homestay in Bangata!

 stole this pic from my friend Peter, but this is from Ndarakwai ranch during orientation.

oh my god. so much has happened since i last blogged, which was exactly a week ago . im sitting in an internet cafe in Arusha right now, in a place called "hot bread shop." weird. anyways i guess i'll start from last wednesday....so we had 2 full days in Arusha before we headed up to our homestays in Bangata saturday morning .our mornings were filled with Swahili class and going into town and our evenings were spent at the hotel bar sampling local beer and probably a little too much Konyagi, which is african gin. it was really great to bond with my group though! on Saturday morning we all loaded up in land rovers and drove 8km up a bumpy dirt road (if you can call it that! ) to Bangata, where our homestays would be! we're at an altitude of about 8,000 feet on the slopes of Mt. meru. it is GORGEOUS up there. its practically a tropical jungle with waterfalls and streams all over. I have 2 homestay brothers, Erick (8) and Emmanuel (6), who we call Junior. I also have one Mama, but no dad because he died last year :( I have my own room which is great, but no electricity so much of my homework and meals are by torchlight! I do have running water though which is nice. It was superrrr awkward at first, because i obviously dont speak swahili that well but my 2 brothers speak a fair amount of english so they are helping me. their favorite english saying seems to be "oh shit" which is hilarious. we also have one baby ng'ombe (cow) that i like to pet, and which my brothers like to hit on the head with a stick. my bibi (grandmother) lives right next door. oh, i am also a 2 minute walk from the centre where we take swahili class every morning which is great because some people have 45 minute long walks to school every day!. we have swahili every morning from 8 until 1, and then we normally hang out at the center for a couple more hours, playing frisbee and lounging around doing homework. the centre is great, we have a big grass lawn and flush toilets too. all of us have gotten addicted to tea though..we literally have tea time about 5 times a day. I normally have 2 cups when i wake up, 1 cup at 10:30, 1 cup at 3:30, and 2 cups before bed. im defnitely bringing tea home with me when this is over because its SO good.
ok lets see...my first 2 days in bangata i had my brothers show me around everywhere, we hiked down to a stream and played there and also visited my aunt/uncles house, who are fairly well off as they have a car and tv. I had a great hour long chat with my aunt on the porch over tea about education and the economy in Tanzania. very interesting. then i had some erm...."intestinal problems" probably from the 4 cups of tea with fresh cows milk my aunt kept giving me. you cant really refuse tea here... :)
Right now it is Wednesday at noon and Im in Arusha. every wed we have Kiswahili class in town. today we practiced conversation at a Maasai market where all of us girls bought really cute shoulder bags. mine has little zebra all over it. we then went to a post office to mail letters etc and practiced conversational skills there. we have the rest of the afternoon free to do whatever, but have to be back in Bangata before dark. its going to be rather interesting getting home because we have to take a "dala-dala" to bangata, which are 16 seater mini vans but usually hold numbers in the upper 20's....there is a saying that goes "there is always room for one more in a dala-dala!" however, they cost about 200 shillings which is about 20 cents so that is nice. i probably mentioned this before but things are ridiculously cheap here! we all got soda and donuts earlier which cost 900 shillings, which isn't even a dollar.! later im going to try and find a soccer ball to buy my homestay brothers.
ok internet time is about to run out, but in one week we leave on our first safari, to Tarangire National Park for about 5 days to do mini-research projects in groups. Im in the non-ruminants group and i think we get to study hippos! our workload so far is actually quite a lot. we have Kiswahili homework every night and i have about 80 pages of reading i still need to finish by friday, plus a paper to write, which is hard when you dont have electricity.
also im sorry i cant post pictures but wireless practically doesnt exist here so its hard to upload things.
I miss everyone so much! i really wish i could write more....i have so much to say! I will ttry to post again next week!