Flipper and Familia

Mambo!

In which you reply "Poa"! Its basically slang for saying hi that all of the young people use around here, and Poa means cool, or fresh which I think is pretty funny.

So I went to Paje village last weekend and stayed at this really nice beach resort. One morning we got up at 5:30and took a 30 minute bus ride to another part of the island and we got to swim with wild dolphins which was amazing! We took a boat out pretty far and the guide found the dolphins for us. Once he found them we all would jump out of the boat (with all of our snorkeling gear on) and swim right above them! We tried to swim with them and follow them, but let me tell you, dolphins are fast (Flipper is really faster than lightning!). My little fins could not keep up with them, but we were still able to stay near them for a few minutes. We saw several families of dolphins and some of them would even come to the surface just a few feet away from me (we weren't allowed to touch them though). My favorite part was watching a mom and baby dolphin swimming around together and playing, it was so cute! And just to make the day even better, after we swam with the dolphins we went to a butterfly center and got to see hundreds of beautiful butterflies flying all around! It was definitely a good day.

On Thursday i moved in with my host family. They are nice and welcoming and have a nice house. I think they must be pretty well off compared to some of the other families that live here. We have a maid who does all of the cooking and cleaning, and we also have a normal bathroom and a shower (I am very thankful for that!). Most of the other people in my program are staying with families who have outhouses and they have to take bucket showers, so i got lucky with mine :) Besides my host mama and baba, I live with a 14 year old boy (who speaks some English, so he is basically my translator), a 6 year old girl, a really cute 4 year old boy (whose name is muda :)) and their niece lives with them and she has a 1 year old baby. So whenever I need something to do i have lots of kids to play with so I love that! I have my own room that has a desk, sofa, and a fan so I am quite happy! I will be staying there until the 14th. So everything is going well there, although the language barrier can be really difficult sometimes. Since I have only had like a week of Kiswahili class I have a VERY limited vocabulary, so its hard sometimes. I have got all of the greetings down but after that it takes me like 5 minutes to say a sentence that they will understand. I know it will get better though, and they are very willing to help me learn and are constantly teaching me how to say things.

Well my time is up again! I will post again soon to tell you about my adventure at prison island and I am sure I will have more stories about things that happen with my host family.

Kwa heri,
Amalya (my new kiswahili name)