First Dinner in Tanzania at West Kili Lodge!


 

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Sunday -- The Arusha Marathon (but for us a 5K or 10K)

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Jambo (that’s hello in Kiswahili) Families! We are reaching the final stretch of this truly amazing journey, so look forward to MANY stories! Right now we are relaxing and recuperating at a fabulous hotel in Arusha, having a delicious dinner and watching the original Lion King (quite fitting if you ask us).  You won’t believe how early we woke up this morning. At 6:30pm your time (which is a shocking 4:30am for us), we woke up bright and early to prepare for the Cape to Cairo Arusha Marathon. Everyone chose to participate, whether it was walking/running the 5K or 10K. The whole time we were at the event, we were treated like celebrities (we might just be on TV!!). This marathon was created to help encourage tourism throughout Africa, which is why us travelers from California were such a big deal. Everyone had a ton of fun, with some very notable finishes! Sophia finished 1st of all the women in the 5k (OMG!!), Buffie was 2nd women’s in the 5k, Marissa finished 7th of all the women ...
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Wednesday -- the farewell ceremony at Banjika

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 Hey guys! It’s Adrian and Sophie (aka Cola and Mitch) Wow. Today was our last full day at the school. We started the day off with a late wake up, meaning we got to sleep in and arrived at school at 9 A.M. for tea and donuts. After, students came together in groups, socializing while playing cards and making friendship bracelets: we laughed and joked with our homestays while eating breakfast. Knowing this would be our last day at the school, we took today as an opportunity to take many pictures to savor these moments. We then had the Banjika students teach us a dance. It was rough at first, but then we got the hang of it! After, we had a small dance party to the Cha Cha slide, the Cupid Shuffle, the Macarena, Gangnam Style, and, of course, the song of the trip, Summer by Calvin Harris.  we practiced our dances for the big performance at the celebration We then had lunch and made our way to the goodbye ceremony (tears were shed). The  ceremony started with speeches from Ba...
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Tuesday pm bonus -- the soccer game in all its horror and glory

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 I can’t help writing up my thoughts about the big soccer match, because the student-written blog did not capture the epic nature of the contest. We brought from home a bunch of old Menlo uniforms to give to Banjika. After Wilson passed them out, and we all put them on, there were 30 people in Menlo jerseys. 30 against 0 – we have a shot at winning this game! 30 against 0 -- we might win this game But someone decided we should play Banjika students vs Menlo students. To me, this was unfair, because the Banjika kids have skills that we (I) don’t have, like controlling the ball with their feet, using their head to advance the ball, and making precise passes as opposed to just swinging wildly with my leg as hard as possible if the ball came within five feet.  (Yeah, but I bet I know a lot more about James Madison than they do).  One of the things that I had intended to praise our students for is their lack of complaining (although, weirdly, they had very negative (and ad hom...
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