Swahili and Little Children

Habari gani!
was our first day of Swahili class.  We met with our teacher, Chuma,this morning and got started with greetings and learning how to introduce ourselves. This took a good chunk of our time, but I think everyone is now able to greet any Swahili speaker and at least tell them our name. After lunch, we broke out into small groups to work on our speaking which really helped us learn the material better. We also were visited by Hilary, the wood carver. He brought some of his work which was amazing! Everyone really liked his visit and look forward to his next stop. After Swahili class this afternoon and a quick tea, we set out for the orphanage. It was about a 30 minute walk through some of the most amazing scenery. There were palm trees all over, some even growing in the middle of corn fields...figure that one out! With the mountain in the background it was such a cool place to be. Luckily we get to make that journey four more times so there should be some awesome pictures when we come home.
When we got to the orphanage the kids latched onto us right away. Not everyone had made it through the door before there were kids in our arms and interacting with us. They were so adorable and absolutely loved our cameras! There would be times the kids would run off with them for ten minutes or so before we could get them out of their hands. They definitely loved taking and being in the pictures and I know tons of random photos were taken by little kids today :) They don't have much for toys at the orphanage and apparantly they don't last long even when some appear. We plan to fix that when we take our donations, but for today they were more than happy to play with the cameras. The kids seem happy though and are so cute! Everyone is excited to go back (with cameras safetly out of sight!).
After we got back and had dinner, we went out to the girls' house to rehearse our singing for our village visits. It is definitely improving so maybe by Sunday we can have it all ready to go. Saturday we are going to visit the youth prison and then attend a Masaai cattle market. It may be a long day but will have a very intersting experience to go with.

Palm Trees and Corn Fields

Today is  also Alex's birthday, so Happy Birthday Alex! Just because they don't celebrate birthdays in Tanzania doesn't mean we can't still wish you a great day!