Habari! So today was the first day of class since we've all moved in with our host families. It was a rough weekend, but it was nice. At first I thought my host family just couldn't understand me or didn't like me, but as it turns out, I just have a very quiet and shy family. My mwalimu Yusta told me that what I should do is go out and visit other families. When she started out with "What you should do...", I was expecting some kind of conversation topics or something to help me talk with my family about things I could understand, but instead I was advised to go outside of my house! I guess I just got stuck in a tough situation. My family is really nice, don't get me wrong. I really like them all and they are really nice to me. It just makes me feel really awkward when we have nothing to talk about or when it feels like they are ignoring me. It's basically scared me into silence. But oh well, when life gives you lemons I suppose... I'm getting really excited about our trip to Dar. The closer it gets the happier I am because I will be able to see a lot of things that are different from Arusha and be WARM!!!!!! We get to travel by car, boat and plane on the trip. I am so psyched! I am going to be going to the island that one of my professors in America is from and also I get to see what a big city on the coast is like. Last semester at I.U., I wrote a paper in which I interviewed my roomates Kelsey's uncle because he had immigrated to America from Rwanda. He told me in the interview that places like Dar reminded him of areas like New York City. A few of the girls in my program here have also been to areas similar to Dar in South Africa and said it would be really intriguing to see the area. Right now I am staying in a relatively rural area with lots of agriculture, so now I will get to see large areas of biashara (business) so I can see how it compares and contrasts to the states. I also just want to leave Arusha for a bit, I need some relaxation time!

Tomorrow I get to go talk with the owner of the orphanage I've been talking about in recent posts (Cradle of Love). I am going to talk with her about a paper I'm writing on children's rights in East Africa. I'm actually really excited to see how she started her organization and what kind of work was set out for her and still is. This may help me decide more concretely on what I would like to study in grad school (AHHH!!!!!). It seemed like that decision was so far away, but now, it's just around the bend. After being surrounded by grad students this whole trip, I've been realizing how I need to step my game up and decide what the hell I'm going to do with my life (pardon the language, but it seems necessary!). I know that I'm going to take a year off to just ease into an older, more mature life (because we all know college is just the "middle man"), and maybe intern in an embassy or even NGO before deciding what I am going to focus all my energy on. But I think I'm finally getting an idea...there is a program here at TCDC where people are able to get BA's, and they graduated while I was here. At their ceremony, they had a guest speaker come who had worked on the Rwandan tribunals, who gave an AMAZING speech. His name slips my mind at the moment, but he was very inspirational and definately made me think about my future in non-profit management and the way I would work with this region. I can definately say that he gave me the motivation that was needed because of my lag in forward-academic-motion due to much frustration from what I felt was a stand still in my decision-making-future career-way of thinking(say that five times fast). Anyway, I have to walk back to the host house now, it's getting kind of late. It's been a LONG day, and I need some rest and some homework time.

Here are two pics to help you see how far I've come, you could say. The first is me kabla ya Africa, freshly showered with makeup and clothing that hasn't been worn for three weeks straight, and the second, well, yeah, you know, baada ya.