Teacher.

One week and two days.

In one week and two days, I leave on a journey towards a lifelong dream.  If you would have talked to me a month ago, I would have felt slightly less inclined to tell you how real it all suddenly feels.  It does.  Since my last post, I've been busy, making preparations.  For the last month, I have been listening to Swahili language audiobooks pretty much nonstop.  Poa kichizi kama ndizi!  (If you can translate that, you will giggle for a while, and I will be significantly impressed with you.)  A few weeks ago, I visited a travel clinic and left with five shots in my arms, a bottle of malaria pills, and a stern lecture about not drinking the local tap water for my trouble (an arm full of yellow fever vaccine HURTS, man).  Last week I got my passport back from the Tanzanian Mission to the United Nations, with my visa stamp in it.  Last Friday, I proceeded to buy out most of the camping and travel sections of the Waconia Target store.  And today, one week and two days before I leave, I received my program placement and job duties from my Program Director. 

I will be teaching English to kindergartners in a private day school in Moshi.

Squeeeeeee!

This is exactly what I was hoping for.  Exactly.  I was prepared to be flexible, but the fact that I'll be working with kids again is almost a relief, in a way.  I feel doubly prepared now.  This is what I DID for the two years I was in AmeriCorps, working with young English language-learners on their reading, writing, and early math skills.  I know the name, the role, and the face of "teacher."  I am familiar with both the rewards and the tribulations of teaching, although I am still learning and can never realistically hope to fully understand either.  I love the look on the face of a kid who has made a discovery in his or her learning.  I live for that look.  I can't wait to see that look again, this time at the Kilimahewa School, in a country on the other side of the world.    

Seriously, it couldn't have played out any more perfectly.  And I can definitely count on the fact that these kids... whom I will meet in one week and six days... will teach me as much as I can hope to teach them.