Happy Holidays!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! [Helia Christmas na Helia Mwaka Mpya!] I hope you all had a nice, peaceful, happy holiday season. Mine was different for sure, but much better than I ever could have expected for a Tanzanian holiday. After my IST travels, I went back to my site for about a week before going to Tukuyu for Christmas. It was really nice to have some quiet time after alot of travelling. My school was pretty empty with most of the students gone for break, but it gave me time to do some running, fashion some Christmas presents and decorate my house, thanks to all of the awesome Christmas decorations I got sent from home. My house was pretty well decked out with solar and battery powered Christmas lights, a mini tree, and even a creepy hanging snowman of Christine's from back in the day. Before I got back, there was apparently a big storm and lighting struck the school's generator, so there was no power most of the time I was there. Aside from the mild disappointment of not being able to watch Christmas movie marathons, it was actually really nice to just sit by candlelight in the evenings and go to bed early.

The week before Christmas I headed to Tukuyu where Hannah lives, and there were about 11 of us meeting up at different times for Christmas. There were already some very impressive decorations up at the house, but I brought all of my contributions as well and it really was amazing how Christmas-y we got it to look. We even went out tree-hunting, since there are a lot of pine trees in that area. After passing on a couple very promising ones because they happened to be in people's back yards (whammy), we finally found the perfect Christmas branch for our living room, and yes it was bigger than a Charlie Brown tree. ***Joke setup: The Swahili word for tree is "mti" [MMM-tee]*** So we decided to name her Mti-na Turner, and got her to stand up in a cut-off water bottle in a bin filled with dirt. We decorated it with solar Christmas lights, popcorn garland, lots of ornaments, and I made a giant Christmas crane to put on the top in lieu of a star. It was great.
I was very happy that several of my own personal Christmas traditions were still able to come true. Every year at home we like to go out to Olive Garden on Christmas Eve for dinner. This year we made this delicious "pizza soup" which should totally be added to the Olive Garden menu, and also had salad and bread - pretty close if you ask me! And we all watched Polar Express before bed, though we were all missing some of the classic cartoon and animated shows. Christmas morning we had cinnamon rolls with colored frosting, which is also one of my favorite Bonomo traditions, along with a giant fruit salad and breakfast casserole. Our Christmas dinner included a big steak pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, honey carrots, and of course, mac and cheese. A great success for a Tanzanian Christmas dinner!

We also had a few new traditions-in-the-making that I can very much see catching on for years to come back home. On Christmas Eve we made sugar cookies and frosted / painted them with toothpicks to make some really cool shapes and designs, including Christmas giraffes. Another great new tradition was the introduction of the Christmas tent in Hannah's living room. I brought my 2-person tent in order to avoid the mosquitos at night, and so we set it up inside and strung Christmas lights along the top and crammed 3-4 people inside. It was a little warm and certainly got interesting after chili night....but still worth doing again!
Tanzanians don't really do too much special for Christmas, aside from some travelling and all going to church. But since it fell on a Sunday this year, it really wasn't too different from normal. Some of the small stationery stores turn into mini Christmas shops and I did see some fake trees and other decorations being sold. And it was nice not having to worry about stores being closed on Christmas morning for those last-minute cooking items.

Aside from pretty constant cooking and eating, there wasn't a whole lot going on around Christmas other than just relaxing and such. The day after Christmas we went to another volunteer's house nearby for a big spaghetti lunch, and there were lots of people from all the other classes of volunteers. We stayed in Tukuyu until the middle of the next week, and then a few people left to go home or other places for New Year's, and the rest of us went to Matema Beach on lake Malawi, which was just a few hours away. To get there faster, we got a private taxi to drive us to the beach, and on the way there we made a stop for gas on the side of the road, where usually people will come up to the car to try and sell different foods and things, especially for a car full of foreigners. But this time a guy came up with a little baby monkey wrapped around his arm and tried to sell it to us. It was actually a very reasonable price and probably would have saved the monkey from a lot of abuse to take it off of their hands, but one of us was just too concerned about the certainty of attracting many diseases and talked us out of buying it. But I got to hold it for a little bit and was petting him when he gave me a nice little going-away present on my shirt. I guess I scared the poop out of him.

Matema was a lot of fun, and again there were lots of volunteers there that I hadn't seen ever or in a very long time. The first day we were a little unprepared for the power of the beach equator sun and all got torched with sunburn. But we got to go on a really nice hike to this giant waterfall where there's a big pool and the water is ice cold. You can even climb up on a rock and sit under the falls and jump off into the pool. I brought the Christmas tent with and set it up on the beach but only ended up sleeping in it one night. It was really cool because it was during a lighting storm (no rain luckily) and it was neat to see the lightning flashes above while going to sleep. The beach also had some fantastic sunrise and sunset views that I will have to post pictures of soon. New Year's Eve was actually the birthday of someone in our group, so we had a double celebration and made a guitar pinata out of newspaper. And at midnight everyone went for a celebratory swim in the lake.

It was also great because I was able to skype several times with family and friends at Matema. I was even able to join in our first-ever successful trans-continental Game Night with my sisters and cousins back home. We found some good games that could be played over skype and I got to introduce a couple new participants on the Tanzanian end. Next step is outer space game night.

I'm excited to be going back to my house now to get ready for the next year of school. Soon we will have a meeting to plan for classes and scheduling next year. I'm hoping to teach Form IV Math, so that I can keep my same students from last year and help them prepare for their national exams, and I also want to add on Form I or II Physics in addition to the evening computer classes continuing from last year for students and teachers. It will be good to have the class for a full year now, as opposed to awkwardly coming in in the middle of the semester last year.

Many things to be thankful for and to look forward to this new year. Some current goals include climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and having my family come to visit. I will be doing all I can to help make them come true. I hope everyone else has enjoyed the holidays and is looking forward to an exciting year ahead as well!

P.S. If you'd like more terrible Swahili pun jokes, I'll try to keep you satisfied, but first we will need some crash-course vocab.

Example:
short = fupi [FOO-pee]
Q: What is a short Tanzanian's favorite form of martial arts?
Answer: Kung Fu-pi!

New:
dog = mbwa [MMM-bwah]
Q: What is a Tanzanian dog's favorite breakfast food?
Answer: Coming next post...