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

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 in the 10k (WOWZA!!), and Mr. Schafer finished 9th in the men’s 5k. After a long morning of being a celebrity, we had plentiful downtime at the hotel, which many of us used to nap and hangout by the pool. 

While we will be going back to bucket showers and our separate homestay lives tomorrow, we are taking complete advantage of our consistent hot shower water flow and all the amenities we are now so grateful for. We are also having SO MUCH fun with all our friends, we can’t wait to see what fun awaits us this last week!

Signing off,
Marissa & Murohn

4:45 wakeup and breakfast in the dark

still dark as we made the bus ride to the stadium

 but when we get there, there is an excellent warm up and hype up opportunity that woke us up             

and look who find their way onto the hype stage....


At the starting line



After the race
with the hype guy!


While the rest of us ran the 5K, Ethan, Marissa, and Wilson (of WLS) ran the 10K




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