ZANZIBAR!

Hamjambo?! Harbari?! Hope all is well with everyone at home! I am missing you all dearly & wish all of you could be experiencing all of this with me!!! I'm a few days behind on my blog so I am using right now to catch up finally. This past weekend was a BLAST! We had an fantabulous time in Zanzibar, very relaxing and entertaining at the same time! Friday morning I got up and went to teach. Decided to give them a test to see how well they were truly understanding time telling! Plus it was the easiest thing to do with 50 kids, when I didnt have Justin there to help me.haha. After bidding farewell and a good weekend to the kids I made my way back to home base to get ready for our trip. After throwing some last minute things into my bag, all 16 of us piled into a pretty nice bus...even though it did have small chinese children wallpapered all over the inside : ) . Because of a local named Kennedy, who did all of our planning for us for the weekend, everything was extremely easy. We made our two hour journey back to Dar Es Salaam to board onto the ferry. Kennedy also surprised us with First Class tickets for the ferry which ended up being a blessing! The inside of the boat is set up like plane seating, with the upstairs being upstairs and much more spread out...so it was very nice! Especially since this two hour boat ride ended up being in high seas and some peoples first boat ride ever...it made for some pretty upset stomachs! Once we got off the ferry and went through Customs, we boarded another bus and made our hour long ride to our hotel on the Eastern coast of the island. It was very bumpy roads in the dark of night, to what seemed like the middle of nowhere. Our hotel was a lot of little bungalows with 3 four-poster beds in each room covered with, of course, the mosquito nets! And the best part was our bathrooms with WARM WATER!!!! & very large commodity around these parts! After grabbing a quick dinner we all were extremely tired and went to bed.
It was so cool waking up the next morning to the beach, which we couldnt see at all the first night there. It was GORGEOUS! White sands...Blue Skies...Light teal water...and a Bar of course! haha. They had a PADI dive center there so Meg went diving, some of us spent the day snorkelling, and others kayaked. We all had a great day laying on the beach catching some rays...some of us maybe too many rays! LOL. All up and down the beach there were locals with little huts, selling painting and sculptures, and other kids of art. We decided to make our way down there after having a HAMBURGER : ) for lunch! And let me tell you, these locals are Hustlers!!!! They would come by and grab your hand and pull you into their stores to buy something...and if you even ask the price of something they immediately think you will buy it. Sometimes we would just say yes just to get them to be quiet! But a lot of bartering was done that afternoon & we got some really awesome artwork for really cheap! Our favorite purchase was our MZUNGU (white person) t-shirts haha...we can't wait to wear them when we get home!
Every local we say kept asking us if we were going to dance with them tonight...and come to find out there was a big full moon party going on on the beach that night to celebrate the full moon! So of course we said we would join in on the fun! So that evening we made our way down the beach to the next hotel over and paid the 5,000 shillings to go to the party and for one free drink! We had a blast dancing with each other and watching the Kilimanjaro group do their acrobatics show. We also ran into a lot of the locals we had seen early that day...Shadrac, Mr. M, Captain Morgan (whose dog we adopted and name Jessie-George earlier that morning), and a few others. They were all really nice, but most of the locals were a little creapy. They would follow you around until you danced with them and always ask you to hangout...I'm pretty sure a few girls got some proposals haha. After dancing all night I retired myself back to bed.
The next morning we had to check out at 10AM, but our driver wasnt coming to pick us up until 12 so Katherine, Suzanne, and I got breakfast and then were brave enough to face the locals again for some more paintings! At 12 we made our hour ride back to Stone Town so we could walk around and see some of the history. We only had an hour and a half until we had to catch the ferry and many of us were starving, so we decided to stop and eat. We waiting FOREVER until we only had 10 minutes until we had to meet the group. So I asked the man if they could hurry because we were in a rush and he said that the food was coming out of the kitchen as we spoke. but 5 minutes later he came out and said "We have no cheese"...dumbfounded, because we had all ordered GRILLED CHEESES, Meg said "sooo you are bringing us a grilled cheese w/o the cheese...soooooo just bread???" and he said YES hahahaha...so, upset that we didnt get our food, we all just got up and left! We all made our way wiht about a million other people back onto the ferry...everyone pushing and shoving...I think i dropped my stuff like amillion times and we were all about to scream or cry haha. And the ferry right didnt go quite as smoothly as the last one either. We were all fine watching Rat Race on the boat until Jamie, who was sitting beside me, throws up in his hat from sea sickness. When I let everyone know that he was sick and that we needed paper towels, everyone else got sick too. So we had over half of us outside throwing up over the side of the boat. It wasn't pretty AT ALL!!!! I never get seasick and I was really queasy too : ( but I forced myself to fall asleep thru it. Everyone was EXTREMELY glad when we were back on land! On our way home we stopped at a Shoprite grocery store to grab food...when we were walking out of the store I looked up above the doorway and there was a VERY large sign that read..."Thank You CALL again!" (instead of come) haha...I thought it was hysterical that they put that much money into a sign that made no sense for a grocery store! After getting a good laugh, we boarded the bus and finally made it back home where we all fell dead asleep in a matter of seconds. As much as we loved Zanzibar, we were all very happy to be back in Bagamoyo! I think we missed the soft pillows from the hotel more than anything (because our pillows here are like rocks)!