barafu SANA in the land of the dutch

holyyyyyy crap it is very cold in Amsterdam.  I boarded the plane in a tanktop and walked off in 3 coats....a very abrupt transition from summer to winter! We landed in a solid 6 inches of snow at Schiphol, which has been causing a ton of delays and cancellations.. my friend Chelsea I was with was sitting on the runway on her plane to Atlanta, only to find out it was cancelled..so we may be meeting up again later tonight if she is stuck here!

Our last day in Arusha was weird, just because we knew we were leaving that night. Chelsea and I finished packing up and got our last meal of street food and I did some last minute shopping. We both stocked up on Chai Bora (our favorite tea) and I got an extra-large jar of Vegemite that will hopefully last me through the year :) We hopped into our taxi that took us to the airport and for the FIRST time over the past 4 months Mt. Kilimanjaro was crystal clear....we could see all the snow covering it. It was awesome, and I'm really glad I got to see it on my last night there!

We boarded our plane at 10:30pm and took off for Dar-es-Salaam to pick up more passengers before heading north to Europe. I guess I slept because chelsea informed me that I missed dinner. We got to Amsterdam a gross 11 hours later where I said goodbye to Chelsea and headed out to find a bus. Surprisingly, I feel so much more culturally retarded here in Amsterdam than I did in Tanzania. I dont know why but its a lot scarier to ask people for help here, and I also do not understand a word of Dutch. I felt a little lost. I managed to find a bus to take me to Museumplein where my hostel was. Then I walked around for a good half hour with my giant backpack on my back, and my little backpack on my front in the snow until I found my hostel...I was freezing by the time I got there. My hostel is cute although I am in a room with 6 people...there are 4 of us so far and im the only girl....interesting. One of my roomates was kind of screaming into his phone in Sri-Lankan or whatever they speak there but I managed to fall asleep and take a nice nap.

Right now I'm just sitting in my hostel trying to figure out what to do with myself...I meet up with my friends tomorrow morning. I already walked around a bit to find food and explore but it was so damn snowy I ended up just coming straight back after eating. Also my lack of proper clothing in this winter weather is somewhat of a hinderance.Oh well. I think my goal tonight will be to find a waffle because I heard they are good here...hmm. I did get to eat a salad for lunch today though! it was splendid to have lettuce after 4 months.

kwa heri! I dont know how they goodbye in dutch so Im gunna stick with what i know...kiswahili.

and the last night is here....

 Last night in Tanzania right now...and I'm really not liking it one bit. I can't believe I am leaving my life for the past 4 months behind here. Its surreal that this semester is already over and I would literally give anything to be back with the 24 people I spent the last four months with.  :( I have a red-eye out of Kilimanjaro Int'l Airport tomorrow at 10:30pm.... leaving summer and heading to winter in Amsterdam for four days! I'm excited to see Amsterdam but emotionally and physically I really dont think I am ready. Mostly physically considering I literally have no clothes...gunna have to rock the hiking boots look when I walk around. Cute.

Things I AM looking forward to in Amsterdam though: salad! and washing machines. After almost four months of hand washing my clothes are terrible looking. The Maasai goat smell has really seeped into everything..never did I think I would look forward to doing laundry so badly! Also I have been a bit deprived of lettuce and cheese so those are first on the list.

Anyways, I DID just get back from an amazing week on the beaches of Zanzibar with 7 other people from my program. After an extremely tearful goodbye to everyone on the program, the 6 of us headed to the airport and hopped on a little puddle-jumper to Zanzibar. The planes here are ridiculous. Its more like a bus...we boarded our flight at the time it was supposed to take off, we sat in any seat we wanted, and they literally shut the door behind us and off we went. No instructions, no nothing. We landed in Stonetown in Zanzibar and holllllyyyy crap was it humid. I dont think I stopped sweating the entire week we were there. Stonetown is SO different from Arusha though...I honestly didnt feel like I was in Tanzania! Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim, so the Islamic influence in the architecture and all the buildings was definitely noticeable...it even had a bit of a European feel to it. There are tons of winding alleyways and narrow streets with flags hung between them (we got lost a A LOT) that were so fun to walk around. We met up with some of the SIT Zanzibar kids, smoked some hookah with them, and then they let us borrow their snorkeling equipment. So nice.
Stonetown also has this awesome place called Forodhani Gardens, where a bunch of street vendors convene and sell food every night. Its all lit up and right on the water. They have fresh seafood they grill up for you and they also have zanzibar pizzas which are my new favorite thing. its vegetables, cheese, and egg grilled together and wrapped up in a thin bread crust. SO delicious. You can also get them with bananas and chocolate inside as well. I also got prawns there one night as well, which may possibly be a bit sketchy but I never got sick so I think its fine. Its a bit ridiculous how much street food I've eaten here...probably a miracle I havent gotten sick actually. There were so many nights in Arusha that we just wandered around the bus station looking for street mamas who cook rice and beans in a little pot on a sidewalk for about 900 Tsh, which is probably 60 cents. We also ate a lot of street fruit as well that we would cut up using what we liked to call "small sword" which is a machete my friend Sam bought off the street for $3 and which was sharpened on a bicycle. :)

Our first full day in Zanzi we took a nice little boat  called Mr. Bean  to Prison Island where we spent the day feeding giant tortoises and snorkeling around the reef!! The tortoises were so cool...one was 150 years old! It was about three times the size of me. The snorkeling was cool but a bit of a fail because my mask was broken so I mostly just floated around a lot. This is my first time in the Indian Ocean and for some reason it seems a hundred times saltier than any other ocean I've ever been in! The water is amazing though...bright turquoise blue!
The next day we took a 2 hr dala-dala ride to Kendwa, where all the really nice beaches are (there aren't really any beaches in Stonetown). Kendwa was AMAZING. I dont think I've ever been on a beach that beautiful...soft white sand and really warm blue waters..it was awesome. We spent 3 days there just hanging out doing absolutely nothing except tanning, swimming and eating really good seafood! The sun was unlike anything I've experienced though....its summer here and we are on the equator...no joke I was putting SPF 70 on and still getting tan. I didnt even burn myself which is quite the accomplishment for me!! I got some really cool henna on my foot as well that hopefully should stay for a couple weeks.

We all headed back to Stonetown after 3 days and Chelsea and I had to say goodbye to the rest of the girls we were with :( We spent our last day doing lots of x-mas shopping in the curio shops that Zanzibar has...I got some really cool rings and Aladdin pants! :) The curios were so neat...they were huge shops stuffed to the brim with antiques from the Middle East...some of the stuff looked straight out of Aladdin....huge jeweled rings, genie lamps, and tons of Zanzibar chests which are beautiful. I would have loved to get one if only they didnt weigh 50 lbs....

Chelsea and I said goodbye to the Indian Ocean and flew back to Arusha this morning. We packed a bit and then our Academic Director took us out for one last dinner in Tanzania.....we had some awesome wanyama choma (grilled meat) with a couple other people on my program was well. A couple of them had just summited Kilimanjaro, and one had just gotten back from Ethiopia, so it was cool to hear about everyone elsees experiences. I REALLY want to climb Kili...I guess I will make that my goal so then I can come back to Tanzania :).
I had about 4  pieces of this really yummy meat that I was raving about before I learned that it was goat...which I swore I would never eat but whatever. It was really good.
And now I sit here back in the Meru House Inn writing this blog entry, really trying hard to stop thinking about how I am leaving tomorrow night. Thank gosh I have all day tomorrow to get last minute stuff done. Still need to get some last minute x-mas gifts at the market, and I need to stock up on Vegemite, tea, and Konyagi packets (which I shall be distributing when I get home..its African gin).

I'll probably blog again from Amsterdam, but this is my last post from Tanzania :( Kwaheri for now...

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!