I am so sad that I haven't been keeping up with my blog since Ive been here! Ive been so busy and at the end of the day I am just too tired to write anything. My last blog I think I left off before my weekend in Moshi, which now seems like so long ago! Moshi is the town next to Arusha (where I am living currently) in Tanzania. It is about an hour and a half bus ride from Arusha and is also home the glorious and famous Mt. Kilimanjaro. On a good day (not cloudy here or in Moshi) you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro from my friends porch.

Our trip to Moshi started at the Arusha bus stop with 13 other lovely girls also volunteering. Can you imagine how 14 cute white girls look at a huge bus stop in the middle of Africa? That's how much attention we got. Once we got on the bus we settled in and watched the scenery. This was the first time I got to see the "Africa" I thought I would be seeing, endless savannah and rolling hills off in the distance, with random small villages nestled in the tall grasses. Half way to Moshi is a small town called Boma where many Massai people live. We got off the bus and were SWARMED by people trying to get us to get on their bus or "tuk tuks." We finally agreed on a good price for 7 tuk tuks to take us to the hot springs we were looking for. At this point in time, I was just going with the flow and letting the other girls that had been in Africa longer negotiate and lead the way. So I got on a tuk tuk (a motorcycle type thing with a wagon on the back for 2-3 people to sit in) with one other girl and off we went. This being my first real outing into a third world country I was being very very cautious in my mind and expecting the worse to happen. I was never told how far away these "hot springs" were and the other girl I was with had no idea either. So the men driving these tuk tuks started racing each other and going as fast as the little things would go. Our driver some how got to the front and raced off ahead of the others, suddenly I looked back and everyone was out of site and were not reappearing. Of course my brain started panic mode as we were buzzing through these small 4-5 shack villages in the middle of nowhere. I eventually asked the guide of the driver where the others were and he said "Hakuna Matata." After driving for about an hour in a dry, desert, African bush-we finally came across a patch of trees.

Walking up to the hot springs and realizing where I was standing was indescribable. Around the corner through huge mangrove type trees was the clearest, bluest, most beautiful lagoon I had ever seen (even though I haven't really seen that many lagoons.) But to think, I was in the middle of nowhere in Africa experiencing this incredible site with these wonderful people, wow. A few minutes later the others arrived and we went behind some bushes to change into our swimsuits. The water was the perfect temperature and there was a steady current of water coming from somewhere under the trees. The trees came right up to the edge of the water and the roots were showing and would dive down into the water all the way to the bottom. There were even roots to sit on in the water! There was also an awesome rope swing, the locals swimming there helped us get it with a branch. After swimming for a couple hours and jumping off the rope swing we headed back to town to complete our trip to Moshi. Once we got to Moshi a guide we had set up a waterfall tour with on Sunday met us to direct us to the backpacker's hostel we were staying at that night. We checked in our stuff and our guide, Paul, took us to a restaurant down the street from our hotel. During this time we got to see a little bit on Moshi and how it compares to Arusha. At first look we absolutely loved it, with Mt. Kilimanjaro lingering in the background and the lesser amount of people rushing through the street was a nice break from Arusha. The food at this restaurant was amazing too! After eating way too much pizza, we walked back to the hotel and took a nap before our guide, Paul took us out on the town. We had HOT showers and free wifi, and a beautiful backpackers with people from all over the world conversing. Just writing about it makes me swoon. Later that night we went out to a small bar, with an even smaller dance floor and got our boogie on. Turned out our guide Paul (who is in his early twenties, and also quite attractive) knew how to break dance! We all had so much fun dancing and some of us even ended up going to another club with Paul because we wanted to dance longer.

The next day was just as amazing as the first. We woke up and Paul picked us up from the hotel and we headed out to the foothills of Kilimanjaro. All I knew at this point was we were hiking to a waterfall and seeing a coffee plantation afterword's. We drove up into the winding hills and passed beautiful villages in the jungle on the side of the mountain. We stopped at our destination and were met by one of Pauls friends, Oscar. Oscar led us up a steep hill to his home where we saw his grandma cooking and his sisters playing with the children. We used his bathroom/outhouse (my first squat toilet experience!) and then began our trek to the waterfall. We walked along narrow paths on the side of gorgeous hills and followed a stream for a while, we went up and down steep hills and saw banana, avocado and mango trees and we even saw a chameleon! I have always been a sucker for gorgeous views and man were there some views on this hike! We were at the top of a valley and you could see out all the way to Arusha! We were told a lot of the small huts and villages we passed we would not see anyone because everyone was at church, and then a few minutes later you could here the people worshipping on the other side of the valley, it was spectacular hearing their songs echo on the hills.

We finally could see the waterfall in the distance; it was so huge it was not hard to miss. My pictures will do this more justice than my words but wow was it the most beautiful waterfall I've ever seen! It was not huge as in a lot of water, but the valley it was falling down into was probably as tall as a 20-story building. Once we got up to the pool of water everyone wanted to swim because we were so hot from hiking, but the water was FREEZING! After swimming around and swimming behind the waterfall and finding its cave we laid out to dry and warm up. We then hiked back to Oscars house for the coffee plantation tour. Once we got there I didn't realize that Oscars house and land was the actual coffee plantation! He talked to us about each step you do to make the coffee and had us help with each step. He was very enthusiastic about his work and informed us of the GMO's (genetically modified organisms) a lot of other coffee plantations are using now a day to produce more coffee at a quicker rate. Oscar was very against the idea of using GMO's and is very in touch with nature and the natural process of growing and making the coffee. My favorite way he put this was "everyone and everything balanced?" So during our hike to the waterfall he would stop and ask us numerous times, "Is everyone balanced?" Another favorite saying from that day was when I asked if you could see Mt. Kilimanjaro from where we were at Oscars house, when I asked him this his eyes lit up and he took me around some trees to look into the distance and said "not today, she is being shy and hiding behind the clouds, maybe she will come out later." After the process of the coffee was shown to us, we all had a cup sitting around a handmade gazebo for the coffee drinkers. The coffee was quite tasty and we were given pure cane sugar to sweeten it up. At this time I was sitting next to a friend who I have grown quite close to because we spend everyday at placement together. She is from Columbia and English is her second language. I have had the greatest time conversing with her and helping her find the right words in English she wants to use. I have noticed that the Spanish language has much more emotional descriptions than English and is much more connected and beautiful. She started explaining to me how touched she has been by this experience and how lovely it's been to be welcomed into Oscars home and see the way he lives and how much she appreciates the fact that he wants to remain true to nature instead of the selfish ways of humans. She wanted to tell him all of this but wanted to say it to me first to make sure her English made sense. We gathered our thoughts and one thought I had is that I knew this world and way of living was out there, the pure beauty and connection with nature these people experience day to day, but I never knew how to reach it and experience it for myself. For as long as I can remember, I have been craving to have this experience and grab it and see it for myself, because I always knew it was there, I just never knew how to find it but I had just found it and realized it with my new friend. The intensity of this moment made us both starting crying tears of joy and we held each other for a bit as we soaked up the greatness of it all.

Sorry for the cheesiness, this is kind of like a journal to me as well. I will write about more of my adventures later! We are going out to dinner to say farewell to a friend that is leaving in the morning. Asante sana for reading! Habari za jioni.