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.