Hajambo from Zanzibar!

Hajambo rafiki!
Other words for, hello friends!
After almost 2 full days of traveling and a total of 4 hours of sleep I finally made it to Zanzibar on Wednesday morning! The flights were long, but my long layover in london turned out to be really fun because we (me and the other students that I was traveling with) went into the city and got to see Piccadilly circus. I had never been to london before, and although I was only in the city for about 4 hours I really like it and definetly plan on going back. The plane ride to Zanzibar was filled with amazing views of my first glimpses of Africa. I saw Mount Kilmanjaro from afar, and the arial view of Zanzibar was SO beautiful!! The water is the clearest and bluest water I have ever seen, and it some parts it looked like it was glowing, almost like a neon blue, since it is so clear! Upon arrival we found out that 11 out of 15 peoples luggage was lost (we think it got stuck in heathrow) so that has been a challenge, but we finally got our luggage today! I am very happy to have clean clothes again (i am sure that other people are more grateful that i have clean clothes too, haha).

We started Kiswahili lessons the 2nd day, and I have already learned so much! We will being having lessons twice a day, for two hours at a time and by the end of the program the teacher said that we will all be fluent! I am surprised that it can take that short of a time to learn a language that I had never even really heard before. But even after 2 classes I can already have a conversation with the local people! I am surprised that my brain is working this well after being on break for almost a month and a half! Yesterday we had the perfect opportunity to practice our Kiswahili. As a traditional SIT event, all of the students were dropped off in random parts of the city we are in (Stone town) . We were in groups of 3 and each group had a map and a list of taks to accomplish. We had to navigate our way around the city finding all of the things on our list and had to make our way back to the SIT office in 3 hours. It was quite an adventure considering we had only had 2 hours of Kiswahili lessons and now had to ask all of the locals for directions. All of the locals were extremely nice and very willing to help when they heard us speaking Kiswahili. A lot of them laughed at us but helped us out with pronouncing as I am sure we were continuously slaughtering their language. Some people actually just stared at us wondering what in the world we were saying, but they were still very friendly. One thing I love about the people here is that they all say hello to you when you walk by. It is actually extremely rude here to walk by someone and not say hello. I think that it is very nice and it made me feel very welcome. I found it interesting that whenever my group would walk by a group of American tourists that the tourists would not say one word and just keep walking. They didn't even say hello, and its not if they couldn't tell that we were Americans. So I love the friendly and inviting atmosphere here so far :)

Today has been my favorite day so far. The Inn that I am staying at is only a 5 minute walk away from the beach, so the whole group walked to the coast and we took a 20 minute boat ride to a really large sand bank. We rode in a boat that was called Mr. Bean which I thought was funny. The view was absolutely amazing. You can see several other islands from there and the weather is also perfect. It has been about 90 F during the day and it is very humid. The night time is perfect temperature, as it is still warm but with a very cool breeze. And you can see SOOO many stars since there aren't many lights around. I even saw a planet! Anyways back to the sand bank, we went snorkeling in a coral reef and that has not to be that coolest thing I have ever done before. I just floated effortlessly above hundreds of vibrantly colored fish and lots of coral. I saw soo many different types of fish that were beautiful shades of blue, and yellow, and orange. I saw a really big puffer fish, some sponges, and I think I might have even found Nemo :) Well at least I found Nemo's home. The water is so clear that you can see really really far and I felt like I was in a movie or something because it was almost too beautiful to be believable. I am very excited to go snorkeling again, and on Monday actually we are going to swim with dolphins!!!! One funny thing is that since I didn't have my luggage yet, I went swimming in pants and a long sleeve shirt, and had to rent snorkeling gear. The fish were probably wondering what I was doing, haha. After snorkeling we went back onto the large sand bank and had a picnic which was a culinary delight! We had fresh pineapple, passion fruit, and papaya, lots of bread, nutella, tea, fish, cake, and more! All of the fruit and juice here is very good and there are lots og mangos (i Love mangos!). The picnic was very picturesque as were watching boats pass by and looking at the view of the city and other islands. Of course i thought of you all when I was there, and thought about my friends who were probably in class while I am here sitting in a tropical paradise :) I will upload pictures next time so that I can share with you all :)

We leave tomorrow morning for a beach village and will be there until late Monday. I should be able to have internet access at least once a week, as there are many internet cafes around and it is pretty cheap. I know this post was rather jumbled, but my next post will be better as I will actually think about what I am going to write before going to the Internet cafe and having a time limit to write a post (pressure!). So as my time is running out that's all for now! I will update again soon :) Oh and you should know that spelling is my worst subject, so I probably spelled some things wrong! Alrighty, ta ta for now!

Love,
Emily

Let the adventure begin.....

First of all I would like to explain the title of my blog, since most of you are probably wondering what in the world it says. While in Zanzibar I will be taking a beginners’ class and learning Kiswahili. Kisiwa Kwachu means "Island Fun" in Kiswahili, which I hope to have lots of while in Zanzibar :) I have been browsing my pocket Kiswahili-English dictionary trying to learn some useful phrases and I also found out that the word for lion is simba (wow Disney, that’s creative!).

I leave from Dulles Airport tomorrow night around 10pm. I am taking a group flight with other people that are in my program (my program consists of 14 other American students from all over the US.) I have a 7 hour flight to Heathrow-London, and then once I am there I have an 8 hour lay-over. Hopefully I can find something fun to do there ( I am not sure if I will be able to leave the airport). At least I will get to know the other students in my program. From London I then have an 8 1/2 hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya with a 2 hour layover. And finally I take a 2 hour flight to ...... ZANZIBAR, Tanzania!!!! So hopefully I will arrive in Zanzibar on Wednesday morning, at which point I will want to take a 12 hour nap but will probably be thrown into orientation events.

I will begin with an orientation in Stone Town, followed by the beginning of Kiswahili language training at a nearby beach village. Kiswahili classes will continue for another two weeks in Stone Town where I will be staying with a Swahili family. At the same time, I will be attending lectures at the Institute of Marine Sciences working on various observation assignments, and traveling on short field trips. I am not sure what my schedule will be after that, but I know that I will be going on several excursions in Zanzibar, Pemba Island, the other large island in the Zanzibar archipelago, and to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. The last month I will be working on my Independent Study Project (I am hoping to study bioeroding sponges in coral reefs ).

Well that's all for now, the next time I update I will be in Africa!