Today I ate a burger!!!! WOOT!

Hey everyone!

My first week of classes is over and done, and I've just started my second. It's hard to believe that 6 weeks from today I will be on my way home to Canada.

I'm making better friends with the locals and am starting to know my family better. I spend a lot of time with Ali, Yeyea, and Naila, the 3 youngest, and am starting to become friends with Mohammed, the oldest. I only ever see them in the afternoon because during the week they have school Monday-Friday from 7-1, which means they must be up for 6 (which is brutal).

My classes are going well. I teach a computer class twice a week, an English Club once a week where we discuss present political issues (both local and international), and 2 sets of English classes twice a week, one in a rural area and one near my home in an urban area. Surprisingly the rural students have been much more outspoken and eager to participate in class. The staff of YCI says this is unusual since they have less access to education resources and rarely see white people; in the staff's experience it is usually the urban kids who are talkative. Participation rates are decent, considering that all classes have at least 20 people signed up for each, and 14-15 show up for each session (except for urban english where only 6 people show up each class). So far we've been trying to get everyone comfortable in speaking English and are working on nouns. The kids are catching on fast. This upcoming week is verbs.

On Friday we went to eat freshly caught seafood at Furadani Night Market. We have decided to eat here each Friday for as long as we are here. The prices are expensive compared to everywhere else, but so far I've been trying everything I can. My favourite is still octopus, and I've also tried calamari, barracuda, curried lobster and shark which turned out to be my least favourite (it was actually really gross). However, on the plus side for food, today on our way here Tyler and I passes a stall selling burgers, and we immediately ran to the store to devour them. It was the most disgusting and worst-made burger I've ever had, but at that moment they tasted sooo good. I just hope we don't get indigestion or diarrhea from eating them...

On Saturday after classes YCI took us on a tour of a few spice plantations on the northern end of the island. There we saw every kind of spice imaginable, and how each was grown. We were shown so many that I can hardly remember the specifics of each one, but the walk through the jungle and rural roads felt great and took a lot of the stress off of us. Afterwards we were sat down and fed many types of tropical fruit. There was papaya, mango, jackfruit, grapefruit, oranges, pineapple, and about 10 others that I didn't recognize. After this we were taken to a coconut tree where there was a man called Mr. Butterfly waiting for us. What he does for a living is climb palm trees and cut off the coconuts from the top. Simple, except the palm trees are 100 feet high and offer no kind of handhold. Also, Mr. Butterfly is hardcore and a man, and he decided to sing at the top of his lungs, pull stunts, and climb without a lifeline. After all this was done and he had gotten the coconuts from the tree, he shimmied down the tree to the bottom and cut them open so we could drink the milk and eat the fruit inside. Definetely the highlight of my day.

I now have the rest of the day off, and I plan on hanging out with Ali and celebrating Thanksgiving at an Italian restaurant with Tyler and Stephanie. This is about the closest way we can celebrate the holiday in a Western style here in Zanzibar. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!