A few classes from our school went to visit an orphanage today. It was such a beautiful day and the kids had a great time!

Over the Easter holiday I traveled to Dar and then to Zanzibar. On our journey to Dar Megan, her parents, and I stopped at a beautiful lodge in Morogoro. I've posted pictures of our lodge and of the view from our lodge. It was such a nice way to start out our holiday. We sat in the sun during the day and had a great dinner in the evening.
We continued our journey to Dar the next day. Once in Dar we went straight to the airport and hopped on a plane to Zanzibar. We couldn't stop saying how lucky we are to be able to stay at such nice places and spend our holidays on a beautiful beach!
We spent our first night in Stonetown. We had a beautiful rooftop dinner and looked out at all of the old stone buildings. Our next adventure was to go on the spice tour. We walked through a mini-forest and our tour guide explained all of the uses of the different spices. Some of the spices that we were able to see and learn about were nutmeg, cinnamon, peppercorn, cloves, lemongrass, and curry. I was amazed how many uses the different spices have. So many of them are used for medicinal purposes there due to the fact that they have so few medical centers. The people of Zanzibar make up their own remedies.

Due to the massive amounts of rain in Stonetown we decided to head to our next destination-Nungwi beach. We had an hour drive there but it was well worth it. By the time we arrived the sky was starting to clear up. The hotel had an amazing view of the sea, a pool, and lots of cocktails that were calling our names! We had a relaxing rest of our day enjoying a nice dinner and an acrobatics show afterwards.
Waking up to a beautiful vision of the white sandy beach was perfect! We got an early start of laying in the sun and catching up on some reading. We continued our day with wonderful fruity drinks and delicious meals, all while sitting in the pool.
It was such a nice holiday! Now I'm looking forward to the next time I hop on a plane. I know that there is no comparison to a beautiful beach in Zanzibar, but America will be pretty good too :)

My Weekend

We are going on a really long streak of no vacations at the international school right now so we have been making the most out of our weekends! This weekend we went out to the Ruaha River. We had a picnic and I sat and read a book on a rock by the river. I was so lucky to have such beautiful scenery. No big buildings or houses; just dirt roads and trees! Then we went to play some more rugby. It is really nice to be surrounded by such a wonderful group of people who always create something fun to do! It is also just nice to chat with everyone and hear their stories-since there is a lot of time to just chat here you end up finding out a lot of interesting information about the people you're around.

New Activities in Iringa!

I have been experiencing some new activities in Iringa. I've been started to play some touch rugby; I would have never thought that I would be playing touch rugby in Africa (or America). It has been a really nice way to spend my past couple of Wednesday nights. A lot of the expats from all over come together to play. It is a nice way to meet new people and get to know some of my students' parents better. Annnnd believe it or not: I got voted player of the day yesterday!!
I'm also on my midterm break now. We are almost half way through our second term of school. My students had some presentations yesterday about peace and conflict in Africa and I was really proud of how hard they worked on their projects! I learned a lot about what is going on in the world. In our next unit we are going to be learning about children's rights. I think this will be really eye-opening because in Iringa we have a lot of street kids. I hope that learning about this makes my kids more aware of how lucky we are to be able to receive an education and not have to beg for food.
On a lighter note...I'm getting really excited to come home and see everyone and to go to Katie and Jordan's wedding! I think that next week I will go to someone to get a dress made for the rehearsal dinner! I'm obviously getting way too excited, way too early! I will be coming back to America at the end of June, probably June 27th. Can't wait!!