Written by Eli and Megan
After a smooth week of student directed travel, the group headed to the beautiful island of zanzibar. once we landed in stonetown, we were introduced to our final homestay families. After settling into our new homes for the week, we were lucky enough to be given a proper tour of stonetown by our contact, Faisal, and his funny sidekick, Ally. We learned about how some front doors have chains carved into them to represent that the original owners of the building had been involved in slave trade. Some doors were also decorated with flowers or vines, symbolizing that the previous owner had been involved in spice trading. Once we completed our tour of stonetown, we headed back to our homestays to enjoy a delicous homemade meal cooked by our mamas.
Our time in Stonetown was jampacked with adventures. Everybody chose an internship for the week, and we spent a few hours there everyday. Eli and Reid chose to do their internship with a local painter. They learned how to blend colors together and eventually created their own pieces of work. Reb, Eve, Ellie B., and Maddy decided on a relaxing spa internship, where they created tea blends, incense, body scrubs, and extracted their own coconut oil. Hanya, Lily, Ben, Ellie G. and Megan chose to learn the ins and outs of screen printing. They worked hard to create their own T-shirt design, and eventually got to print and take home their custom made shirts.
In between our internships and daily shopping sprees, we found time to take a boat out to Prison Island. This beautiful island is known for their giant tortoises!! After wondering around the tortoise park, some of us snorkled and some relaxed on the shore for a while. When the tide started to come back in, the group spent hours bridge jumping.. it was a blast!
On our final day in Stonetown, most of the group took part in Henna. We Henna’d our hands, feet, arms, and even nails. The designs were beautiful, but sadly they washed away once we got to our next stop- Matemwe- and started our SCUBA TRAINING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Follow up on next weeks blog to hear all about our SCUBA adventures.
Eli and Megan