Shaglabagla! (Just try saying it outloud - you'll love it too)

Blog posting has turned out to be more difficult than I had hoped. Over the last couple days, I've managed to take the time to upload 2 photos to flickr (see the link to your right), and I think I may have to start making sure to write and be VERY selective with my pictures. It's that or reduce the file size and post low resolution photos and fix them later. If you know how to do this, I'm open for suggestions.

The process of learning swahili has been so good and so challenging. I'm excited to understand more each day and get a better understanding of the culture. For instance, our first day was entirely spent learning greetings. We have a term of respect you say to elders, inquiries about how you are, how your day or sleeping was, and general hellos. It's not uncommon to go through a list of at least 3 different greetings before getting on to regular conversation. If someone asks how you are or how your day was, you always respond with 'nzuri' or 'salama' -- basically saying 'good' or 'peaceful.' Even if you didn't sleep a wink or your mother has died, you still give a positive response. It can then be followed with 'kidogo' (a little) that could maybe prompt someone to ask about what might not be so great. Politeness is paramount and modesty is very valued. The only thing that is starting to bother me is the fact that I really would like to wear sleeveless shirts when things get a little too warm... On the other hand, if that's my biggest problem, then I'm doing pretty well. Like I was telling daddy, it's idyllic here, weather-wise. It's just cool enough at night for a jacket, and the mornings can be rather cool when the sun isn't out. Once we reach midafternoon it is perfect for short sleeves, long skirt, and sandals. It might be nice if there was a tad more sun, but I'd really rather be on the cool side of things. We had a gorgeously sunny, sweaty day when we went to Arusha on Saturday.

Since I was so excited about them, let me share a few of my profound discoveries about Swahili.

• I've long been confused about when to use 'Swahili' and when to use 'Kiswahili' when refering to the language itself. Turns out, the language is called Swahili, but if you're actually speaking swahili, they refer to languages with the prefix ki-. Thus Japanese is Kijapani, Norwegian is Kinorwei, Arabic is Kiarabu, and English is Kiingereza.

• Reading swahili is really as easy as it sounds -- if you have no idea what a word is, read it outloud, flip your R's, and pronounce every single letter, separating vowels. The only vowel sounds are a (ah), e (eh), i (ee), o (oh), u (oo). This might help with reading the words above, too. English really does actually sound like 'English.'

• The note above also makes it pretty easy to communicate here. If you can't think of a word in Swahili, just say it with a bit of an accent. Like technical terms we ran into. Wire Cutters are called Waya Kata. Try it - it's fun. :)

• Swahili has a great set of vocabulary words that describe some things the way they really should be described. Like the word Shaglabagla. Just try it. I think I may try and coin it as a new term in the Perry family because it describes us perfectly: basically, it means mess, disorder, or craziness. This can describe things like the floor of my bedroom (or Daniel's or Helen's, for that matter), the state of Daddy's studio, or general craziness, like when Mamma is trying to coordinate us all getting to the right places at the right times, shower, and talk to her children overseas and over prairies.
  

• On another note, I've discovered one more way I am like my family. I used to make fun of them for taking pictures of plants all the time, but with the wealth of greenery here, it's all I can to do help from taking pictures of only plants and animals, and since the animals are rather hard to catch, it's mostly plants. If you look at my new profile picture, it's a picture of a flower that I'd seen somewhere (I think interfacelift.com) and loved. It was thrilling to discover that it is actually a real flower and is just lying on the ground here after falling off a tree.

I think that's all the discoveries you'll get to hear about for now... I'm getting too distracted by the thought of dinner and walking around before the sun sets. I guess another thought is that since we're so close to the equator, the amount of sunlight doesn't really change year round. While one might think that was great, it actually means there's less sunlight than I'm used to having during the summer!