my first week here : )

Well, I cannot even believe I have been here for over a week! We have definitely kept very busy and I am excited for the things we will be working on in the future. So on my way to Tanzania we stopped in London. I can’t remember if I already said anything about it so I will go ahead and say what we did anyway. It was me, Heather, and a girl in our group named Alexis. First we rode the eye, then passed through Trafalgar Square, then we went up to a bakery I wanted to visit called Patisserie Valerie, then to a book store called Foyles, then we walked down to St. James park which was really pretty, and our last stop was the Buckingham Palace!

So far in Tanzania we have gotten settled in and familiar with our area. This past week was spent mostly meeting with potential partners about different projects. I am still deciding on what I will focus my efforts on but there are a ton of projects that will be happening this summer and all of them sound really exciting. We have some options to volunteer in orphanages or there are also some potential business projects I could choose from. One project I will for sure be working on is with a program called IOL, or inside-out learning, where we will be training teachers how to use more hands on teaching methods. We also have some exciting opportunities to work with the Albino Peacemaker Group, which I am especially excited about. There is a lot of need for business ideas for this group. Anyway, this week we have a few more meetings with partners and then we will be deciding what projects to spend our time working on. So once I choose my projects I will talk about them more specifically and keep you updated on their progress.

So the week was mostly spent in meetings but last Monday we did have the opportunity to work on a gardening project with a partner named Good Luck. We cleared out an area and made some garden beds for his organization that helps out HIV/AIDS patients. Then on Friday we were able to go and visit an orphanage and spend some time playing with the kids there. We had a blast painting nails, blowing bubbles, and taking pictures. The kids here LOVE our cameras! : ) They love to steal them and take pictures and they also love to see themselves in the pictures…when I show the kids the pictures we take of them they always get really excited and giggle. It is really cute!

On Saturday we had the day off so we went on a nice long hike up to a neat waterfall! It was pretty refreshing to play in the water because the water had been off at our house all week! Haha...yeah, that means no showers and no flushing toilets! I am happy to say that our water is back on but we have to conserve it so we can only take what we call “bucket showers” for now!

So, since I have some extra time I will write a little bit about Tanzania in general. We live in a town called Suye and I absolutely love it here! All our neighbors and people walking around town are so friendly! So when you see someone on the street you say jambo which means hello or mambo and then the response for that is poa. It is kind of like saying hey or what’s up. Habari means how are you and nzuri means good. So it is pretty fun to greet everyone when we are walking (which is a TON). Another word we came to understand the very first day is mzungu which means white person or foreigner! People yell it at us all the time…especially the kids! Ha! Speaking of the kids, they are so stinkin cute! I love when you run into a group of them because they we say in unison “howahhhyouhowahhyou?” It almost sounds like they are singing, it is adorable. And then sometimes they will even follow us and hold our hands. We are basically celebrities here…haha. So our little neighborhood is fun because we can be friendly and greet people but we definitely cannot do that when we are in Arusha, which is a city. The people there only want to greet you and start conversations so they can sell you stuff. So I usually just ignore them and they don’t bother me at all. So that is a little bit about Tanzania for you! As far and scenery it is soooo pretty and of course very green!

Alrighty, blogging is quite the task here because of the slow internet connection and unreliability of it all so that is all I will say for now. I will write again next Sunday!

until then, enjoy some pictures! : )

 

as you can see, this is me in a red telephone booth in London!

 

this is a pic i snapped of the London eye from St. James Park

 

this is our view of Mt. Kilimanjaro from our little tiny plane we took from Kenya to Tanzania!...i will be standing on the top of that thing in August...if i make it that is! : }

 

as you can see we have a ton of fun amongst ourselves in the house! this is a pic of me and my roomies during our shaving party. this was after we all shaved our legs for the last time for the summer...don't worry, we didn't really shave our faces. but we really are having a non-shaving contest, whoever can last all summer without shaving their legs gets a prize!  

 

this is me and heather before the gardening project!

  

this is me helpin out with the garden beds

 

me and heat in our room! you can see all our awesome mosquito nets and sketchy bunk beds in the background. it will be a miracle if nobody gets smashed by the top bunkers or gets malaria by the end of the summer...

 

this is our living room

 

this is a group of us out on our front porch! our house definitely has a lot of character : ) but really, i do love it and it is pretty spacious!

 

 this is the day we played with the kiddos at the orphanage!

Kwaheri!