Home sweet home

Well I am back ini good old Minnesota! It's crazy the weather is nicer here than it was there. I am trying to get myself back on the time schedule for here. I actually stayed up until 10 PM last night, which would have been 6 Am there. So I thought that was good, but I didn't sleep great last night. Jeff picked me up from the airport and my plane was actually about an hour early so that was nice and I made it through customs realitively quickly. I am going to be spending the weekend at the cabin and then I am taking a class next week at Blake. So I am back the the busy life of the USA, not the pole pole additude of the Africans! The picture is from the Maasia girls school. These are the girls that took us on a tour of the school.

Heading home!

Well today is my last day in Tanzania! It has gone so fast. I still have yet to see Kilimanjaro, kind of sad, hopefully it will clear up a little today so I can at least say I saw Kili even if I didn't climb it! I am going to try and go out to the Amani house today which is an orphange here in Moshi. I am not very excited about the long flight home or trying to get my sleeping pattern switched again. I have started to try, but it will be easier when i am home where the daylight has switched. If you have not checked out the teacher blog, Karen has added some pictures... www.phfteachers.blogspot.com Give me a call sometime soon, I would love to tell you all about what we did here and what the country is like. it was amazing! I am hoping ot scrapbook about my trip, but we'll see how long that takes, maybe Kathy would be willing to give me a hand, she is fast and her books look amazing! Take care!

Moshi!

Well my time is quickly endning here. I am now in MOshi, which is near Kilimanjaro. Hopefully I will actually be able to see it! I am now traveling by myslef for a couple of days. I am leaving on Wednesday, the time has gone so fast but yet I feel like I have been gone for so long. It was been wonderful and eye opening. Exciting and sad. Hopefully and discouraging!

Zanzibar was wonderful, but very different from the first part of the trip. It was nice a relaxing. We did some snorkeling and the beaches were beautiful. We also meet some great people, so that has been fun. I hope everyone is doing well and see you shortly!

Still sunny!

Well we are still in zanzibar right now, it has been beautiful! We went snorkeling yesterday, it was great! The water is a beautiful color. We are thinking about going back to Stone Town today and I am going to be heading to Moshi tomorrow, hopefully! I have not booked my flight yet, but I am going to do that now! The time here has been so great, we have actually had some time since ending our time with Peace house. that experience was great though because we actually got to live a day in the life of a Tanzanian rather than just being a tourist and seeing only other tourists like we are now.

Yesterday was my niece Abbey's 5th birthday! I am excited that I will get to celebrate that when I get home next week! Have a super day! i sure am!

The Beaches of Zanzibar

Hello,
we are finally on the relaxing part of our trip. Jessica and Rob left this morning to head to Amsterdam, so now we are down to three. We were in Peja or Jamibanee the last two nights, we were right between the too. It was a beautiful beach. We stayed at a little bungalow place without many other people there. We went snorkeling on a little boat that looked like it was about to fall apart! It was good though, we didn't see too many brightly colored fish. It was nice to relax on the beach. We had a hge dog fight on our porch one night and also a storm that came through so we didn't sleep too much that night, or at least I did not. I am going to be on ZAnaibar until Sunday I think and then I am going to go up to MOshi and go to Kilimanjaro national park, not to climb the whole mountain, but jst to see it. We have not even see the mountian yet! Sorry the u key is not really working on this compuuter. Hope everyone has been enjoying the hot weather!

On our own!

Hello, well we are officially done with our Peace house trip. There are five of us that are continuing on though. We stayed in Arusha for two extra days and now we are in Dar seSalaam. It was a long 10 hour bus ride toget here yesterday. We stayed in a roach motel! we had lots of bugs to keep us company and cement walls, so it felt like we were in a jail cell. We are all thankful we are only staying here one night! We are off to zanaibar this afternoon. It's hot, but soon enough we will be sitting on the beaches of tanzania. We had a bit of a rough start here, we got way over charged for a cab but that's ok. The night everyone else left, we went to Theo's house, she is the head mistriss for Peace HOuse. She had dinner for us, it was lovely. It was nice to be in a house eating real food. It was very good she was stressed about what we would eat but we ate lots and it was typically tanzanian food! That was so wonderful. we also had a surprise visitor before everyone departed for home, Mama Tesha came to say farwell. She is the head mistress at a school that many of us visited and also came to the conferenece. she brought little betiks for all of us, that was so nice! A great way to end our time together! I hope everyone had a good fourth of july. We had 'fireworks' in our tents, using flashlights! It was great, but about the best we could do! I hope the ferry is better than everyone says, they say it is very rough and crowded! but this whole trip is an adventure. Sorry have not been able to upload pictures, you will have to check when I get back home, then I can put some on here. Have a super day!

We're back!

We made it back from safari! It was fun but very tiring! I was really surprised that it tired you out so much! All we did was drvie around standing up looking for animals, but it was fun, we saw elephants, lions, zebra, impala, leopard, hippos, rhinos, lots of birds, wildabeasts, hyenas, dik-diks, monkeys, chimpanzees, monitor lizaeds, and I am sure I am missing some. We had a great driver. Last night we stayed in permenent tents, with monkeys, and dik-diks all around. we also saw a family of elephants going past, which was great. we had wonderful food. Tomorrow we all split up, which will be a little sad, I have met some amazing people but hopefully we will be able to stay in to stay in touch! I hope you all had a great fourth of July! love you lots!

What an mess!

Update Update! OK so now it is the next day I have I spent all my time on here getting to this page, what an mess getting on the internet, I will never complain about speed again! But as they say here we are on Africa time! We are leaving shortly for our safari!


UPDATE: I have been sitting at a computer for 30 minutes now trying to get to my blog, but it has not been working, the computers are really slow! Ever slower than our dial up at home! So I am going to post this a little later hopefully!

Well we are back from the Maasae village. IT WAS A VERY INTERESTING EXPERIENCE! What a different world it is there. They live in huts with there family, men have more than one wife, the kids run around and herd goats, the women made beaded jewelry, they dances for us, which was amazing! We also learned about some of their costumes like circumcision and female circumcision. It is a very big topic hear for the females. There tribe still practices is, somewhat, many of the families do not and it is actually against the law. Today I went with the warriors, who are the men and older boys, like between 15 and 40, but there where two elders there that were in their 60’s! They killed a goat and we got to see how they eat it. I ate some of the blood and some part of the meat, I am not sure what it was though, it was OK, not great but I had to try it! We also had a bracelet made out of goat fur. Today we have our last meal with the teachers from PHF, it will be a little sad to say goodbye to them! We leave for safari tomorrow. We finally had a couple of nice days too, so that was great. We haven’t had much sunshine, so hopefully that will be changing. I am going to stay in Arusha a few days and then we are going to head down the west coast. I think there are five of us going to go down there. So it should be fun! We have had a great time on this trip, met some wonderful people and I am learning so much! It’s amazing! I hope everything is well at home. Have a happy fourth if I am not able to get on here while on safari! Much love to all!