Julia’s Tanzania Bucket List (A Work in Progress…)

1. Learn Swahili...like, for real.
2. Eavesdrop on a conversation in Swahili when people don’t know I speak it, then reply with an awesome comeback
3. Memorize all the regions of Tanzania and generally become not an idiot about the country’s geography
4. Read up on Tanzanian history
5. Proudly sing all the words to the Tanzanian National Anthem at morning assembly
6. Take a foot picture on the “heart rock” (check!)
7. Eat at Hotel Tilapia (check!)
8. Learn to dance, Africa-style
9. Learn how to plait the girls’ hair
10. Let the girls plait my hair
11. Experience Christmas in Tanzania
12. Hike Kilimanjaro
13. Learn to cook several Tanzanian dishes: pilau, kisamvu, mandazi, chapatti, beans, ---
14. Know the name of every student at Joseph and Mary Primary Academy
15. Walk to the fish pond
16. Turn right at the main road (check!)
17. Swim in Lake Victoria (check!)
18. Walk to Kitongo and buy something without a Swahili-speaking chaperone (check!)
19. Buy my own produce in Mwanza’s huge market while bargaining in Swahili (check!)
20. Take a piki-piki to a dala-dala to another dala-dala to Mwanza
21. Wander the streets of Mwanza by myself without the anxiety of having a driver wait for me
22. Marvel at the Serengeti’s magnificence (check!)
23. Eat in a random café with plastic chairs (check!)
24. Soak up the sun on the beaches of Zanzibar
25. Do one special thing for/with each of our girls
26. Paint my bedroom sky blue
27. Coordinate a half marathon and train the girls for it
28. Teach the girls sign language to accompany the lyrics to various songs
29. Perform a song, with dance choreography, on Sunday night for the girls (check!)
30. Be part of a flash mob with the girls—future guests, beware!
31. Beat Liku on a run (well, I can dream, anyway…)
32. Be invited to someone’s home for dinner and actually go (check!)
33. Same as 32, but with a local family
34. Introduce Thanksgiving to my Tanzanian family
35. Master those terrible “Lucky” matches so that lighting the gas stove and oven is not an overwhelming object lesson in failure, daily (check!)
36. Teach the girls origami
37. Open a nail salon for the day (check!)

Periodic updates to follow...stay tuned!