General Update, 2/14

So I think it's very obvious to anyone who has been checking the blog lately that my posting frequency has dropped immensely since the turn of the New Year. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it was around the beginning of the New Year that a lot of the novelty of living in Arusha began to wear off. I had developed a fairly routine schedule - much of it spent at work - and the number of experiences I felt were worth writing has drastically reduced. Additionally, as I have become much more accustomed to the culture, I'm having more trouble distinguishing which experiences are interesting to read about back home and which would instead be considered mundane. Therefore, I've had to supplement the lack of experience posts with more informational and / or personal opinion posts (such as the post on independent volunteering) , which take much more thought, effort, revision, and therefore, time.

While lack of interesting subject material is partly to blame for the drop in posts, the bigger reason is that my access to a computer has been greatly reduced. I actually had access to a laptop about every other weekend for my first month and a half here, which allowed me to write posts in the evenings when I was back at the hostel. However, this has not been the case in the past month and a half and, combined with the fact that I spend most of the day working, I have not had ample opportunity to sit down and write posts.

A third and lesser reason for my lack of posting is that my dad has been visiting me these past two weeks, and I have spent much of the time traveling with him. While this has given me quite a bit of new material to write about, it again means that I have had neither the time nor the acess to a computer to blog.

Despite these reasons, I have good news to report. First, I kept written notes on a number of blogs which I wished to write before my dad came to visit, so that I would be able to come back later and turn them into proper posts. Second, my dad's visit and our corresponding travels has given me quite a bit of new and interesting material worth blogging about. Finally, in the last few days I have once again gained access to a laptop, which I will have for the next three weeks until I depart for southern Tanzania. Therefore, I will be spending the next three weeks trying to catch up on events from the past month and a half, as well as hopefully writing about a few new experiences as well. So be on the look out for much more frequent posting through the beginning of March.