Sitting in a coffee shop across from an outdoor market hoping I won't get sick from my drink

Day 3 at CCS. September 27, 2011. Started our placements today. Woke up at 630 as usual, after having very vivid dreams that I promptly forgot. Apparently, it's an undocumented side effect of the Malarone, the malaria medication that most of the volunteers take. I have to remind myself to send an email back home to arrange my second month of pills to be sent to me. Even though we've only been h a few days, it feels like years. This morning, after dropping off a few volunteers at their respective placements, Madison and I were taken to Bridge, where upon we were immediately hounded by fifty pairs of eyes. I felt like a celebrity. The children would run up to hold our hands and pull on my black jersey skirt. They sang a song about God and his greatness, and sang it with as much vivacity as a chant about holding and smelling a flower and blowing out a candle. We were told yesterday that we would have the opportunity to tour all the classes and then pick which one we wanted to stay in. I walked into the Hope A class, a year before primary. The children are five to six, and absolutely precious. They are working on learning to add numbers and write and pronounce three letter words. The main teacher was one of the women I met yesterday, Aika, Mama Mary's daughter. She threatened to beat some of the children, but the closest I saw her get to to corporal punishment was tapping a little boy's head with a ruler. In practicing writing the letter G today, they were required to rewrite the word gun over and over on their paper. I wonderedif that would ever be the example word in America. We came back that afternoon, after being picked up first by John, my favorite driver. Lunch was delicious--comfort food. Mac and cheese, grilled cheese, fruit, and milk. We then went out to get local phones to use only in Tanzania. We also went into the clothing store to look at cloth. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the women's dress here, and how much I adore it. Now, I'm just sitting under my white mosquito net, feeling very much like an African princess, only wearing a beat up white tshirt that was once my dad's, and blue Nike shorts. Lydie and I sit up here often and eat my chocolate that I was supposed to be saving for nine months, and watch the other volunteers from the window that looks out on the common area. I can hear them still, and even though I'm about to go to bed, their voices lull me to sleep.