PLANNING A TRIP IS HARD!!!!!

                My friend and I were planning to go to Chicago during the Christmas break, this was a really good idea as some of our friends from Westmister college were going to join us and we were looking forward to a great Christmas. Planning this trip was not as easy as we thought it would be, we needed to find an affordable place to stay and transportation. This was not an easy task as we spent 3 hours trying to make ends meet but in the end we cancelled the trip.

                 This does not mean that we are going to spend our Christmas break doing nothing in Waverly. Instead of going to Chicago, my friend and I are going to our friends in Fulton, Missourri. We are looking forward to having a lot of fun there and a great Christmas away from home :-).

                          The only problem we have is getting to Fulton!!!

THE WEATHER MAKES ME LAUGH

                 On Saturday afternoon one of my friends said to me,"The weather forecast said that it was going to snow today but I'm surprized that it's raining" and I asked her,"Do you want it to snow?" Her response was a great "NO!!!"  Her response did not surprize me at all as I knew she was going to say that because like me, she also does not want it to snow.

              Then I go into my facebook and one of my friends' status said,"The advantages of global warming: the forecast had predicted snow but it's snowing." This statement made my day as it made realise how much my fellow Africans do not want it to snow :-) I am sure it is going to snow on one of these days and I hope they have prepared themselves for it.

       I think I'm well prepared for the SNOW!!!!!!!!

FATHER-DAUGTHER SONG

             My father happens to be one of those people who love Bakulutu which is a type of Congolese music, his favourite artists are Franco and Madilu Systeme. In the whole family he was the only person who loved listenin to this type of music, although my mother loved dancing to this type of music she did not like to listen to it.

              One day I was riding in his car and out of nowhere a started singing along to the song that was playing (I was only 5 years old). My father was so happy that I could sing along to a language I did not know (Lingala) and he was happier that there was someone in the family who actually liked listening to such music. From that day to today he would play the song Basambisa Yo? by Josky Kiambukuta whenever I was in his car.

              I am so glad that this song helped me bond with my dad :-)

LOOKING FORWARD TO BLACK FRIDAY!!

                Black Friday according to me is just a day on which shops put these big sales and people shop like crazy but the surprising part is that the shopping start at midnight to noon, really?! Couldn't they just hold the whole sale during the day, how hard is that? But then we always have to toil for the things we get in life, well nothing comes easy :-)

                Although I don't get this part of the American culture, I am greatly looking forward to experiencing it as it reminds me of the shopping festival in Tanzania called "sabasaba" which is pretty much similiar to black Friday but the only difference is that sabasaba lasts for about two weeks and does not open at midnight :-)

THANKSGIVING!!!

           "Thanksgiving...... What is it with this American culture?", is the question I asked myself on the first day I heard about it. I do know that thanksgiving is when one thanks God for all the blessing he showers upon one but where I'm from that is something we do personally at a church or mosque and not something that the whole nation celebrates at the same time. But now I understand that it has some historical background that seems very interesting and I would love to get to learn more about it.

              Well enough about that, I really enjoyed my thanksgiving dinner with my roommate's family and they made me feel very much at home and the fact that they more that six people at the dining table gave me the best homely atmosphere :-). This was the best first thanksgiving of my life and I hope the rest of them will this great.

BEAT LUTHER!!!

                 Beating Luther was the only thing I could think of throughout the whole of the BEAT LUTHER week. Iwas so excited because first of all, I have a friends who goes to Luther college so I wanted wanted my team to beat Luther so that he would not laugh at me as he always does when the Luther's women soccer team beats Wartburg's team.

                   Throughout the week I made plans of how I would go there and cheer for my football team but shame on me, it got to Saturday and I forgot that there was a football match between Wartburg and Luther. So I spent the whole day wondering where the most of the people went and checking my planner I realised that it was the day for the match, I was so sad that I missed it. Later during the day I heard Wartburg beat Luther and I was so happy again :-)........ But to bad my friend at Luther did not dare bring up the topic cause I was eagerly waiting for him to do so amd I would have laughed at him a lot.

SNOW!!!!!

               I knew it was going to snow today morning as my work supervisor had told me about it the day before. Tuesday was one of those long days as I was eagerly waiting for Wednesday to finally see and touch the snow. Although I knew it would be like the ice in my mother's refrigerator, I still wanted to know what the natural version of that ice was like.

               Today morning I woke up and the first thing I did was look out my window and there it was.... Snow, beautiful snow :-). As I was rushing off to work I felt so happy when the snow fell on my nose and with great satisfaction I told myself, "My first day of snow and I like it" 

               Its had to believe but I'm already thinking of my first snow fight and all the fun I can do in the snow with all my friends. Now I can tell my family that I've finally experienced snow, I'm so excited for that cause I'm sure my mom will be so happy to hear it and my dad will probably come up with a joke for it.

               And as the day comes to a close most of the snow has melted away and it's hard to believe that these same grounds where cover with snow in the morning. According to the weather forecast, tomorrow will be a sunny day, amazing!!!!     

NOVELS HELPED ME DISCOVER MY TALENT

              I happen to be a very slow reader, not only that but also I get difficulty trying to understand everything that an author is saying in the novel. Reading has always been my favourite activity from the time I learned how to read, I remember my father buying for me story books and I would spend a lot of time just reading my books. My love for novels and reading made me hate sports as I spent most of my precious time reading books and trying to write my own  short stories.

              I thought I would be an author in the future because my passion for reading was just too intense but with time I realized that writing stories was not for so I tried poetry and that was also not for me. When I started singing then I finally realized that I was a pretty good songwriter and singer, hence music became a way for me to express my ideas and feelings.

               The best day of my life was the my friends and I won a singing competition, singing a song that I had written. This gave me a great sense of achievement and thanks to my love for novels I discovered my talent :-)

VOLUNTEERING

                Having things done for feels good but doing something whole heartedly for someone else feels much better. I wanted to be a doctor because I thought it was the only way I could help others but little did I know that there are so many other ways I could help other. Curing a disease may give a person the joy of being physically fit but the joy one gets when he/she is shown love is way greater than physical fitness.

          Here at Wartburg college I'm discovering new and various way that I can show love to other people who are in great need of love and hope. Like sending some a birthday or best wishes card makes someone feel that there are people out there who care about them.

         I can change the world with the little acts of love that I do in my society :-)

SCARED OF THE WINTER

                 Winter is just around the corner, that's what I tell myself everyday morning. The snow is the part of the winter I'm really scared of, all my life i have never seen snow, apart from seeing it on televisons.

                   I keep wondering how it will be like, how cold it will be, how will my first snow fight be like, will I ever manage leave my room and go to class..... All these thought circulate in my head and scare me a lot as I do not have the answer to them, worse thing is when people tell me that winter will surprise me big time as I have no idea what that surprise will be :-(

                    I guess I'll just have to experience it to fully understand this surprise everybody keeps talking about. Well, we do learn form our experiences :-)

BEST FATHER IN THE WORLD

               My father is one of the few people who have managed to always put a smile on my face and on right about all the people he knows. He is such a great person that my grandmother says that she'd be dead by now if she never gave birth to him.

      According to him this is a picture of him helping Jesus to carry his cross but to me it symbolises the great weight he has on his shoulders. He has six children now and three of these children aare still in school. He has a tough job and that is why I pray for him a lot.

      Although he sent this picture to put a smile on my face, which it did, but I found a deeper meaning to that pushes me to do better in my studies so that I can get a good job and help him pay my young brother's school fees.

     MAY GOD KEEP BLESSING HIM AND PROTECTING HIM

              LOVE YOU VERY MUCH DAD :-) 

      

LOST MY SINGING VOICE

             After about three weeks of suffering from a serious cold, I thought it was all over and that in no time I would be able to sing my heart out but I was wrong. Just a week of being better and practising my singing, I got a cold again...... This not cool. Not being able to sing depresses me a lot as singing is one of the way I can release stress.

              As I was surfing the internet I saw a video of a 12 year old boy (Ronan Paker) on Britain's Got Talent singing one of my favourite songs ( Because of you by Kelly Clarkson). This boy sang the song so perfectly that I cried listening to him and then the thought that if I keep getting these colds and flu I might never sing again hit me and I cried even more.

               Now I believe the Theory of use and disuse, this is because I never wanted to sing in public when I had the chance and now that I finally want to start singing in public, I loose my voice :-(...... I believe that with time I'll get back my voice and when I do I'll make sure I sing my lungs and heart out :-)

I NEED SOME SWAHILI

                Swahili is the national language in Tanzania. When I was at home I had the freedom to speak any language, Swahili, English or Sambaa (my mother's mother tongue). Two months in America and I deeply miss this freedom. Everyday I wake wondering whether I'll get a chance to see my fellow Tanzanians and speak a bit of Swahili with them but it never happens as they are as busy as I am.

                 Speaking a foreign language every single day of my life is something very disturbing to me because I'm used to speaking more than one language. At times I put some bits of Swahili in my sentences and people end up staring at me confused wondering what I had just said.

                Since I love speaking more than one language then so I have decided that I will learn French and Spanish, languages that some of the people in Wartburg are familiar with:) I hope I'll manage to perfect these new languages. I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun learning them :-)

Eyes Halfway To Death

                 Its is very difficult to get used to the idea of using computer for a long period of time is something that I'm trying my leve best to adjust to. My worst days are the days when I have to do my Calculus and Chemistry online homework and at the same time type my English and IS essays, as I am forced to spend more than four hours or even the whole day staring at my laptop.

                  For the time being my eyes have come reached a point where they do not even want to look at me in the mirror. My spectacles have become useless now because even when I wear them I have trouble focusing images.

                   As a child I always told myself that I would take care of my eyes so that I do not end up wearing spectacles like my father and sister but it happened. On the day I got my own pair my doctor told that they were temporary but as time went my lenses kept changing not for the better but for the worse. Its been three years and I'm still wearing them, I see no changes and my optician tells me nothing but with time they will get better.

                   Now I feel so blind because of all this extended exposure to computer, something that I never used to do when I was at home, I wonder what my optician will say to me when I pay him a visit in the future...... I'm so sure I will get a new pair of spectacles :-(

           AS MUCH AS SPECTACLES HELP ME BUT I HATE WEARING THEM

OUTFLY IS NOT A GHOST

After a month of intensive studying and attending lectures every student was ready for a break and that's where outfly plays its part. So disturbing how everyone kept saying tomorrow is outfly for a whole week and nothing happened. Everyone was very disappointed, I think I was one of the most disappointed people as it was my first outfly:-(

Finally on the 18th of October, outfly proved to everyone who thought that i didn't exist that it does exist, problem is it chose a bad day to do it as it was very cold outside and standing in the cold is great torture. Poor me didn't enjoy outfly at all..... But thank to outfly I had a four days break, which was actually really cool and I had my own outfly on Friday :-)

OUTFLY DOES EXIST!!! :-)

VOICELESS

             After a week of being torture by flu, sneezing and cough everywhere, I thought I was getting better then I realised that my voice  was starting to sound weird but I ignored it because I thought it was normal for it sound that way when I have flu. I woke up today morning without a voice, I almost cried :-( I picture life without being able to talk loud enough for people to here me and I get stressed.

         I believe that I will regain it soon but I'll go through a lot of torture before I fully recover and I have a feeling that this coming week will not be a very nice one either.

THE PERSEPOLIS

           The Persepolis is a really interesting novel and the fact that the movie is an animation and looks exactly like the novel itself made it even better. As I sat in the Neumann auditorium watching the movie, I felt like someone was just flipping the pages of the novel in my head, it was like a replay of what I had read. The movie tried to portray most of the important events from the novel but I was sad to see that some of the scenes where not as how they were in the book.

          I really enjoyed the movie that my friends I planned to the DVD and watch over again. Although I had to focus on reading the subtitles and watching the movie at the same time I really enjoyed the movie. It had some funny parts and some emotional scenes like when she her house was bombed.

              I never thought I would enjoy watching the movie but I did and the fact that it was in a language I really admire made it much better. I will make sure I watch it again in the future :-)

WORST WEEK OF MY LIFE

                Last week was one of my worst weeks so far, I was and I'm still really sick. The worst thing about being sick at school is that it made me extremely homesick for the only thing I could think of was my parents and siblings make sure I ate right and had my medication at the right time. Even though my friends tried to play that role it did not help because all I wanted was to have my family around.

                 The most shocking thing is that the disease that had me in bed for the whole day is flu, something that I would not consider as a major disease back at home but it almost killed here. The only question I could ask myself was whether the flu is the reason why I was really sick or homesickness had deeply got me.... That's a question I can never find the answer to but I think both things had me really sick. 

               After this experience I am trying my level to eat healthy and lead a healthy lifestyle so that I don't fall sick again, being sick is just so depressing.

FROM PEN AND PAPER TO COMPUTERS

               Adapting to changes is a very important aspect in all organism even scientist have tried to explain this factor in other organisms. That is not the type of adaptation I want to talk about. When I say adapting I think of the sudden change I'm experiencing when it comes to the way there are so many school assignments I have to do online.

       All my academic life has been based on pen and paper, everything was done in hard copy unlike in college where all my essays have to be typed and submitted online and as hard copy. Being a person who has had less interest in computers and knows very little about modern technology, this new way of doing things is a bit difficult for me but I believe I can make it. No matter how difficult using these websites and computers might be, they have made doing some of my assignments easier like writting a six page essay would be torture without computers.

       Despite the fact that computers hurt my eyes a lot but the fact that they easen the process of doing my assignments makes me love them in a way :-)   

HOMESICKNESS

Every Friday after classes, I see some of the students preparing themselves to home for the weekend and I envy them deeply. The idea that there families are less than five hours away from the college while my family is about twenty one hours away, makes wish I were them. I am in no position to complain for I chose to study in the USA without being forced by anyone ( although my father tried his level best to make sure that I get a college in this country)

Homesickness is something that I deal with daily and not during the weekends only but I try not to let it get to me for if I let it get to me I will never accomplish anything and my long trip to this country will be a great waste. I look at my family pictures and end up wanting to cry but I know crying will not solve anything but leave me with a major headache which is not good when studying.

All in all, homesickness is feeling that almost every student in college experiences even if home is 30 minutes away but the idea of being at a place that is not home and wanting to be home so bad is natural. To say the truth I really miss home and the fact that I might go home after two years, scares me and saddens a lot :-(

WHAT IS MY MAJOR?

As I was applying to Wartburg college, the major I thought and always considered was Biology. People tried to scare me by telling me that it was a really hard major to take but I strongly disagreed with everything they told me and stayed true to my dream.

A week after classes started I dropped Biology and now I don't have a major and I find myself hanging and not knowing what I want to take. I believe with time in college I will find a major that will be perfect for me and make my family proud of me. :-)

A GREAT MOVIE

About ten years ago I watched the movie "Jurassic Park" and thought it was a really cool and exciting movie. I was too young to understand the science in the movie, in my head I thought that everything that was portrayed in the movie was real and was taking place in laboraties in some countries.

And now watching the movie in my IS101 class and reading the criticism of some of the science displayed in the movie and how impossible it is to carry out such things in real life I realised that critics can make one loose interest in something for no special reason.

Despite the critics I still rank Jurassic Park as the best movie ever made, according to me. I have watch more than thrice and still want to watch it again.

My Journey To America

A month before my journey date, my father finally declare that I would be travelling all alone. That statement on that day changed my view of the journey as it filled me with alot of fear and questions like "what if I get lost at the airport" or "what if I connect the wrong flight". I was so scared of travelling alone that I changed my mind about coming to college, something my parents would never understand, but I'm in the United States of America and very happy to be here. I was not forced to come here, the only thing I had to do was overcome the foolish fear I had in me.

Although the journey was not that what I expected it to be, it wasn't good either but atleast I neither got lost in an airport nor ended up in the wrong plane. 21 hours of sitting in an airplane is a very tiring experience, I felt like a farmer who had been digging for hour on the next day :-).

There is always a first time to do something and I'm glad my first journey to America was not a disaster and from it I have come to appreciate the idea that I can do anything in this world if I just put my mind to it. And I will use this experience to overcome all the obstacle that might come my way when I'm in college.