Orientations at Valdivia

Last weekend AFS, the foreign exchange program had another set of
orientations, and in spite of the prior experiences with AFS
orientations, I was looking foreward to it. All of the AFS students
south of Curicó would be heading to Valdivia and I was hoping that
would be interesting.

Although the orientations were unsurprisingly useless, it turns out
that all of the students were extremely interesting to talk to and the
best conversations were definitely the ones between students that had
to communicate in languages that aren't their native ones.
Conversations ended up being half in English and half Spanish for me,
and I think for quite a few people although some also had people with
whom to speak their native tongue for the first time in at least a
month, such as the Finnish and Thai girls and those from German-
speaking countries, but I was surprised how little of those other
languages I heard.

We all shared our experiences and the nationalities were pretty mixed,
I did spend some time with the Italians although they seemed kind of
exclusive as a result of their only being able to communicate in
Spanish and some peoples reluctance (or inability for some of the
students that have only been here slightly more than a month) to speak
purely in Spanish, though also because they didn't try to mix too
hard. We all had a lot of experiences in common and had made a lot of
the same observations, but the differences between families or cities
waere interesting.

Over all, the majority of the students that came to Chile at the same
time as I did are also getting used to the situation, although some
are still struggling with the language. It was fun, and a bit sad that
we spent so little time together, but even though I was not speaking
all English, I am glad that I got back to a fully Spanish surrounding
because I am pretty sure that being able to go into English mode too
often wouldn't help my Spanish development.

Pruebas

I had two quiz things today but as I missed the covering of the material for filisofy, I only had to do the half that I was here for, and the lenguage test on don Quijote covered much less for me - I only had to read and summarize two chapters while everyone else had to read 14 and answer specific and somewhat obscure questions. Other than tests such as these first ones for which I missed the teaching and those that require the reading of books written in old castilian, I will be able to keep up with most of what everyone else had to do, and though the first bio test was almost impossible, I am hoping it will get better too as I missed the teaching of some material. 
In terms of weather, though we got one good day on monday signalling the coming of spring, the last two days have been depressing and rainy. Hopefully it gets better soon, because not even getting driven to school is worth having to put up with this weather.

Colegio. Three weeks in.

By now I almost know the schedule, but it is so weird and random that I sometimes have to guess. Not that it matters too much. I have math in one form or other (math electivo or comun) almost every day, but physics comunes once a week, on Friday so we haven't really had it yet because of a presentation the first week and a holiday last week. So far my impressions: three classes will be quite easy for me, one pretty easy, three rather hard and two pretty much not graded.
Those easiest classes would be math e+c, English e+c, and physics e+c. Math is stuff I covered three years ago and is super boring and (my opinion) not that well taught. English goes in this group for obvious reasons, and since it isn't even at a level where I will learn Spanish, it will also be boring. Physics will at least interest me if only for the new vocabulary, but also to relearn what I forgot after my cram for the SAT, but judging by the classes so far and the test I just got a 7 (100%) on, it should be easy.
Next level includes chem. Since I had Mr. Fox (for anyone unfamiliar he is an abysmal teacher) I may not have learned quite what I was supposed to but I think that I know enough to make the class relatively easy. It is the BSing for why that will be slightly more difficult.
History and filosofy will be okay, I think, and I think I get special grading. My group for a group project we did gave a presentation today on the Punic wars and although I said the least and worst (not surprisingly at all), I think I still got a good grade. Filosofy is weird and we just started a unit on sexuality and individual. It was kind of odd that one student asked (translated for your convenience) "is homosexuality an illness or preference?" and got the difinitive response of "preference/choice. There is no person that is born gay." while I certainly respect opinions, I don't when they are presented as facts. Oh well I think I will get past the (by CA standards) old fashioned beliefs and that class shouldn't be too bad.
In the hard category will be bio because my one year of bio is not what we are learning. Having missed thae learning part, I think I will do quite badly on the test tomorrow, not to mention all the new special vocabulary I will have to learn. Luckily, that doesn't matter.
Both of my teachers of lenguage (spelling mixed english/spanish) have told me that I am graded specially (or pretty much not at all), so those classes will be easy but not boring as I will learn a lot of Spanish, I suppose.
Not that any of the grades matter because they aren't sent back to the US (even if they were, they wouldn't know what to do with a 6,3). The other day I was feeling quite sick of school when I reminded myself of that, and now it isn't nearly so bad, almost like a game. Still not a big fan of the uniform, but what can you do?
Chico is in the centro de alumnos, the student government thing at our school, so I have gone with him to the after school meetings. We were going to go to an all Chile centro de alumnos thing at a school near Concepción this weekend, but I'm not quite sure if it's been cancelled. At any rate the centro (only 5 students or so) has been planning the aniversario, which strikes me as kind of like homecoming week. There is a king and queen and lots of competitions. I don't completely get it, but I am already excited anyhow.
It is good to have a friend that drives because Chelo (marcelo) can save us some money and time getting home for lunch and today he gave five of us a ride to the small mall thing after school and we ate ice cream. He had a Nissan truck when I first got here, but I think that broke down so now he has a fiat car thing with two seats up front and a covered truck bed thing in back, which is where we ride mostly.

Flaites and fighting

After another day of school that lasted till 5, Chico and I left for home along with a few other guys. We made it a couple hundred yards when Xico warned me to make sure my cell phone or something was safe. I was wondering why when from behind us approach the kind of person called fleites here, 4 or 5 of them. One of them approaches Chico and says something like "WTF do you think you're doing, fag?" it looks like it could turn into a fight, though the other Conce guys with us are trying to break it up, saying "¡¡tranquilo!!" and it almost seems like nothing would happen when a different fleite, a small one that had been behind the one that was mainly in Chico's face, runs forward and punches Chico in the face. Since they were speaking quickly with plenty of slang and stuff, I must have missed something because the little fleite's attack was completely unanticipated. Chico is pushed backwards and at least the two fleites are punching him, and I realize it is time to do something. I am slow to come to that conclusion and to reach them, because now a white truck stops and the fleites vanish. Chico asks that I don't tell our parents or abuelita, because abuelita would worry too much. He has the slightest cut lip, but other than that seems unhurt. Chico doesn't know what got the fleites all reiled up and The next day I was informed by a classmate that something like that never has happened before. So that is the first actual fleite experience I had, before I had just been warned to avoid them and that they steal stuff a lot. They apparently have their way of dressing but I am not yet quite certain what defines that.

The first day of Colegio

Today was the first day of school and I woke up right away when the first alarm went of at 6:58. That won't last; I always start out that way and end up pressing snooze 3 times. Anyhow, Seba and I got ready for school, breakfast and stuff, and then had time to spare because my host dad was to drive us, something unusual as he is normally in Santiago all week but today most schools have off. At any rate we got to school with time to spare and waited for the first class, P.E. today.
We wear a different uniform for P.E. than for regular class days, and that is what we're all wearing today, blue pants with a yellow stripe, grey shirt and blue and grey sweatshirt. We run around the gym for a while and then do some dribbling drills around some cones with a football (yeah that is a soccerball for you unitedstatesians). I am really bad because I haven't tried to play football for years. For that reason I choose to go shower when given the choice of a game or that, and about half chose the same, it seems. That means that I have a while while we wait for those who chose to play finish playing and shower. Next is English. I have a feeling that I won't have too much trouble in that class.
In English everyone asks me questions as a quiz type thing with a grade for asking questions no matter what they are. I get "do you have a girlfriend?" twice from the girls in the class and then again from Diego and "do you have a boyfriend" from another guy. They get points for asking the questions and they get to be funny. Otherwise, most of the questions are "do you like...?" kind of questions.
We stay in the same room with most of the same people for most of the classes, and the teachers come to us. Not all of the classes are with all the same people bacause everyone chooses an electivo of either matemático, biología, or lenguaje and each takes extra of certain classes. As it will be the easiest, I chose matemático which includes extra of math, English and physics. So my electivo math class is next.
As always we all stand until the profe greets us and tells us to take a seat. He goes over distance and midpoint formulas, informs us that there is a quiz the following Monday and gives us a study guide. This is geometry stuff that I learned in eighth grade, so it isn't too hard if only I knew what the longitud de gravedad or something is. Luckily the profe helps me out with a little drawing that makes it quite clear.
Lunch time so we head for home. Normally we might walk a short way then catch the micro to get closer to home, but one of our classmates drives and gives us a lift to someplace nearer home. We get home and eat lunch, always the largest meal of the day, and mom (how am I supposed to refer to her in this blog?) tells us she'll give us a lift back, again unusual as she normally needs to get back to school too.
Now is PSU lenguaje, which is our language class that prepares us, or everyone else, for the PSU test that determines something about what college you get into and has a lot of different subjects in it as near as I can tell. We take notes from the board and the profe's dictation, and I get most of it but need to glance at Chico's page for a couple of words. We then have a class that is actually just a talk with the boss-teacher Carolina and back to PSU lenguaje for more of the same. The talk with la Caro was interesting to listen to, mainly discussing grades and how they should try harder, then going over who can help in each class. My classmates volunteer me for English (surprise) and for math and I accept although I think that it will be quite hard trying I teach in Spanish.
That was school, and now it is after 5 (Monday is one of the later days, I think, and Friday is only until lunch) and we walk in a large group away from school saying "ciao" to people as the group shrinks and everyone heads home.

Everything

I have been bad with keeping up my blog here, but now I will try to catch up. All in one post.

Through I now feel very comfortable here at home, the first few days were a little weird. My family learned quickly that they need to talk to me rather slowly, but I was(and still am) constantly asking people to repeat themselves and I hope that they don't get too annoyed, though it seems to me like it could easily be extremely bothersome. The one thing that still I feel uncomfortable with is refusing an offer. My abuelita that lives with us is always offering me food. Not that it isn't good, because it is generally, but I feel like I am eating way too much sometimes. That is of course her goal because I am assuredly far too thin. Luckily I am exercising. I'll get to that later this post (sorry it is so long)
As for people I've met, they all seem quite nice, if only I could be more a part of the conversation. We had a party/onces de bienvenidos and around 18 of my class of 25 came. While I barely talked at all with some, others put a lot of effort into having a conversation with me. One girl decided that I should always be talking with someone and asked me quite a few questions, until someone else noted their growing absurdity and mocked her, asking "does el Toby breathe?" Overall, the party went quite well, though I was very tired by the time the last few guests left at around 2 in the morning.
My brothers here are very active and one of the first things I spent my pesos on upon arriving was a gym membership. At 9000 pesos per month it seems like a pretty good deal, that's about $18 U.S., and I will be going pretty often with my younger brother. Sebastian is 16, and somewhat shorter than I, though about the same weight. He goes to the gym often so while I could best him in a race, he has a bit more upper body strength than I. We do lift weights together, but he is almost always lifting more, if it's not with the legs. The gym is not huge, but since there aren't normally that many people there, we can use pretty much any equipment we want.
My older brother, David, also goes to the same gym, but not with us. With him, I run. We have only gone on one run so far, but that is only because of the bad weather we've been having(it rained every day for the first week I was here). The air is pretty good here, though there is quite a bit of wood smoke as that is the principal method of heating here, also causing the houses to be lacking the warmth of our centrally heated ones.
Other impressions include the amazing view of the Andes from anywhere in Linares, and the wonderfulness of being able to walk anywhere, though come school next week that one might lose its charm slightly.
If I've forgotten anything, it must not be important right now. This post is long enough.

Linares

I got to Linares by bus on Sunday and was picked up by my family and an AFS volunteer called Domingo. We got dragged my bags to the car, a silver Citröen five seat hatchback, and got in. My mother, father, and two brothers went to pick me up from the bus station, and at home there were two grandmothers, one of whom always lives here with us and her birthday was the day before I arrived. The other was just visiting and she left soon after. The brothers are six months older than me and six months younger. The 16 year-old, Sebastián, goes to the same school as I will, and the 17 year-old, David, now goes to a public school because of bad grades. Also at home there is a cousin who is staying here for break, which ends in two weeks.
I am still adjusting to living here and speaking Spanish all the time, but at least we can comunicate most of the time. I almost started writing this in Spanish because my mind gets in that mode sometimes. I had better write my college applications soon.

Miami

I arrived in Miami a bit late last night, at around midnight, here time, and when I found out where the shuttle left to my hotel, I left for there. One of the other people on the shuttle was also going to Chile with AFS. He seemed a bit unprepared, and out of it - he left his bag at the airport or something. Today, I had breakfast with another AFSer, by accident (I thought he was done and had left his table). Along with one other person I met on Facebook, I now know 3 other people going to Chile for the semester program. None of them are in the same city as I am, but I will meet others at the orientation today, so maybe one of them will. So far they all have one thing in common - 2 years of Spanish. I am feeling quite prepared at this point and not worried.
The surprise of the day was running into Emiliana Mattson at the hotel I am at. She is getting back from planting trees and stuff in Costa Rica, and we were both very surprised when she found me at breakfast.

Still hasn't completely sunk in that I will be in Chile for 6 months.

For whom it may concern

As it turns out, I just found out, here in Dubai (first Internet for a couple of days) that am returning to California on the 10, arriving in the airport at sac at 8. I might be tired though. Who knows. See all you Auburnians soon. (Or any of you who might read this blog)
The time on the post might be TZ time, but I am in Dubai (one hour later) but my iPod clock is on NY time (430 pm) which just happens to be the same as chile's right now. How nice. Maybe it is time for an afternoon ice cream snack, Evan thinks so anyhow. Haven't had ice cream for a long time.

edit: am now in Denver and may get back at four instead of eight! Assuming I get on this flight (standby) but I'm not too worried.

Orfans

On friday, Evan and I went to Chipemoyo, where our neighbor Daniela works. She goes every Friday to play with the kids and brings board games, paper, colored pencils and puzzels. We get there and walk in, all the boys dressed in worn out t-shirts, and they greet us happily (Shikamoo, marahaba), if a bit shyly. That wore off pretty quickly.
They just make up rules to their games because Daniela does not speak Swahili perfectly. We play connect 4, but the game isn't over till the board is full, and the king can do anything in checkers. They try to make the simple puzzels, and we help them out. There is one girl and she wears this nice dress, though the boys' clothes are threadbare. Their drawings seem to mainly be of houses, and I wonder if that reflects their desire to find their homes. Origame fortune-tellers without fortunes inside. They all crowd in front of Evan's camera. And behind to see the pictures and videos of themselves. They all seem so happy.
The kids are all trying to find their homes, and chipemoyo helps them do that, and also helps them have money for school in the mean time. Emmanuel, who I have seen too much of: he comes to our house every day, was there at some point, before he found this family that he is now staying with. The kids are always changing, some leaving, some arriving. 8 checked in from the streets on Friday.

Nyamaguku

Speaking of contrasts, on Thursday we got to see the other end of the spectrum, a town that makes Musoma look big. My mom's nonprofit has one villiage with 16 or 17 houses with solar lighting. It is often referred to as the research villiage by Robi and my mom because the name is so hard to remember. Upon arriving, the first house we go to is that of the richest man in the village. He is not an especially nice person, it seems. He is like Scrooge: he is rich, but he doesn'teven have furniture in his house and he almost didn't let my mom take a picture of the system in the rafters. I was worried at that point that the whole village would be that way toward us, but it wasn't so. Most greeted us warmly and one particularly outgoing older woman posed in a picture with Evan and the system. Everyone seemed happy to have the two electric lights, and only wanted more lights and a bigger system for a TV, radio or cell phone charger. Before having these lights installed in their houses, the only source of light after 7 was a kerosene lantern, which not only created disgusting smoke to breath in but also was expensive, and as with all petroleum products, the price just keeps going up. The waiting list on this one small village has already reached 90 people.
My mom has pointed out how unusual it is to be invited into peoples' homes in rural Africa, and it is true that it is very uncommon, but so is the thing my mom is doing with solar lighting. The systems are humble, but even they are an improvement over what they had and what they have in most of Tanzania and rural Africa still.

Mwanza

Musoma is a small town by unitedstatesian standards, but rather large for the area when many of them have only a handful of houses surrounded by some large gardens then a vast expanse of nothing, or at least nothing human influenced. For that reason Musoma is a hub of activity for surrounding areas, getting produce and stuff in its market from miles around. So it seems big sometimes, until there is someplace bigger. Mwanza is the second biggest city in TZ, we think, after Dar and it is about 260 km south of Musoma (if you want miles, do the math. Something like 150). We take the bus, but the big one, not one of the polluting mini buses. It drops us off on some random(as far as we can tell) street in the city, and we set off. The contrast is startling, really. It is really a city. One thing that is an interesting difference city to country is the cars you see. In the country and in Musoma there are almost strictly Toyotas. there might be a Mitsubishi or Suzuki every once in a while, and VERY rarely anything else (one Honda in Musoma and couple Nissans) Notice a trend? Yeah. All Japanese. In the city, there is slightly more variety, and only a bit more than 2 in 3 are Toyotas and there might be a Ford, Peugeot, Mehindra etc. This is a very small example, but it just illustrates the differences. We do some shopping for the house because there is a lot of stuff that one simply can't buy in Musoma.
After a few hours of shopping (we got lots of African fabric for clothes and curtains, some bathroom fixtures and some other stuff) we catch the bus home. This proves more difficult than planned as the main office was not where we were dropped off, so we take a taxi there. At the main office, we buy tickets back to Musoma and sit down to wait. While we wait, Evan points out how the man sitting across from us looked very very similar to Heath Ledger, only black. I had noticed him, but until he pointed it out, I didn't notice how much he actually did resemble the actor. Later, once we got on the bus (he does too) we sneakily take a picture of him, pretending to take pictures of the outside and eachother. The busride home is uneventful, but the busdrivers go SO fast on these roads, and people buy stuff through the windows of the bus when we stop. Both are normal here, apparently.

Running with the bull

So my mom, my brother and I were walking back from lunch at The Anglican, which is Robi's favorite lunch place, (he is very set in his ways) along the dirt road to Juasun. Small children bid us good afternoon (practice your English on the wazungu), I can understand them after a moment. We smile and reply good afternoon. We continue walking and presently we hear fast footsteps approaching us. I think that there are children running after us, after all there had been a gaggle of children following us not 5 minutes ago. I decide not to look at the children running after us. Then my brother makes a noise of surprise and distress. Maybe it was my mom, I really don't know because what is running behind us isn't a group of children and what happens next wipes other thoughts out of my head. I had started to get out of the way as soon as I heard the sound of alarm from Pineapple Fishstick but a split second later the thing behind me runs into me. As I finish leaping out of the way, a bull runs past me, cream colored, with horns spanning about two feet. One of those horns had just stabbed me in the buttocks. It hurts, but I'll be fine, yet my mother keeps making a huge deal out of it. Looking back, it could have been a big deal, if I hadn't leapt out of the way just in time. There is a hole in my shirt. And my pants. And my boxers, yet it feels like I've got no more than a bruise. It isn't even so bad riding my bike. Luckily the bikes have wide seats here.

Safari

Saturday was safari day. We got up early, alarms set for 5:15. Still we didn't get breakfast. We left at 6:03 according to the Nissan Patrol's clock. The sun rose as we drove, and we were at the gate to the Serengheti park at 7:45. After paying for entrance, we enter. I am surprised somehow at the amount of animals already, right near the entrance and right near the road. Right away there are wildebeast, zebra, impala and warthogs (I guess one would not expect warthogs to be cute, I didn't. But they definitely are. Especially when they run.). We spent the day driving around the dirt roads of the Serengheti in search of wonderful animals, stopping just to eat lunch in the parking lot of a super-expensive hotel. We would have gone in to eat but lunch was 50 dollars. Each. By the end of the day we had seen almost every kind of animal we could have hoped for. we saw far more wildebeast and antelope than we needed, but though we also saw tons of zebra, I never grew tired of them (they look like striped donkeys, and that is what they are called in Swahili). We saw giraffes, elephants, lions, a leopard in a sort of distant tree, viboko (hippos), an unimpressive crocodile, gorrillas, monkeys, buffalo, mongoose galore (tons at the lodge. baby ones are really cute; adult ones not so much), lots of birds including a walking one that Evan swears he saw in the Lion King and even a hyena, which was stockier than I expected and very ugly. The only things we can think of that we didn't see is a cheetah and a rhino, but apparently we weren't likely to see a rhino had we stayed for a week. That at least gave us four of the "big five"(leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We had planned to stay for more than one day, but at the end of one we felt we had seen enough and another day would just be more of the same. After leaving the park, we see more zebra, antelope, even giraffe and an elephant crossing the road makes us stop for a moment. Same with a herd of wildebeast crossing, though we just drove through that – far less dangerous than an elephant. Not like animals know about such things as park boundries.

Dr. Seuss

I am sure that Dr. Seuss drew inspiration for his plants and even animals from African vegetation. It first struck me how suess-like the trees are on Saturday morning, with the trees silhouetted against the sunrise. He not only stole the typical African planes trees that are big and flat but also these weird trees that have lots of little tufts of leaves on long, thin and sometimes squigly branches. Then there are papaya trees and these little puff balls on sticks that seem to be everywhere in Seuss books. I have decided that Seuss formed his world one day while in Africa, probably on a safari. Like I did today (Saturday).

Lakuba

We pack frantically the morning of departure, Wednesday. Well we'll only be gone one day, but somehow my mom tries to make the mood in the house frantic anyhow. I sit on the bed reading Dry until one minutes before we are supposed to be leaving. I then go about and throw everything into my backpack. We leave only nine minutes late, and arrive at Tembo beach, where we are to get picked up, the boat is there but the people arrive shortly after the appointed time of 10. The water is calm as we start out, but more and more waves appear as we leave the shore behind us.
We pass close by some small rocky islands, one full of white birds another with black ones covering it, then we arrive at the island, Lakuba. When we get off the boat on the beach we are met by a white woman and a black man holding a tray with three glasses of deliciously tart orange juice. The beach is pristinely beautiful. Five small cabins with thatched rooves hide beneath the trees on the edge of the beach, and a hammock is strung between two of the trees, and three chairs are set up in the shade of another. The sand is coarse but comfortable to lie in, and birds of every kind fly around the trees and beach. We have it all to ourselves - we are the only guests. Then the monkeys come. little white monkeys with black faces and hands. The first one wanders down the beach toward us while we relax on the chairs and hammock. It pays us no attention and then slowly wanders off. Later there are at least eight on the beach, in the shade of the trees. Most of them keep their distance from us, but one fearlessly approaches me as I crouch to seem less intimidating. He comes within a metre of me. I have no food and am not very exciting to him, and he heads back to join his fellow monkeys.
The white woman that came to meet us when we arrived at the beach turned out to work there and she is a very funny person. A guide born in Zimbabwe, grew up in South Africa and has never lived in a city. She enjoys the word "freak" and I think she doesn't like people so much, though we got along with her well. She doesn't try to be funny usually, but she succeeds nonetheless. I can't really explain it.
On the island is also the first time we swim in the lake. That isn't because we haven't wanted to go swimming but because there is a parasite that is common on the shore of Lake Victoria here in Musoma. We have heard conflicting things about the parasite (it isn't a danger this time of year, it is dangerous to go swimming now; there is no danger of the parasite on Lakuba because of the currents, it is also dangerous on the island) but we know for sure that it is painful and potentially deadly, but completely treatable. Either way, I hope I didn't get it and if I did I hope there is a way to treat it in Chile.
The water was warm but not super warm like the ocean around Hawaii. There are many tall rocks right next to the water, and Evan was excited about the possibility of cliff jumping. Too bad it seems impossible to get on top of the good rocks. We went swimming from the beach and just sat on some warm, but low rocks while on a canoe trip to find good cliff jumping. Oh well.

The Peninsula

I'm a bit nervous. It's Monday and we'll be meeting Daniel at 5 when he gets off. Evan and I were at Tembo beach, or right next to it earlier in the day when we got his text. He wants to know if we'll be there at five to go and take pictures of stuff like rocks and monkeys. He had already called once, on Saturday, to verify that we would indeed be there. That is when I began to get slightly worried. Yeah it was probably nothing. He probably just wants to make a couple new friends and show us the cool local places. Like that rocky peninsula with no signs of human habitation. The reason I'm worried is that he seemed very interested in both the price of Evan's camera and about my GPS. And I also had my phone out at some point. That is all in addition to the fact that we're wazungu. Adds up to a prime target for mugging if you ask me. Even Evan thought the insistence a bit suspicious, especially the monkey detail.
We arrive late. Evan wasn't ready to leave Juasun, our Internet access point, until we were supposed to be there at the fish industry. We bike home and I leave all of my stuff, the only thing we bring is Evan's camera. I send Daniel a text to tell him we'll be late then drop my phone on the bed. It turns out that I really needn't have worried, Daniel was obviously just being friendly, and while we saw no monkeys that day, the peninsula was still worth the trip.
We walk down the long dirt road, Evan and I walking our bikes next to Daniel, who is no longer wearing the orange rubber suit, stopping to
take an absurd amount of pictures, though the boys carrying sticks didn't want us to. Too late. On reaching what is pretty much the end of the peninsula, we find what Daniel tells us is a hotel. We lock our bikes together and head toward some large, interesting looking rocks and a tree. The large rock says "house of goat" in Swahili. We climb around to the edge of the lake and look out, next to us on the rocks are a couple of boats made with styrofoam-filled reeds. Fishermen actually live here. We take pictures of each other and of some weird mongoose type thing and head back to the hotel, order three sodas (Evan says he has money though I've left mine at home). After finishing our sodas and paying (almost 600 Tsh each) we go out onto some different rocks at the very end of the point and watch the sun set over Lake Victoria, an endless expanse of water.
We walk back to a small group of huts and Daniel offers us porridge. We duck under a short reed roof with reed walls part way up to it and take a seat at a short table with benches. Everyone crowds around the wazungu as we eat our porridge (I think it tastes like spaghetti Os only good, Evan disagrees). We then walk a short way until we part ways with Daniel, only then do we get on the bikes, even though my mom will be frantic. It is getting dark and I warn Evan to be careful; people drive crazily here, though most people walk or ride bikes. Any collision would be bad, but we make it home fine and sure enough my mom was just calling us on our neighbor's phone (hers was out of minutes) Why do I include such random details? Who knows. Daniel told us about a disco with Swahili hiphop that would be on Saturday, too bad we'll be on a safari. Ok no, I'm pretty sure it'll be worth it.

Friends

People here in Musoma seem really nice. At least some of them, the
ones that aren't trying to get money from us "mzungu" ("white person"
that's the singular, wazungu is the plural but it doesnt seem as
common. Yeah we started taking Swahili lessons). But it seems that
some Tanzanians
like making friends with us when they see us, like a good way to
practice their English, or maybe we just look lost all the time.
Hassan was the first such person we met. On our second day in Musoma,
we needed some stuff, a water boiler for tea, cups, plates and
utensils. Upon entering the market, we see a row of small, open-
fronted shops with who knows what inside. We wander down what appears
to be the road of furniture makers. In the middle of the street there
is a pile of rock we must walk around; it is still a dirt road and it
looks like it will be paved soon. The next street has more variety of
wares as well as more people, on bikes as is most common here. We
approach a promising shop and are greeted by a man who speaks English
well (though I hadn't been here long enough yet to realize how
uncommon that is). He translates for the shopkeeper, who doesn't speak
English at all. We buy a thing to boil water and look at a set of
plates, cups etc. before deciding they're too expensive. The English
speaking man, Hassan(as I found out later. I think that is how it is
spelled), leads us to a place with plastic stuff and we buy a few
trash bins. He again translates for the shopkeeper and my mom is
getting angry, deciding that as a middle man, Hassan was getting a cut
and her dislike if him begins. Later that day as we shop he approaches
us with lower offers for that dish set we had decided was more than it
should be, but my mom was definitely done with him. In the following
weeks my brother and I would run into him while shopping, and though I
at first had agreed with my mom that he should be avoided, Evan
trusted him more, so I gave him a chance. He helped us find bike locks
and it really does seem like he's doing us a favor and not profitting
from the transactions.
Emmanuel S. Mkeba was the next friendly Tanzanian we met, though
closer to our age. After riding (we had purchased bikes by that point:
red, white and blue ones as I noticed later, it really annoyed me
because I don't want to be seen as an obnoxious American so it is
better when just two of us go out, although I doubt anyone would
notice anyhow) through the white gate to our house, I turn to close
the gate and there is a boy standing there. Evan is already walking
toward the house but I call him back. Emmanuel (though he introduced
himself as Mkeba; they often use last names here) had apparently
seen us in town and biked like crazy to catch up to us. He wants to
make friends with us, and he already has friends from Sweden and some
other places. Over the next week he emailed us once and visited our
house twice. As it turns out he needs a sponsor to keep going to
school. He has a four page history on himself that is rather tragic,
and taken along with his appearance, (with one bad eye that goes the
wrong direction, except I can't decide which one goes the right
direction and therefore which to focus on) he seems like a very
compelling charity case. It seems that he doesn't expect us togive him
the money but rather for us to take the story to others in the US. I
find it kind of painful to talk to him, simply because his English
isn't very good, apparently Evan is better because they were talking
for a long time on the porch.
Daniel is my favorite so far. Evan and I were biking down some street
we didn't know, looking for the lake. It seems like it wouldn't be
hard to find since it is the second largest lake in the world, after
the Caspian Sea. The street was dirt, and looked like it had to lead
to the lakeside at some point. We stop to take a picture of the absurd
pelicans with the lake in the background (or a bay of it because we
could see across it). At that point a guy in an orange full-body
rubber suit and boots walks up to us and greets us. In English. He
works at the "fish industry", which is where we are, apparently. He
should be at work because he gets out at 5:00 and it is just after 3,
but he says to us that his boss won't do anything to him of he's with
us. So we ask him how to get to the beach. He leads us past some huts,
with us walking our bikes, and we arrive at an extremely small beach
with a good view. We exchange phone numbers (I've put an african
vodacom sim card that Robbie, my mom's friend, gave me in my phone)
and make plans to go to the rocky peninsula we saw off to the right.
He heads back to work, and we have plans to see him Monday (yeah that
already happened, I'm a bit behind – that story next post) Sorry about the formatting – i dont know why my email does that. I am now too lazy to fix it. Photos coming soon.

TZ 2: settling in

The house is livable, it just lacks some things, like a functional refridgerator and a mirror. The first few days were devoted to fixing the house up and getting to know Musoma. Though the fridge is still not working, someone is working on finding a replacement part and we have a freezer that doesn't freeze for the meantime. We do at least now have lights in the living room and both showers work. But that's the boring stuff. The town of musuma is close to our house and before we purchased bikes, we could walk there easily, right past the airport (4 flights per week, dirt runway). In town there are streets of little shops and a market with the food, and some of the vendors see us and immediately try to charge us 7 times what they'd charge any African, but for the most part it's relatively cheap, about 1000 Tsh (Tanzanian shillings) per dollar. I'm not even caught up yet, sorry my island vacation got me off schedule... I'll try to get pictures up at some point, but i can't do that from my iPod at this point. Let me know if there was anything interesting described that there should be a picture of.

TZ number one: flight & arrival

Flying to Dar Es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania that used to be the capital and is now losing it to some city in the geographical center of the country, was the longest amount of time I have ever spent in an airplane over any 2 day period. After spending the morning (1:45 to 11am) in JFK international airport in NY and sleeping on the floor, we departed on the longest flight, around 11 hours. It was long, but on the best plane I've ever been in. Each normal seat (not just the first class ones) had a touch screen monitor on which we could watch movies and TV shows on demand and play their library of music and games. I did take advantage of the movies and tv shows but I had my own music and didn't like the game controller or the games. My brother did not want that flight to end, but I was ready to be at our hotel in Dar, where we were after another 5 hour plane ride. We were in Dar for 1 day, which was enough time to get almost lost and to find the Indian ocean. The next day we arrived in Musoma. My mom has a friend here who is in the internet business - that is to say that he is the sole Internet provider around and does internet for Musoma as well as other villiages that have very little other contact with the outside world. He had Rhode (pronounced road-y because he's the driver) come get us in the truck to take us to the house we're renting. We got there and took our stuff inside, it was lacking some things but it was still quite luxurious by standards here.

Intro

So I guess we got to Tanzania last Tuesday but just today (Sunday) decided to start a blog. First, as an explanation of the name of the blog, at the moment there are no plans to go to Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of TZ, but I needed someplace starting with a z in order to have an A-Z blog name, and Zanzibar is pretty close to Dar Es Salaam. More on that later.