Time for Part-Two of the "Two-Part Thriller" that is my crazy Tanzanian life/weekend in Bagamoyo: Good news folks (sort of)...due to the kungi on campus today (otherwise known as, in english, a 'student protest'.....and for even more new swahili words: university=chuo kikuu, and today=leo) classes were canceled, which has enabled me to have an excellent day-off AND find some quality free time to continue my ramblings about this past weekend and my safari to the Arts Festival in B-Town (sidenote: no one really calls it that, i just made that up...). As a preface to my B-Town break down, however, I should first clarify that aside from the deranged men with sticks guarding the main entrance to the Univ. and most classrooms on the main campus in order to prevent any student and/or teacher from entering/learning today, everything is fine, I'm safe, and while I really have no idea what the kungi is all about I'm sure it'll all subside shortly. In other news, after a cold shower and a little chapati this morning, I headed down to the Primary School for my first day of volunteering/teaching. I was warmly accepted and greeted by the head administrator and my mwalimu (which means 'teacher'....that is to say, the teacher I'll mainly be working with this semester)and was quickly wisked off to meet the students as class was about to start. After greeting "my class" and stumbling through a short self-introduction in Kiswahili, I took my seat among the Standard IV students (between the ages of 8-11..?) in order to watch my teacher at work and hopefully get an idea of how best I'll be able to assist her this semester with her English lessons on Monday and Tuesday mornings. All I have to say about that is that English is freaking confusing. Try explaining to an 8 year old whose first language is kiswahili the difference between take, took, taken, and taking and you'll know exactly what I mean. Props to these kids for tackling a subject like that, and may God have mercy on my soul. I'll be honest in saying that I'm a little overwhelmed about the task ahead of me, but am optimistic about the students' ability to at least get something out of my meek attempts at teaching them a subject I don't even know that well. I feel stupid for thinking all these years that other languages didn't make any sense, and equally as ignorant for having already significantly failed twice at learning a second language in my educational history. Not to mention my grammatical and structural knowledge of the English language in the first place is rather sub-par, to say the least. Oh well though, these kids are resilient as hell and definitely brighter than me so I'm sure they'll soak up anything I throw at them like a sponge. Anywho, after Primary School this morning, the rest of my afternoon shaped out rather nicely, what with a trip to Mwenge for some lunch/market perusing, a little sporting round of frisbee toss and a strawberry ice cream liter-binge with Sam, and a short nap; all making for an excellent day-off. And being that I came straight here (to the computer lab that is) from dinner (which tonight was a plate chalk full of fresh pinneapple[nanazi], banana[ndizi], papaya[same], oranges[chungwa], and cucumber[tango].....ummm delicious!), this blog post, along with a little late night naked-Yoga on the roof, should just about round out my kick-ass Monday. But yeah, about this past weekend....like I said before, this weekend (and actually all of last week) was highlighted by the 25th annual Music and Arts Festival going down in Bagamoyo (about 45 min. to an hour north of Dar) at the Bagamoyo Fine Arts Institute; a nationally recognized and widely attended event...even the President showed up for the opening ceremonies last Monday, although, unfortunately, he wasn't there this weekend so I didn't get to see him for a second time in as many weeks....bummer! I had originally planned on going with Arni, but due to Arni's all too sudden bought with malaria (pole sana Arni), I was forced to change my plans a bit and instead go with the small threesome of my newest Norwegian friends from the Univ. of Trondheim (Sigruun, Malvin, and Eileen...way cool, way Norwegian). We ended up staying at this really nice beach resort owned by this crazy French couple, complete with beach side bandas, a nice big pool, and French-style continental breakfast, and all for only 12000 Tsh. a person, per night...kinda felt a little spoiled but oh well. Anywho, the festival itself was amazing and proved to be one of my greatest/coolest experiences thus far. Each day of the festival featured a sufficient sampling of nationally and locally acclaimed acts on the mainstage ampitheater and offered a chance at buying/perusing a wide array of hand crafted arts and foods. Plenty of good times, plenty of crazy-African artists, and all for such a ridiculously reasonable price. The standard admission price, for example (which wasn't even collected during the day at most times), was only 500 Tsh.! The acts, ranging from dramas, choirs, drumming ensembles, live bongo-flava bands, and dance troups, were all very entertaining (although, some for un-planned reasons as I'll explain in a moment..) and proved to be some of the most quality entertainment I've ever experienced (although, the cold cement ampitheater seats were hard and uncomfortable enough to make even the softest and biggest butts significantly sore...but hakuna matata!) Anywho, there was entirely too much that went on over the course of the 2 and a half days I was there, so I'll just hit on the main parts... my favorite act was this group of dancers decked out in these crazy flailing palm tree leaves attatched to their waistes and shoulders and all decorated with what I think must have been traditional face and body paint. Sweet dancing coupled with an amazing percussion ensemble, and topped off with some slightly insane snake-antics......and by that I mean they brought out three of the largest snakes I've ever seen, danced around with them, wrapped them around their bodies, and I think one of the dancers even put one of the snakes' ENTIRE mouth and head inside HIS mouth....all while moving his hips and body like Shakira. Complete craziness, but very cool. The Saturday night line-up made for an equally entertaining as well as hillarious display of events. Most of the acts were utterly amazing, but some were slightly less remarkable and would have been down right dissapointing had it not been for the sheer hilarity of it all. First shout-out goes to the group of dancers whose performance was slightly altered by the heavily intoxicated gentlemen who decided it was a good idea to wander up on stage and proceed to shake and shimmy what the good Lord gave him in front of everyone AND in the middle of the dancers' routine and formation. To top it all off, no one (including the dancers who just continued to dance around him) made any kind of attempt to get the guy off the stage so he stayed up their, in the middle of everything, disturbing the poor dancers' performance for the rest of the song.......and then came back during the next number to "entertain" us some more, again uninhibited! Someone probably should have done something about it, but boy was it funny! Definitely turned an otherwise average performance into an all inclusive, quality chuckle-fest...feel kinda bad for the dancers though. The act two acts after that takes the cake, however, for funniest act of the night. For what was the only magic act of the weekend, and probably all week, I've decided that, despite its hilarity, Tanzanians should definitely stick to dancing, singing, and drumming and should leave the "magic" to Siegfried and Roy....minus the getting eaten by a tiger part. This poor girl and her less than intelligent sidekicks started off bad enough with a lame rope trick that even I could figure out and ended off even worse with a botched attempt at the "stick a person in a box and then pierce the box with a bunch of swords" trick. Not only did the routine take forever (while the same lame song repeated 4 times), but the freakin box fell apart midway through the trick, exposing her scrunched-up-in-a-ball-well-below-the-swords sidekick and the true extent of her "magical" abilities. I was laughing hard enough as it was, but for awhile I honestly thought Malvin was going to wet himself. Good stuff. As for the rest of Saturday night, which keep in mind lasted until 8:30am when I finally went to sleep, was highlighted by the raging-reggae rastafari drum-love "beachy fire" beach party. Basically, after the last act the party (including any and all who were crazy/kick-ass/awake enough to join) totally moved from ampitheater to beach-side bon-fire, and in less than 10 min. everyone was down at the beach huddled around a big bon-fire, enjoying various fine spirts/tons of marijuana, and jamming out to some quality drum beats and randomly improvised reggae/bongo-flava singing. Needless to say I joined in on the drumming action and found myself drumming side-by-side with some insanely talented (and some, not so talented and sufficiently high) and wicked crazy rastas for most of 6 hours. The temperature was perfect and the beach-side star gazing (even with the beachy fire) was absolutely supurb. Anyway, after sunrise I proceeded to jump in the ocean for an early morning bath, walked back to the hotel with Sigruun, took a shower (not with Sigrunn, however), ate some breakfast, and crashed for about 4 hours before catching a dala dala back to Dar in the afternoon. Not much else worth mentioning about Sunday, but I think you all can get a pretty good jist of my fantastically fantabulastic weekend. Time for bed now, but I hope this new post finds all in the best of spirits and warmest of moods. Much love to all. Badaaye.