Rabbit, rabbit

I was going to title this post--"The worst kind of loser--an infidel loser" because Lila and I are hilarious, but I think the truth might just be that we are ridiculous and no one else would think it was funny. Plus side: we are good friends.

Have gotten close with a lot of different people on the trip, which is nice. I would always come back to the hotel at night thinking I would write, then would end up talking to people until midnight instead. Worth the trade off though, and I have still been writing a lot. I also read The Giver yesterday in about an hour and a half. Very good book, even the second time around, and it was nice to have time just to myself and a book.

I’m rather bored with Zanzibar, at least with Stone Town. It’s incredibly touristy and doesn’t seem to have beaches without what we think are sewage pipes going into the ocean. So it’s too gross to swim, but too hot to do much of anything else available. There’s a lot of shopping, mostly for souvenirs, but I’m not a window shopper or a browser. I’m not really into shopping unless it’s for something I definitely want or need. And since I am being the Dutchest person alive here, sometimes even food doesn’t fall into that category.

When I get home I am having pounds and pounds of cheese. Also hamburgers, anything with real ketchup, and Mexican food. And I’m already looking forward to crepes in France—I suppose that’s where the cheese eating will start. And hard bread...mmmmmmm.

Have officially finished the first part of the semester: turned in my final reflection to D Sperling today, and took my Swahili test yesterday. After I had finished Rose told me I spoke very well as usual and she was very happy, so obviously I was happy too. I’ve been getting progressively worse grades on D Sperling’s reflections, but he told me not to worry about the last one (only a B, but not my style) because “I know you’re up here” (hand motion above his head) “This is just a blip.” He’s ridiculous. Lila described him as like a tortoise, which is very true and I can no longer look at him without thinking about it. He’s very smart but I did not much like him as a professor, and will not really miss him now that he’s left. I’ll miss Rose a lot though; she’s a favorite.

On Sunday a woman who works with Millennium Villages Project came to talk to us. They take villages and try to help them reach the Millennium Goals, which are what the UN decided were necessary to eradicate poverty: access to water, universal primary education, treatment for infectious diseases, women’s rights. She was incredibly interesting. I liked her work, but thought she was more interesting because she majored in music and political science, went on to get her Master’s in creative writing and music, and then did something awesome with her life. She is basically what I want to be when I grow up (minus the music part). She was also beautiful and funny, which helps. She told a story of how one of the elders told her she should marry a man from his village and she said, “Yeah...Baadaye!” meaning “later.” All the girls having been proposed to a million times now, we appreciated the story.

Every night there is a big hooplah at a park on the water—food everywhere, all these guys trying to entice you over, too many white people. Not really my scene, but it had some delicious cheap food. A Zanzibar pizza, which is meat, tomatoes, onions, an egg and a dollop of mayonnaise (aka a heart attack) fried (another heart attack) on some crust. I shared one with Alex, and we also shared a banana-nutella pizza that was just as delicious. And there’s cane juice everywhere, which is fantastic. All of the juice here is fantastic actually—we’ve been getting passion fruit juice every morning with breakfast (and I’ve been having 4 glasses), and in Pemba we had juice of something called a tree tomato, which tasted like watermelon with lime and was really really really good.

I’ve had gelato twice this week and am thinking about getting it in lieu of lunch today. It’s just so good: mango and passion fruit and mandarin orange. Even the banana tastes like real banana.

Tuesday we went to a Kenyan national park. Walked through a forest and saw a snake and a monkey and a fair amount of lizards. They also have spiders that basically look like they have horns. Some of the spiders here are actually gargantuan, and I am not a fan. But they stay in their webs, so it’s okay. (Geckos on the other hand, just live in our hotel rooms all the time.) We also saw MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!! They were so acclimated to humans that we were literally two feet from them taking pictures. I have some amazing pictures of this baby monkey showing off with its mother. Later we walked through a mangrove forest, and the guide let us actually walk on the mangrove roots over a whole bunch of mud, which was pretty fun.

Afterward we went to a spice farm. Thinking farm I pictured rows of plants or something. If I wasn’t shown around, I would have just thought I was walking through some trees. In reality, we saw cinnamon and coffee and vanilla and cardamom and nutmeg and curry and ginger and pepper and coconuts and starfruit and breadfruit and giant passion fruit and caocao and cloves. It was basically amazing. They let us smell and sometimes taste everything. Cardamom is amazing, both in smell and taste, even though I have no idea what you do with it. And cinnamon is actually the bark of a tree! Who knew? Sam and I both ate a tiny red chili though, which was a very bad decision. It tasted good but then I couldn’t stop crying.

Yesterday we went to a madrasa, which was interesting but kind of superficial. We only stayed in the classrooms long enough to say hi and maybe answer a couple of questions. Zach had ladies after him again—we think it’s because of his hair. Afterward we walked in smaller groups to the non-touristy area of town, but it was still just shops and things. I did manage to get lunch for 200 shillings (of our 8000 shilling allowance), so that was nice.

Had a horrible dream last night that my parents had sold the house and we had to move to Connecticut within the week. I don’t know why they sold it, but I just sat in it and cried and refused to leave. Moral of the story: Mom and Dad, don’t sell the house.

That is it I think. There is a potential plan for skinny dipping tonight (sewage pipes be damned) but I don’t know if it will happen. Must watch the sunset. It hasn’t been a priority because, well, I’m sort of spoiled in that regard, but I’d like to see it at least once.

Somebody best get a hold of me if the Tigers clinch the Division today (or within the next couple of days). It's killing me that I won't have internet to know. Also, what the heck happened to our starting rotation--Figaro and Bonine and Robertson? What the what? Maybe I spend too much time thinking about baseball. When Rose asked on my test for me to tell a bit about myself, I talked about watching baseball games with my dad. It's the first thing I check when I get online too. My fantasy team made the playoffs but lost in the first round. In conclusion: I think about baseball too much.