darn good time!!! i have to say thati am ready for a bit of a rest. it iwll be nice to stay away...seeing as i am fairly poor (spent WAY too money making my house super nice...but i think i will enjoy it in the long run) but i am going to be camping on the beach instead of a hotel while there. apparently there is this white sand crystal blue water beach with bandas that you can rent out. sounds NICE!

oh other good news...got cats. johnny a black and white female and then a solid black kitten that i named chakula (swahili for food) but i refer to it more as rotten. so yeah that makes johnny rotten.

so i hope to talk to all soon! sorry not to have sent mail...really expected the post office to be open...but i have many ready to mail out and there is always next time!

love you all
jane