Now that we’re well into our second year of living in Tanzania, I’ve vowed to participate in more local activities. Doing so will help me better appreciate life in Arusha, and it will be good for Max and Elly to get out of the house occasionally and have some new experiences.

Today we went to the Arusha Day for the Animals fundraising event at a local coffee shop. The event featured a bounce house, face painting, games for kids, a playground and a few friendly dogs for kids to play with. I thought Max and Elly would be really excited about the dogs because every time they hear a dog bark in our neighborhood (which is multiple times a day), Elly’s eyes get big and she pats my arm or leg and says repeatedly, puppy, puppy, puppy. But instead, their attention went immediately to the playground.

However the puppies did register in Elly’s memory of the day. When we got home and were finishing up bath time, Elly was jumping around their room saying, “Puppy ruka! Puppy ruka!” She had combined the bounce house and the dogs at today’s event and was saying “Puppy jump! Puppy jump!”

As a special treat for our outing, I let them each have their own pop. I’m not sure why, but they both have recently taken to calling pop “juice.” So they enjoyed their “juice” and took a few more runs down the slippery slide before we headed home.

Fortunately the activity of the day was a counter affect to the added sugar in their system and they managed to be asleep in record time. And, as a bonus, we now know of a great playground not that far from home that we can enjoy!