Today began with the usual routine of getting up and going to eat breakfast with the added bonus that the tops of my thighs are a startling shade of bright red that caused several exclamations of deep concern from my fellow students upon entering the dining hall. For this reason before going to class I wisely decided to wear pants instead of shorts. Class was its perfectly normal self except for the announcement that we were going to have our first Swahili exam that afternoon! Which meant that from the lunch break all the way until our exam, all of us were nervously grouped outside the academic buildings greeting each other repeatedly, counting to twenty, and telling the time in Swahili. Just by the way, time in Swahili is VERY different. Seven am is actually called one and you count up until you get to 12 (known to us as 6 pm) before starting back at one and counting up again. The camp staff made no secret at how funny we all looked. During this endless period of waiting (we were tested in alphabetical order of first name) I happened to notice that the sky was this amazing silvery gray solid cloud cover. This is actually the first time that the sky has not been mostly blue with fluffy clumps of clouds passing every now and again. I may not have mentioned that we have had some spectacular thunderstorms here over the past few days. Mainly occurring at night they are intense and so far have lasted no more than 20-25 minutes each. During those minutes there are torrential rains, booming thunder and electric lightening (really it makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck!). However despite the gray clouds and a few threatening sprinkles it did not rain today. After taking my test I read a book and relaxed before eating dinner. Yes I should have done something productive like homework…oh well. So instead of being a good girl and doing my homework I sat around the fire with a few other students and several camp staff members philosophizing about love (everyone in my group is very excited for valentine’s day for some reason…), life and how cool the national parks are in Africa. For this we also talked about how economically dependent Tanzania is on tourism and the effects this has on the stability of jobs/employment, income and the structure of the country in general. So here I am staying up late again and so excited for our first non-program day!!! Yay! I really enjoy our classes here but seven days of straight classes has been a bit much.
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