So i'm back in the center again! This morning I said goodbye to them all. The kids waited to go to school until after I left and my dad drove me to the center in our amazing '70s van. (It looks like the mystery machine!!!) Last night I decided to give a lot of my clothes and things to my family. I gave a ton of my t-shirts to my house help sister and then a lot of my notebooks and folders and extra bug spray, etc to my family to use. I'm going to go back and visit them in a few days before I leave. I'm definately going to miss seeing my aunt and my dada late at night. We stayed up together a lot after my parents went to bed and talked about America, my hair, etc. It was really fun, but at least I know that I have somewhere to come to if I ever come back here! Now we are on our last leg of our trip. Today and tomorrow we have presentations over two of our papers, but I think that a majority of us are pretty worn out by now. It seems a little intense to have a test, three papers, and two presentations in a matter of five days. Pretty intense. I'm just ready to be finished with all my work!!!! I'm really excited for Jumatano (Wed.) because we get to go to the Rwandan Tribunals AND it's also a fellow student's 21st birthday! Happy Birthday Jack! AND, I'm going to be finished with all my papers and presentations, the first break I'll have had ALL SUMMER. But I'm a little sad to be leaving. It's going to be such a rough transition from living here to living in the states again. I'm glad that we at least have a kind of grace period in the center where we can get used to the idea of showers again and things like that. It's just weird for me to realize I leave for home in less than five days. Not only that, but it's basically 24 hours of flying time as well. It's going to be intense: the word of the trip. Anyway, time to go "prepare" for my presentation that I have to do in a few hours. Oh! And to reply to the question about my album "Going on nne...", the "my sis" picture. I have no idea what that is!!!!! I have shown everyone in the computer lab and we can't believe it. There is something right above my sister in the picture in the woods. That's not a person because that is the woods behind my house. No one is able to walk around back there because of all the trash/water/etc. I am hoping it's a banana leaf or something...I'm just really glad that I didn't see that picture until AFTER I moved out!!! It's pretty scary!!!!




Anyway, this will most likely be my last post until I come home unless something amazing happens in the next few days. See you all soon!!








<--me and laura at the monkey park. cute, eh?

just a little update....i just added 160 pictures to my shutterfly account: www.watchoutarusha.shutterfly.com/action for those who are interested! they're from dar and zanzibar!!!!! you can also check out www.lauracopeland.shutterfly.com/action for some good pics. it's the site of one of my friends who is here on GPA as well. Kwaheri!

hey everyone! i'm back in one piece from DAr and Zanzibar! It was so amazing to go and see the two areas. Zanzibar was definately my favorite of the two places. It felt the most like a vacation which is what I needed SO BADLY. It reminded me a lot of Venice the way the buildings looked and the feel of the island. All of the buildings are very old and gorgeous because they have a persian influence that makes them elegant, in my mind. There were also SO MANY cats everywhere! They seem to run the streets, no one minds where they sit or what they do. We all decided to go to the beaches while we were there and they were so amazing. The water was so warm and the sand was so soft. When we were in Dar, we decided to try and swim on the beaches of Bagamoyo, but it was such a bad idea! Our first clue should have been that we had to walk out about 200 feet on mucky sand just to reach the water that was beyond a large wall of coral. Once we got there, I thought it would be a good idea to just jump directly in and start swimming. Wow was I wrong. I jumped directly into a huge patch of seaweed that kept grabbing at my ankles and dragging me under. It was so gross. I thought, well if I keep swimming, then I'll eventually reach an area where there was nothing but water. Again, was I wrong. I started swimming really fast and abruptly met with a large coral reef with my knuckles. It was awful. I wish that we would have had a camera so that you could see what I looked like. I was walking on my hands and knees across coral cutting myself to death. Everyone had to do it so it was actually kind of entertaining, but I am still getting over the scars. I can laugh now that it's over! But once we reached Zanzibar, I realized that if I was to ever come back to Africa, I would most likely want to be on an island. Zanzibar is my favorite spot so far just because of the people and the city I was in. It's not as claustraphobic as living somewhere like Arusha. All places are nice though, I just am a child of the ocean.
Now that we're back we are all working like crazy to finish all of our reports and get them ready to present. It's pretty intense, I'm not going to lie. I don't think anyone realized that everything was so serious and that it was supposed to be due so soon. I am very hard on myself when I have deadlines, so I am particularly stressed out right now. I'm trying to make sure that I'm doing everything that I'm supposed to while at the same time enjoy my last 9 days here AND make sure that all of my work gets transfered to I.U. just so that I can get credit for a study abroad program. AHHHH! I hope all works out well.
I hate to say it, but I'm getting really excited about coming home. There are so many things that I miss from home, not severly, but it would be nice to have them. I'm really just excited about being able to be on my own agenda. Anyway, time for class. More to come!

Hello everyone!!! I just wanted to stop in and say kwaheri before I left. my group leaves tomorrow for Dar and for Zanzibar. It's going to be so amazing. We're going to see a bunch of real touristy things but at the same time we're also going to be in the community talking with everyone in swahili. I'm really excited to just get a break from class. It felt like my brain was going to explode if I tried to learn anything more. And then tensions seemed a little high as well between all the students. But beside that, everything is going well. I have definately gotten used to life in Arusha: the monkeys, the food, the people, and the climate. I went to Arusha today with some friends from my group and we had so much fun. We could even joke around with people on the street in Kiswahili, which makes me realize how far we've actually come with our skills. It was really an eye-opener. anyway, time to go get ready for my trip. be back in 10 days!

habari moto moto!!!(hot news!!!) my host family got a new calf yesterday! it is the coolest thing in the world. he/she (i don't remember which) was born yesterday and is sooooo cute. my dad here has a hobbie of breeding cows. that's really big around arusha, everyone has cows. they're even used as a form of dowry. i actually live in a neighborhood that is named after the artificial insemination plant that is on the grounds (NAIC). they breed cows from south africa and canada, oddly enough. but anyway, this cow is special. it was born at 7 p.m. (which is 1p.m. american time, Tanzania uses a different clock. so the cow was born at 1 in the afternoon, which on a tanzanian clock, is 7 in the afternoon, if that makes any sense.) in the seventh month, and as you can see, has a huge birthmark of a 7 on its head. how cool is that? i'm almost positive that 7 is my mom's lucky number, so you can stop worrying now mom, thats a sign that i have luck here!!!! anyway, just thought i'd share the news because it was a big deal over here! and because i'm in love with this ng'ombe!!!!!!! kwaheri!

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.

Hello everyone! I finally got a picture to work with me! Hahaha...this is a picture of the Shifting Sands near Oldupai gorge. I was dressed fully in my kitenge because the wind was so intense! It was blowing sand all over the place. The shifting sands was the coolest thing ever. In the middle of this huge area of bare trees and dirt, there is this big black pile of sand that sticks together and moves every year in one direction due to wind. It's black and doesn't stick to your skin, but instead sticks to itself. It's actually magnetic. our tour guide took a magnet out to the area and showed us how the sand stuck to it and kept building on itself. It was so amazing to see. In the photo you can see the difference in colors right below my ears.

We had our "midterm" test this morning. It wasn't too bad, it was just so cold in the computer lab that all of our fingers were cramping! Today is also my last day at the center. Tomorrow we move in with our host families! We had a little session in class today, boys and girls separated, to teach us how life is different in Tanzania. It was so hilarious to see that our professors had actually taken to drawing pictures of toilets on large pieces of paper to demonstrate how to go to the bathroom when using a pit toilet. It was so so so funny to see our professors squatting over a piece of paper and showing how to "aim correctly" so as not to miss. Our host families are going to be very fun and a good experience. It's going to be almost too much for me to be waited on hand and foot. I want to be treated like part of the family, but instead I am going to be this huge deal! We were told that when we went to any type of function with our families, we would be placed in front of everything so that everyone could see us. It's still hard for me to get used to being such a huge spectacle. I'm not used to having everyone stare at me uncontrollably everyday. Although, being called "mzungu" is definately something I AM getting used to.

I'm finally adapting to the sounds, tastes and weather of Arusha. It took me awhile at first to get over things like the mosque shouting prayers through a megaphone from 5am til around 7, or the crazy birds and monkeys outside my window making sounds straight out of a horror film. The weather is still a little chilly, but I'm slowly learning to layer EVERYTHING I own. It's not too bad. I have bought a few kangas and kitenges, and they're very good for layering, as you've seen in the picture of me by the Shifting Sands. I'm glad it's kipupwe (winter) because that means my host family will be trying to keep me warm!!!
<------these were my students at the school we taught yesterday morning. My computer is finally uploading pictures for me so this one is a little late. I just thought it would be interesting to see all the children. They were so fascinated by us, they didn't care what we taught them! The girls next to me in the photo were amazing. They kept grabing me by my arms/legs/hair(gently of course)/clothing to show me everything they could think of while screaming out "Zuwena"! I loved every minute of it! School is so amazing here, it is so different from in the states. Children actually want to be there, want to learn. After I taught my lesson, I stuck around to watch my friend Trey teach music and it was amazing to see how the students learned the lesson. All of them were sharing pencils and pens and paper and waiting so patiently for each to finish. It could have also been because Wazungu were teaching the class...but education is definately valued more here than in the states, I can guarantee it.

Anyway, my pictures are finally posting on my shutterfly account, so you are more than welcome to visit. hope all is well back home and your summer is going well! Kwaheri!

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!