Back to School!

Well, we don't have lovely new outfits, but it's back to school for us! School officially started today, and yesterday we watched thirty ridiculously excited Form One girls each carry a new mattress and pillow to their new dorm room. We almost wanted to move in with them - they made it look like so much fun! We are still teaching a lot of classes for our last three weeks - around four hours of teaching a day. It's great! We had a really good time with our families these past two weeks - Elena headed to Jambiani in Zanzibar for Christmas, and then a safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, and Camilla did the safari first then went to South Africa for New Years. We both had a really good time on safari and saw so many animals up close, and we even got to radio chat each other when our safaris overlapped! But now, after the luxury tented camps, heaps of delicious buffet food and taxis (thanks mama na baba!), it's back to the real world of budget travelling. Our power is out, our showers are cold and we have cockroaches. But we're still very happy to be in Morogoro and home again. We are planning our trip to India and trying to tackle the Lonely Planet while still in holiday mode. We managed to get our Indian visas after much trouble with the embassy. Basically they leave a forty-five minute window in which to pick up your passport, and they arrive half an hour late to that. And the dalla-dallas don't care that you have an urgent appointment and insist on taking ridiculous routes and taking the time to squeeze as many limbs into the bus as possible. The trouble with the Indian visas did, however, bide us time for a (not really) well-earned beach holiday in Kipepeo (butterfly) beach for a few days. We stayed in a tent on the sand with just a mattress and both spent the entire time reading and lounging in the shade. We had expected to swim but both managed to get stung by jellyfish and spent more time running out of waves screaming than enjoying the ocean. Nevertheless, it was relaxing. We also got to spend one last day with our friends Sadie and Belle before their departure back to Vancouver (we'll miss you!) We went khanga and kitenge shopping (big mistake seeing as our bags are already full) and went to a sugar cane juice stand. After a long (8 hour when it should have been 2.5) journey back to Morogoro, in which we saw an overturned bus due to the storm (eee scary), we are ready to embrace our last three weeks in Morogoro. Bring it on!