Three weeks late (written August 13th):

ITS MY BIRTHDAY. And I'm flying back to America (in seven hours). I will officially be stateside and hopefully home safe and sound tomorrow evening. Don't worry though, being in Tanzania and flying home on my 21st birthday isn't nearly as bad as it sounds...I did my official celebrating last night (countdown to midnight!) and had a blast. Too much fun...almost.

Woke up yesterday morning, our final morning with our host families, to pouring rain. Bad omen for my day? Not at all. Packed up and headed out. Final school activity: visited the Rwanda Genocide Tribunal, which is located right in the center of Arusha. Very educational visit - but a bit of a sad note to end our trip on. Family celebrations were in the afternoon, where all our host families were welcomed to come for food, drinks, speeches, and saying goodbye (there was even birthday cake for me!). Definitely going to be missing my family here.

Once the family party was over - the real party began. Serious sorority nostalgia. All the girls got ready together: hair, make up, clothing (we literally safety pinned and put a few stitches in a kanga for me to wear as a dress), a few mixed drinks and we headed to dinner. Serious style - sushi dinner and riding downtown in a van from the stone age. After dinner some of us hit up Via Via - the hot spot of Wazungu on Thursday nights. Countdown to midnight, a few double shots of vodka later and I was officially 21. Holla. Too bad no one gets carded in Tanzania. One very, very long and eventful night later here I am. About to leave Tanzania.

Leaving today is very bittersweet. And also very surreal. My entire life here has been very surreal. Sometimes when walking down the street or finding myself in an unexpected situation here I find myself asking myself, "If this really my life? Where am I?" It feels a bit like watching a movie. Or possibly that life here isn't real life, and that the things I do here will simply be irrelevant when I return home to "real life." Real life back home seems almost as surreal though. Is life really continuing on for everyone else back in America? It seems to me that life back in Iowa simply froze the moment I left Des Moines on that airplane and that everything will resume once I touch back down again.

Speaking of America: I recently found out I will be returning to an Ames Iowa which is incredibly hot, incredibly humid and completely under water. As in flooded. Totally flooded. And a broken water line. So no showers, drinking water, laundry etc. At this rate, might as well just stay here. I suppose its an excuse to spread my perfected knowledge and method of the bucket shower....