hello everyone! sorry for the long time no post. the center has become very full the past few days and the lab is not always available! the posts are most likely going to become few and far between due to the fact that i will be living with my host family for the next two weeks. pictures as well, it seems that my photo acount has decided to stop allowing me to upload. boooo. anyway, today was very interesting. we went to a local primary school and taught lessons to the students. it was SO intimidating! i had to teach fourth grade students about animals in america. the lesson plan didn't do so well because most of it depended on how much they knew about animals in america, which was nothing. i basically just started to ask them questions about their favorite animals and gave a three sentence description of hibernation! hahaha. it was very entertaining. i don't think i've ever been that scared in my whole life! my vocabulary isn't very large so there was a lot of talking around things i didn't know. but in the end the kids were amazing! they loved all of us and sang a bunch of songs for us. they also sang some swahili rap. it was very entertaining :) they loved the fact that we were all wazungu (white people) and when my roomate told them my swahili name was Zuwena, they went nuts. I guess there is a really famous song here in Tanzania about a girl named Zuwena, and everytime i introduce myself, everyone starts singing it. the girls also loved my hair. when we were taking a large group picture, they kept putting it on their heads and saying that they had "new hair". it was so cute!

it seems to have been getting a little warmer these days. i'm happy for that but i'm also beginning to like the cold. i don't want the bugs to come out because the ones i've seen are already big enough! when we travel to Zanzibar and Dar in two weeks, it will be enough heat to last me for the rest of the trip, i think. it's supposed to be amazingly joto (hot). in both areas due to the fact that they are on the coast. i'm excited for the trip but i still have a week to go before i leave. two mornings from now i move into my host family's house. i met them for the first time on the 4th of july and was very happy that they were so excited to meet me. i have a little brother and sister that i'm really excited about, too!

The 4th of July was a little intense. our professors had us celebrate the holiday and had a party for our host families and friends. we did a play about american independence and then played some american games with the kids like baseball and a three legged race. it was fun, but definately different from back home in america. afterwards, we had some "american" food like pizza and fried chicken. it was nice, but i missed home a lot, mostly for the food! you can only eat rice and vegetables and mutton so long before you can't eat anymore. but everything is going well. i have to run, it's time to study for a test i have tomorrow! yucky. then time to pack up all my stuff and get ready to leave the center for my new home. nina wasi wasi! i will try and post more pictures, but like i said, its almost impossible. kwaheri!