celebrating turkey day in Arusha

So I'm back in Arusha with the rest of my program! Megan and I were sad to leave Ndarakwai...she's going back for two days with her dad in December, but I really don't know the next time I'll be able to go back. I posted quite a few pictures on my facebook for those of you wondering what Ndarakwai looks like! Two nights before we left it was a full moon and there was a picture perfect view of Kilimanjaro in the background...sadly I didn't have my camera with me but it was beautiful.

Anyways, all of us wanafunzi are back writing our papers and finishing the last portion of our program! We have two weeks in Arusha to write our papers and prepare for our final presentations on our ISPs. It was fun hearing everyones stories from ISP...we had 5 students in Lake Natron (where we did our Maasai homestay) and they sounded like they had quite the interesting time...they got chased by a buffalo, walked 30km after being stranded, and hiked Oldonyo Lengai, an active volcano. I told them I watched a lot of zebra... :)

Last night our group went out for Thanksgiving dinner at a Chinese restaurant! Some of the fancy hotels here did Thanksgiving dinner but they were all booked up so Chinese was obviously the next logical option. After dinner we went to a club called ViaVia and celebrated with all the other wazungu (white people) in Arusha. We were all dancing when all of a sudden I look over and see Sula Willson, who I went to high school with! I knew she was in Arusha and was planning on meeting her later in the week, but had NO idea she was going to be out that night! It was awesome...its SO weird seeing someone from home, and so we were kind of screaming and hugging all over the place. She was with her Lewis and Clark group so we all ended up dancing together. Good way to spend Thanksgiving. It was also funny because a year ago on Thanksgiving, I was upstate New York with Ellen Whalen and her family, and a year later we were together again in Tanzania! Kind of crazy.

So that basically sums up the last couple days in Arusha. I'm trying to get a lot of things accomplished these next two weeks....Besides my 30pg paper and presentation, I'm trying to go to all the local shops and restaurants that I've been meaning to go to for awhile. I don't wanna leave Arusha wishing I had visited more places. December 8 our program ends, and then Ellen and I and some other SIT students are off to hit up the beaches of Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean for a week!

Time to stop blogging, stop playing solitaire (its really amazing how much Solitaire you can play when you dont have internet) and write my paper!
Baadye!