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And again I’ve neglected my blog.

So as those of you in the US are aware, yesterday was Halloween. What many of you might not be aware of is not only does Tanzania not celebrate Halloween, but people think that you’re acting strangely, even for an American, if you walk down the street dressed as an orca, a zebra, a cat, Swine Flu, and Bollywood stars (Jan and I were the latter). A couple of the clubs that cater to wazungu hosted Halloween parties so we went to one, but felt lame for being the only ones in costume and left after a while. Not your standard Halloween, but hey… pretty good for a place that doesn’t celebrate anything like it.

The family left on Tuesday and arrived home safely (Matt about 9 hours later than expected, I believe). It was really good to have them here. I think that they saw the Arusha that I know, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Yes, we went on safari, but we kind of got that out of the way at the beginning and the next week was spent exploring Arusha. The highlight for me was bringing them to the orphanage that my friends and I have spent some time at. They brought some things for the kids, and although they were definitely appreciated, I think the most fun part was reading with the kids earlier in the day. It was really fun to spend time with the kids because they really remind you how to hope and that there’s plenty of reason to.

After the orphanage, we stopped at the home of Dave and Eunice Simonson. For those of you who don’t know, the Simonsons are pretty much legendary. They came here I believe in the 60s as missionaries and have stayed here ever since doing really genuinely great things for the community. Dave has had some health problems in the last couple of years so he couldn’t talk with us much, but they were both very hospitable and Eunice told some great stories. I had visited them when I was here in 2007 but her stories don’t get old and their beautiful home never loses its effect. It really was a great day.

When I got back last night and looked at my calendar, I saw that I have only a month left here. I knew that but it didn’t really hit me until I saw “Leave” and then “LONDON” on this month’s calendar view. We only have two weeks left of classes before exams, and believe me those will be a busy couple of weeks. But we’re squeezing in some interesting field trips before classes are over. Tomorrow we are going to go on a tour of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and then hopefully to see a trial. ICTR is literally right next door to our classroom and things like that are basically the reason that I came here, and yet I haven’t gone to a trial yet. It has definitely not been for lack of opportunity, and so I’m glad that we’re finally getting a chance to go. That will be a very interesting experience, I’m quite sure.

Also, in class on Thursday we went on an interesting field trip to a sewage “treatment” “plant”/ dump. You will understand the quotes in a minute. Basically we traveled in our nice little mini-van with our professor into the slums. We thought seeing an example of an unplanned area was going to be the field trip, until we came upon a giant reservoir of crap. There was a pool of water with garbage and other debris floating on top of it and a layer of some sort of sludge, as well. The water then “filtered” through multiple of these reservoirs before apparently being used by the local population. Words fail me at trying to describe the smell of this place and just how vile it all was. We literally had to leave because we were feeling nauseous from the smell. We may have places like that in the United States but I’ve never heard of people being forced to live next to (and downwind) from them and using the runoff to irrigate the crops that they then sell in town. Maybe I’m missing something. Anyway, that was a shock to the system, and for that reason a trip well worth two hours of class.

So the ¾ mark is feeling a bit strange. When I say that I still have a quarter of my time left it seems like a lot, but then I remember that after two weeks of class life will move probably the fastest I’ve ever felt. I think four months is a good amount of time. I haven’t felt too heavily culture shocked (not yet, at least – I’m not looking forward to re-entry), I haven’t really missed home too much – just people from home, but I also feel like I’ve really gotten to know my surroundings quite well, and really juiced this experience for all that it’s worth. But I still have four more weeks to squeeze a little more out.