Tsumeb Final Update + beggining of last two weeks

ok so this first part is a couple days old, i just couldn't post it until now, from Tsumeb, which i miss dearly:

so to update my blog, it has been an interesting couple of days. my host sister left and now rika, my host sisters best friend is staying with me and she is hilarious, but also really honest with me so i end up having semi serious conversations with her about stuff i should know about all the time. also i've started watching this hilarious mexican soap opera that everyone is obbsessed with here.... Paloma when you are mine. its melodramatic and possibly has more close up face shots than your average 90s bollywood film. The story line is about Diego and Paloma and their love, except diego is dumb and gentle and has been framed by his cousin fabien who wants to own the family business at the expense of everything. diego makes me want to get some tp. (side note on toilet paper... people here reference everything to it, but mostly they talk abuot hanging themselves with tp. not serious, its like when i say shoot me now. but i think it has more serious undertones b/c pppl have a more fatalistic attitude here, but its hilarious when rika says it, so now i say it all the time now). back to paloma, people are always crying in hilarious scenes where they also look like they are constipated... apparently the two stars came to namibia last year (they are more famous here than in mexico i am so sure) but they couldn't speak english except to say "I love Namibia." oh yes, and after paloma yest, i was brushing my teach and heard a loud, waterfall like gushing sound in the kitchen... it was in fact my tap exploding and water was pretty much shooting up like a geyser all over the kitchen floor. it was pretty funny and there was nothing that the three of us (me, my host mom, and rika) could do, so we pretty much just started cracking up. then this morning just when i wanted to take a shower there was no running water, so i took a sketchy sketchy bucket bath. fun stuff... but also the highlight of my day. my friend megan has the best host family ever... well no mine is better... just kidding. haha. but anyways, they are hilarious also... all of the host families here have been trying to make us get fatter, b/c apparently thats a good thing here, and megan was wearing tight jeans or something and her oma (afrikaans for grandmother) was like "yayyy! you are getting fatter!" and her host aunt goes, "oooo... no more sexy body." hahahaha. ok sorry it was really funny while i was sitting there.
the music here is also interesting... have i already written about gazza and the dogg? they are the two msot famous mucisians in namibia, and i didn't realize how big a deal it was until i started hearing ppl yelling gnp and mshashu being yelled by random bored kids. really they don't sound all that different to me but ppl seem to know them. i have to get their cds for my host siblings, fun fun.
sorry... trying to address everything... oh yes so, in work news, this week as i said earlier, we planned a youth work shop for the kids, which actually was GREAT. 62 kids showed, and we got great feedback, and i was actually pretty proud of what we put together... i think most of the kids left learning something, even though i was definitely in the least technical sessions (condom negotiation, stigma, at risk groups/risk factors)and we didn't actually change behavior , but i think they turned out well. ok, cbt is coming to an end so i will probably have less internet access, but that is no excuse to stop emailing me. dddddddddddooooooooooo it. i miss you alll! amiiii
oh yeah... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MALA! (no clue if you will ever read this... but its the best i can do)

soo.. it is dec. 27, now and unfortunately i found out that manoj kaka died, so that was pretty terrible. I am glad everyone was together and was really sad that I couldn't make it for anything...

Christmas was not bad here they had a braai/barbecue for us which basically kept us occupied and its nice to see all the people from education that we were seperated from during community based training, but i miss the intimacy of CBT. now that we are back in okahanja, we're planning an HIV/AIDS workshop for the education volunteers... it is a little weird b/c we have to make it relevant to their lesson plans and sometimes i feel like i know more about what they need to know than they do when in fact i probably don't. we'll see... its starting tommorow and i'm doing the session on stigma and gender. I hope they like it! We also have our language assessments so I have been frantically studying for those even though i dont feel like i dont know anything... it'll be fun. also my language instructor teaches me one new destructive phrase everyday... today it was otandi kuu dhipaga (sp?) which means I will kill you, now. i love saying it to people, i guess i've developed a morbid sense of humor here, but my lang trainer also finds it to be hilarious, so at least i've bonded with a namibian (well i have bonded with other namibians, rika sends me texts and i love her! new goal in life, to make sure she goes to college, which she probably will b/c she's pretty smart). Besides that I'm mentally prepping myself for permanent site and becoming increasingly attached to the people i know and love here, so I will be visiting them often, especially since most of my site work initially may be needs assesment. who knows. ok, well people are waiting for the internet, so sorry for the short update but once again, little is happening here. inda po nawa!