I Support the Oregon Progress Forum

hey everybody! i'm back in nairobi visiting my kenya family. everyone's doing well. our house help got fired though because she was leaving the two year old in the house alone during the day and not giing him his lunch. crazy. i leave wednesday and i have a night in london and then i get to sf on thursday. i think. aaaaasee you all soon!

sorry. couldn't get the picturees up. this computer won't even recognize my usb. oh well. i'll try in nairobi and if that doesn't work, i'll post them from the states.

hi guys! sorry its been so long. i'm in arusha now. we had a week on the coast snorkeling and taking classes. it was wonderful and beautiful. i had lots of fun and saw some really cool stuff. now we're camping on the property of the family who owns the safari company which is about 60 km outside arusha. this is my last internet access before we leave. so no more me for four weeks. i'm desperately trying to peice my life together at the last minute. i'm trying to regiter for classes and take care of flight plans all over the world. its hectic. tomorrow we have class and the next day we leave civilization. i'm finally gona get to use my binoculars and my ten time zoom. there's been a misfortunate event with my pictures from the first half of the trip bcause i lent them to my friend so she could put them on her blog and she accidentally deleted them off my mem card. i think there's still a copy of them on the computer she was using though and i'm going to get the girl who owns that computer to upload them as soon as she gets back to a place where she can get onto the internet with her computer. i'mg oing to try to get the other ones up though. we'll see. this isn't a very fast connection. you'll get them all eventually though. don't worry.

anyway, so we went to zanzibar and that was awesome. first we stayed with the muslim families in this tiny town in northern pemba called tumbe for three days. it was a crazy experience. they didn't speak hardly any english. my host family mom didn't speak a word and she would blab at me in swahili and i could hardly understand her because she was missing a lot of teeth and talking really fast. it was hilarious. but we got by. i ate some really yummy fish there. best i've ever had probably. no idea what it was though. zanzibar and pemba are huge exporters of spices, especially cloves, so i got some and hopefully i can smuggle them back to the US. then we met back in zanzibar town and hung out there and finished up our history and islam courses and then we had a week off. i've told you this part. most of the girls went to this little town called nungwi and a few days later just about everybody else showed up too. it was really touristy but beautiful. i made a friend named sele who is really awesome. we met him because he manages a hotel and restaurant and he offers this free cooking class. you pay for the food but its pretty cheap and you hel him make it. the food was amazing. we made curries and spiced rice. and he is the funniest guy. we just talked to him for hours. i have lots of stories from nungwi. but no time to tell them right now.

then we met up with the safari people and they threw us on a couple of dhows and brought us back to the mainland for the coastel biology thingy. they're really nice people. we got to stay right on the beach in these little bandas with no electricity and all that fun stuff. they feed us good food and the staff humor us when we try our swahili on them which is nice.

ok. now i'm going to try and put up some pictures.

hi i only have a minute but i wanted to tell you that i'm sorry i haven't been writing in so long. i'm in zanzibar and so much has happened and i'm having so much fun. but we're finishing up both history courses within the next week so i'm very busy and i'm traveling constantly at the same time. in fact i have to go to the slave market right about now to meet my professor. i am taking lots of pictures and they're awesome. in a week when we finish our classes we have a free week to travel and i'll probably stay here in zanzibar and i'l have lots of time so then i'll put up all my pictures and write more about what's happening. i can't begin to describe all the stuff i'm seeing. gotta go bye.

hi guys.
we're leaving in a few days. so sad. today we had our swahili final. one of two. this was written and the other one is oral but it's at the end of the program. hopefully i did ok. we gave all the teachers and the guard and the maintenance guy presents and took pictures. they're all so nice. i'm going to miss them. Mama's teaching me how to make chapati tonight. i'm thinking of coming back here next summer to do research for my thesis and my family told me i could stay with them if i did. i told them i'd write them into my grant if i get it so they could get compensated. i'm going to miss them. they've been so sweet to me. my mom gave me a kikuyu name. it's wangui. i had really yummy food just now for lunch. i'm bracing myself for not having really good food anymore. i'm told that other than nairobi it's hard to get really good food in kenya. although i had some pretty delicious spiced rice in isiolo. we made friends with the owner of this bar that we go to a lot to study near my house. his name is habel. he's teaching me darts. he might come visit us in the states. he also owns an ajoining butchery and the other night he had the butcher make us this big chunk of grilled goat that was sooo good. ok i gotta go. bye!

pictures! just a few for now i have to go.

cat at the school.
my friend anya. sorry she's sideways.