START OF WEEK 2!

Mambo vipi again from Bagamoyo! Yesterday morning, Monday, I got up to teach class, glad to have Justin back for his help. It's a lot easier to teach 50 kids with 2 people than it is just one! I gave them their graded tests back from friday and put stickers on all of the ones that had good grades. When they saw the stickers they would just jump and start dancing from excitement! We were letting the kids have a "fun monday" so we gave back their pictures from last week and let them continute drawing. The class flew by and we took them to play some soccer for their breaktime. It is really funny how the boys and girls separate. All of the girls go to play soccer with Justin and all of the little girls come to sit with me and dance. They also LOVE playing with my hair and braiding it. They are all so cute and I can tell I'm going to be really sad when I have to leave them : ( . I came back for lunch and Swahili lessons. Swahili lessons were cut a little short due to the rain. The rain is CRAZY around here. It will be completely sunny and then out of nowhere start POURING! You have never seen rain come down as hard as it does here. It will rain hard for like 5 to 20 minutes and then just stops like it never happened! After the rain stopped we made our way down the road to the Arts Centre for Batik/Tie-dying lessons! Batiking is when you take a piece of cloth and put wax down in any design you like. When you are done with your wax design you put the cloth into dye and it dyes everything but where the wax was. It was really neat to watch and all of them turned out to be a lot better than we expected! After we were done, the guys from the centre did some dancing and drumming for us and I bought an amazing painting!! I think some other people wanted it too, so I'm glad I got to it first! I also got some really cool jewelry! The guys there always wear bent forks for bracelets and I thought it was really unique so I bought one! It was the owner Dickson's birthday, so he invited us all to come back after dinner for a party and celebrating! Some of us went to change clothes and went to eat dinner at the main house (pasta..yummmm!) and then made our way back over to the arts centre. They made us lots of food...which even if we didnt want to eat it we had to...because it is kind of disrespectful when people prepare you food and it is not eaten. It was the strongest tea any of us had ever tasted. I couldn't finish it but others forced themselves too haha. The guys at the art centre played the guitar and drums and sang and danced with the kids. They all take care, feed...clothe...etc, a bunch of kids and also sponsor some of them at school. A few of my kids from my class were there (Patricki, Isa, and Omali)! They were really good dancers too...may explain why they arent so good at school ; ) !! Hanging out with them at a party made me feel like the creapy teacher that you run into at the bar at night tho haha.
This morning Emily, Justin, and myself slept in an extra hour since we didnt start work until late and caught a ride with Didase in the CCS van to Mbaruku School. We had a great day of teaching the kids BINGO and after class watched Brandon teach some of my girls how to dance the Cupid Shuffle! We had a blast and they thought our dances were really funny! After we left, Brandon and I headed down to the dress maker to order some more shorts and headscarves. I also bought some more fabric and figurines since they are so cheap there! Didase gave us a ride back to homebase. When we stopped by to pick up Emily from UKUN Brandon realized he had left his bag of clothes outside of the dress makers. But when we got back someone had taken them and they were no longer there : ( . At least he made whoever found the bags day! Now I'm back at the computer place by homebase and getting ready for our afternoon visiting the African Medicine Man! Should be exciting!!!! But the bell just rang for lunch soooo BAADAYE (later)!