happy holidays from east africa

Happy holidays from Tanzania!!

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! And I have been informed that Hanukkah has started by members of my group..so happy Hanukkah as well.

SO we have a week left in the program and it's FINALLY starting to hit me that this is it. Thank gosh most of us are staying after the program to travel a bit, but 4 of us are boarding a KLM flight that will return to the states via Amsterdam next week. We're all (mostly) done with our ISP papers....a whopping 30 pages that has been taking up most of our lives the past week and causing me to be a tad sleep-deprived. I felt like I was back at Bucknell for  a bit...speaking of, good luck with finals to all my fellow Bucknellians!

We have our Kiswahili final tomorrow, and then presentations every day for the next 6 days. The presentations are to show the rest of the group what exactly we did when we all disappeared for ISP. We also have a goodbye brunch the last day, and our academic director arranged for the camp crew to cook us one last meal at Klub Afriko, where we stayed previously.

After that, 6 of us are boarding a flight to Zanzibar for the week to chill on the beaches of the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar has very prevalent Muslim influence so it'll be exciting to see a different part of Tanzania. We have no idea where we are staying or what we are doing there yet, but all I know is I wanna lay on the beach all day before I jet off to Amsterdam to freeze but butt off.

Speaking of Amsterdam, I talked to this Dutch expat today while eating a sandwich from her shop and she told me, "you know its absolutely freezing there right now dont you?" Meanwhile, I'm sitting in my pink skirt and tanktop, which is basically all I brought on this program. Cool. However, I decided to take action and I met up with Sula Willson (for all you valley people who know her!) and we went to Croconi, the used clothes market. I bought some jeans for 8 bucks, which hopefully shall serve me well when I head into the arctic that is now apparently Amsterdam.

In other news, our group has been trying to take complete advantage of our last week in Arusha and see everything we have wanted to see. This includes going out to clubs at least 5 times a week...
Our program plans to meet up with Sula's program who are all from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and a bunch of us have met random American/European friends from being here this semester.
I don't know why, but today was really the first day I've felt like I truly live here....and although my tiny bed in the Meru House Inn cannot be considered much of a "home," I feel like Arusha really has become home. I can speak Kiswahili well enough to pretty much get across anything I need, barter with the locals so I don't get ripped off and get an mzungu (white person) price, and I know which crazy dala-dala to take to get almost anywhere. Our academic director always says that everyone knows everyone in Arusha (a city the size of Portland), but its kind of true. Or atleast everyone knows us because of our academic director. But I've started to run into some locals that I met a while ago, and the area we hang out in almost daily is normally packed with a lot of the same people. Granted, we do hang out in what we call "wazungu land" which is basically "land of the white people" but still. Its only because of the food...sometimes you get a bit sick of ricec and beans for 3 days in a row...

I WILL miss the chapati here though, and I'm really confused on why this delicious food has not made it back to the United States yet...My goal is also to cook ugali for my fam when I get back; not quite sure they will like it considering all it consists of is maize flour and water and it kind of sits like a brick in your stomach, but I will try! I pretty much ate ugali everyday over ISP  period for lunch. Ugali and mchicha, which are mixed greens that are cooked and look like seaweed.  Better than it sounds I promise.

Um, not much else to report on. I don't wanna leave! :(  That is the scary part about leaving...I have no idea when I will be able to come back again. But I told myself that I'll just have to make it happen in the future, because this country means too much to me and has shown me sooo much the past couple months.
In one last random note: I'm still on the hunt to find the Harry Potter movie! It should be arriving in Arusha soon...
Kwa heri for now!