17 pages in an hour for her. 17 hours by the radio for them.

i remember it clearly, the second week on outreach, most poignantly on the 27th and 28th of December, my friend borrowing my AM radio, sitting in a small hut on the outskirts of Mwanza, Tanzania.

two major events occurred on the 27th of December, 2007. it was a day that rocked my world.

Kenyans voted for a president, the election being rigged to favor the incumbent. the next 30-odd days awash with blood in a nation heralded as Africa's most peaceful. near 1000 deaths triggered by the lies of the rulers.






Pakistanis lost and began mourning for one of the most prominent women in southern Asian politics.




Benazir Bhutto, the former twice-run Prime Minister, recently returned from Exile, was shot in the back of the head and then blown up by a suicide bomber.

i spent the next several months of my life engrossed entirely in news and updates concerning these two events. i spent countless hours with my friend Joy, from Kenya, listening to my radio for any news of change and peace in her homeland.

i spent nearly an hour in a Barnes & Noble stateside a month later, reading Benazir's book, 'Reconciliation'. the final draft of this manuscript was handed to her friend and editor the morning before her assassination. i read the whole first chapter, all 17 pages, trembling in the plush chair.

tomorrow marks the first anniversary of both of these monumental events.

some great change has come to these two nations, while yet another crisis looms for one and progress has been slow in another. tomorrow i will likely sit, trembling, reading the headlines commemorating such tragic loss of life.

only this time there's still hope for things to get better.

2007 - a horrible but even wonderful year

Knut - this lovely, sweet, wonderful, cute little polar bear baby, who was born Dezember 5th 2006 in Berlin annoyed me sooo much..
Every Religion lesson we talked about this polar bear. My teacher was a real big fan of Knut. Our record of talking about Knut was 45 minutes. During that time our teacher told us how cute Knut was and how the Berlin Zoo managed to handle all the people who wanted to see Knut. Now no one talkes about Knut any more because he isn't that cute any longer. He's a huge polar bear now;Too big to be cute.

Marco W. - the 19 year old German who went on vacation to Antalya with this family and then spend about 8 months in prison because he had sex with a 17 year old Briton. Did he rape her or not? I can't really tell but he was on the news every week.

Madeleine - a four year old girl disappeared on May the 3rd in Portugal. Till today no one knows where she is.

Lea-Sophie - was one of six or even more babies who died in Germany this year.
A mother threw her baby out of the window, and many other babies died because of neglect.
Lea-Sophie died because she didn't get enough food.
2007 so many babies and children died because their parents didn't take enough care, were brutal or didn't want to have their own babies any longer.

Blacksburg - you might even know more about the crazed action of the 23 year old guy who killed 32 humans than me.
I don't really know what to write about Blacksburg because it's too horrible to write about it. But I know that heros were made that day. The most famouse one was Christopher Jamie Bishop. He died because he saved his students.
Every year so many crazed action happen and not only in the USA. Even here at my own school strange things happen.
I was shocked when I heared about Blacksburg because a few months earlier a self-made bomb was build and planted at my school. No one was hurt at our school but there's still this hole in the asphalt and since that time the police drives around our school more often.

Benazir Bhutto - was killed because of a suicide.
She was first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, Pakistan.



So many cruel things happend 2007; too many!


For me personal the last year was pretty split into good and bad times.
Some of my family members died and two guys I knew died in a car crash.
So people disapeared in my life but there were also some who appeared.
I got to know some people of my grade, we hang out together and now we're really good friends. We spend a lot of time together. I attend service at their church and they are really awesome friends.
I'm so glad they entered my life.



Now 2007 is almost over and I'm some kind of sad about it. 2007 was an emotional year and 2008 will be the year of changes for me.
I'll finish school, leave home, go to college and I'll have some cuts in my life.
My life will change a lot.



I wish you all a blessed and happy 2008 and a wonderful New Year's Eve!
-Krissi

P.S. When I finished this blog entry I realized that I wrote about more horrible things than wonderful things of 2007.
It's always like this. You don't remember the good things but the bad ones.
But surely there were some more wonderful events in 2007.