Photos from my day today

 On the way home from Bamba today we got a flat tire!!! :P it was right next to a truck that got a flat tire which was the funniest part of the whole thing.

 Jelena, Linda and I went to Rock Garden for dinner and it was delicioussss.... sadly no monkeys again fo me :( but the food was yummy and i have another awesome bottle cap for my collection

SPECIAL REQUESTS!!!

So I've heard that no one likes if I miss a day of posting, so for all my slow days here I'll need some help!!! You can make an account really easily hear on Blogger or you can just facebook me, tell my mom, etc, but I want to know what all of YOU want to know!! 

We're working a lot now and it's hard for me to be creative ... if you want to see more pictures of certain things, know more about foods, culture, language.... pretty much anything, comment on this post and your wish is my command!

ALSO if you just have questions for me, I'm going to a Q&A post probablyyyy in a week or so and take all the questions and answer them in one post...

I figured this was fun, so cooperate please :D

Badai!

My First Class in Bamba

I had my first class in Bamba this morning while you were all sleeping and it went really well!! We played a little ball-toss game to learn everyone's names which was funny since everyone is an adult and some of them are elders of the community. It was just something silly to break the ice a bit. We talked about what malaria is, the cycle in the body and how it grows in mosquitoes, and some of the symptoms. Everyone asked great questions and they were extremely grateful to have the knowledge. Bamba's definitely my favourite class because out of all the programs we're doing the people here are so eager to learn and have the education come to them since for a lot of them it's very hard to go to the city for classes (not to say the other programs aren't great... I love everything :P) Franki is also a really good translator and he was my BIGGEST help today. He makes it really fun and he's a little ball of energy so he even makes me wake up more!!

I'm doing my next session on Malaria tomorrow and hopefully (fingers crossed) we're getting mosquito nets for the people in the village from the local hospital and some contacts that Mako came across.

Very good day!! :D

Everyone broke into groups to discuss what they already know about Malaria before I started teaching

Franki making everyone dance while we were on a break... Sooo funny... It was like that "hi my name is joe and I work in a button factory" song but in swahili and there was something about Ugali in it. :P

More dancing :P So funny... It actually made me really happy to see them all up and laughing since I didn't know how some of our games would go over with a class of adults. 

Me teaching :D Yay meeeeeee

Uluguru Mountain Climbing to Morningside!!

Our climb today was amazing and Linda, Franki and I had a blasttttt together. We took a taxi about half way up the mountain until the road was too rough to keep going (it was NOT a relaxing car ride!!! most of the time the road was either full of giant holes or on a 45 degree angle) We started our climb at about 7:30 and the first part was reeeally steep. Poor Linda only had her sandals so she was slipping a lot... not exactly an anxiety free climb :P ... We seen a few villages along the way, a lot of farms - which i thought was awesome because we didn't even think anyone lived up there - and bananas everywhere! 

The view was amazing and the clouds kept rolling in and out the whole time. We could also hear the water in the rivers and waterfalls running down the mountain the whole time so despite our huffing and puffing it was a beautiful climb. The best part was Franki grew up in the mountains so he barely broke a sweat - just realized how ridiculously out of shape I am!!

When we got to Morningside it was absolutely amazing. There were beautiful flowers everywhere and even though the building was a little creepy we had breakfast and made some Chai and it was really relaxing. We could kind of hear the baboons but we would have had to climb another few hours to get to where they were and me and Linda were already dying, so we settled with hearing them :P. 

On the way back down we stopped at a few spots in the river and Franki and I climbed down ( Linda has those pictures and her camera memory card doesnt fit in the computer :( ) I almost fell down a 15 ft waterfall but I caught myself on a tree lmao sorry mom!!! It was a greeeeat trip and we're potentially planning for next weekend to goo to the other side of the mountains and see a big waterfall.. the one we were going to see today was too steep of a climb to get to.  

AWWWEESSSOOMMMEEE day!!

Our view during our climb... clouds everywhere and it was beautifulllll!!

Little baby waterfall!!

Bananas were everywhere we looked

I have no idea what this was but we thought it was neat

Franki climbing over the river to get to Morningside

We made it!!!

Morningside :)

Majestic :P

Meeee!! I climbed the mountain!

Me and Franki

Franki dancing on the rock :P

Some of the awesome flowers we found up there

Morogoro!!

Some of the farms on this mountain.. It baffles my mind that people can do anything on these slopes

On our way back down

Some of the houses that were there

I climbed down where that hole is with Franki where I was almost lost forever... much deeper and slipperier than we thought 

Beautiful view!

Cool looking moth :P

These little guys are everywhere!!! :P I love them!! Finally got a picture of one...they move too fast usually

My first souvenirs :)

 This is my painting that i bought... I can't remember what they're called now but they're paintings on fabric  and they're really beautiful!! they guy Linda and I bought ours from was really nice and has a shop we're going to go see for more cool stuff when we get more money :P ... He had a lot of awesome wood carvings and jewelry... so great!!

This is my Kanga!!! It's actually cut into two pieces so technically I have two kangas but I got it for 7000 tsh and they're so easy to wear. It's basically just a wrap that everyone here just wears like how we would wear a towel after a shower but I pin mine in place (just to be safe lmao).. I'm definitely getting a few more before I leave :)

First day of HBC and ESL classes

Today we had our first meeting with the HBC kids and after that was Jelena’s first ESL class. For HBC only 5 kids showed up so I found it really challenging to get into it… a lot of the stuff we had planned was for a larger group so it ended up being pretty quiet and I felt awkward and it kinda sucked to be me since I was running it lol… near the end more kids came for the ESL class so the game we played went a lot better  so “Note to self: never have these kids sitting because it doesn’t work!!!” ..

For ESL pretty much all of the girls club came and there were almost 40 people all together for the class so everyone woke up (besides me because my chest started hurting in the morning then just got worse and worse -.-”). Franki like always took all the babies… he’s so cute with them!! Jelena’s module is all about work readiness and English for tourism so Franki also helped show the kids what not to look like for work. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it because he made himself look ridiculous :P… The kids also got chart paper with pictures of human bodies on it so they could draw in groups what a “work ready” person looks like. They ended up having a lot of fun and it ended on a much better note. 

Franki, Jelena, Linda and I all went for lunch in town and we’re planning on resting tomorrow then going on our mountain hike on Monday instead of next weekend now… It’s called Morning Side the first place we’re going to which is about a 2 hour climb then there are waterfalls that are another hour and a half… If we get high enough Franki said there are also baboons everywhere so it should be AMAZINGGGG. In a few weeks we’re going to go to another set of waterfalls that are bigger and if we’re brave enough we might try to get to the top where there’s a radio tower everyone hikes to in the clouds. 

So just so everyone knows, maybe no blog post tomorrow but definitely one on Monday after we climb :D

So so so excitedddddd. 

Franki with all the babies again :P

ESL Class working on their "work ready" drawing

Linda grabbed a baby too! :P

Girls working away

The class getting ready to present their drawings

Franki and Jelena teaching - they did a great job today