Hobbies

In my last blog post i talked about how i was in need of a hobby to past the hours between school ending and going to sleep/my entire weekend. I have spent the past two weeks trying out various hobbies some of the more obvious ones that did not stick were as follows.

Anti rain dancing- i am not really sure how the Native Americans properly do a rain dance. All I know is that it involves a rain stick and jumping around in a circle while chanting something. I have not been able to check it out on YouTube so i kind of just improvised. I felt like this "hobby" had some real potential to be not only a way to pass time but also had the opportunity to provide me with some much needed exercises, but Alas no matter how many circles i hopped, skipped, and jumped in to stop the rain it inevitably came. As a side note this hobby only lasted one day as I am easily discouraged and may or may not have twisted my ankle in the process due to my lack of coordination. This hobby will be chalked up as a fail.

The next thing I felt had a great potential was tea connoisseur. I felt like i could really excel at this. I love to drink tea and I am always open to trying a new thing and on another plus Tanzanians love their chai. How could this not be a great hobby that would stay with me for the rest of my life? Well my friends things were going along great at our house Gretchen had been smooth enough to take the extra tea bags from our mid-service conference. I was left with many options, peppermint, hibiscus, chamomile, green tea, Kenyan black tea, Tanzanian black tea of course and lemon tea. Soon though I realized this was not the hobby for me. I found that i was rather set in my ways when it came to other varieties. Although hibiscus tea tasted like candy my stomach was less than amused. On top of that i prefer loose leaf tea, you can imagine how quickly I was defeated. Furthermore I was left wondering what would happen after i exhausted all the varieties we had at our home. The village only sells two kinds. I did find that among Tanzanian teas i prefer the classier Kilimanjaro tea to that of Chai Bora, I guess that means it wasn't a complete loss.

One of the hobbies that my parents had insisted i try is writing. I am as much against it as anyone else let me tell you. They tell me i am a great writer and that with all my spare time i have what it takes to write the next great American novel. Well my boredom got the best of me one day and i got to thinking. I can write papers in a snap with little effort and hey I have my blog (although neglected lately) that I can manage to make mildly entertaining for those reading, why not venture into the great world that is writing. I went to the duka down the street and bought 4 new notebooks (a little premature and ambitious I know) all for the sole purpose of filling them with my great story. I came home and sat at the table and pondered. What would I write about? clearly not myself, the world does not need another young white girl writing about her time in Africa "making a difference" also I am also too culturally insensitive to handle writing like that. I needed something better, something new and fresh, but what? After two hours of serious thinking like i have not done since I was studying for the LSAT I found I was stuck. The pressure was too much. I will admit that maybe this hobby has potential but for now it will be placed on the back burner as something I can turn to when i have exhausted all other options, and hey if by some stroke of genius I stumble upon the idea one day while looking longingly outside at the giant mud pile that is my home then fear not because you will have upon you the next great American novel. I mean isn't that what all the great writers do anyway remove themselves from the situation and then BAM the idea comes to them?

Those were the hobbies that i felt had the most potential the next list are ones that really weren't going anywhere from the start but they passed some time.

Chef/ cooking- there is only so much you can do with rice, beans, tomatoes, onions, and the weird leafy green spinach like plant they are selling now. Plus cooking on a jicho albeit time consuming is never stress free or pleasant.

Studying physics- our school library strangely enough has a lot of books on physics. So one day i thought why not give it a try it could be mentally stimulating and keep me on my toes. Most of you who know me know that i have an extreme hatred with math, much to my fathers dismay. I got ten pages into the introduction to physics book and realized it would never work out between us. Maybe I will try one of the psychology books next, they appear to be a lot less threatening.

reading- while a rather obvious choice i have the tendency to read really fast, I quickly exhaust all of my options hence the jump into physics.

yoga- I have no idea what I am doing save for the 10 moves taught to me in a magazine i brought with me, but for the most part i am never relaxed while doing it.

eating- goes with the cooking, its hard to be a foodie when you have a limited diet.

All of these things bring me to the question of what did people do before electricity? I mean seriously. And at this point do I even want to know. I find myself constantly getting jealous of people in the stories I read who even in the late 1800s had electricity in their house. I know its not right but at this point whats a girl to do?