Today was officially my first day really experiencing Tanzania!! I wish I wasn't so exhausted for it, but I'll get over it. We started the day out by going to "town." See, I live in a village called Karanga, and the town, about 15 min away, is called Moshi. Karanga is extremely...Africa. Corn fields, shack houses, little kids running around the streets playing in the dirt, women carrying huge things of bananas on their heads, etc. It is amazing. I thought the poverty would give me a cultural shock, and it kind of did but then you start interacting with them and you realize how happy these people are. It's hard to understand their hard lifestyle when they are living it so happily. In town, Moshi, there are a lot of stores & markets. It's all on dirt roads and there are people walking everywhere. It was Sunday today and here people actually go to church. Many stores aren't open because of it. So little girls were in their nicest dresses and men wore button up shirts. We also stopped by an cluster of stores off the side of the road where artists sell their work. Very intricately carved wooden animals, handbags, clothing, etc. It was fun talking to the people. I ended up playing a game with the guy in the last store. He barely understood any of my English (like I kept asking him what the name of this game was and he would respond saying "ok") but we were able to play the game by him making gestures telling me what to do next. It was a lot like Mancala if you know that game. He won, naturally, but it was really fun!! I'm starting to understand how to interact with them even when you don't know each others' language. When we left, two of the store owners said "Bye Michele," so they remembered my name =) That was sweet. 


The end of the day was spent having a lesson back at the home base about the Tanzanian culture and how to interact with the people, learning some Swahili and more. We had a break after that in which I took a nap, not on purpose, for 2 hours and woke up to eat dinner. Then the primary touring company that CCS works through picked us up around 8 and took us back to their offices where they informed us of all the different things they do & prices of each. They were all about my age so knew very good english which was refreshing. It gets tiring trying to interpret through thick accents. 


Like I said earlier, I was so tired today. I think my body is just trying to transition so many things all at once. The new humid climate (it was very hot today), jetlag for sure, new food (they serve us local food which is good, but new), and a new culture to understand. It was amazing, though. The people are such hard workers. I saw barely any homeless people asking for money. Everyone is hard at work doing what they can with scraps of crap and making them into useable things to sell (like striping tires to make into shoe bottoms). They are happy and friendly people. They love to try to talk to you and find it funny that you don't know how to respond yet. So many people guided me through a conversation. You also have to get used to people staring at you. They look so serious and then you catch them looking at you, wave to them, and their faces suddenly brighten up and wave back because they've been noticed & love it. It's beautiful here too. Banana trees, lemon trees, and avocado trees - and that's just in the home base backyard. I don't even know what else is out there. Chickens roam everywhere, goats are not uncommon, and dogs run wild so you can't touch them. Sorry Mom. 


This trip is really developing into something. I can't wait to go out on my own and teach the kids. The kids are the happiest and I'm so looking forward to interacting with them. Tomorrow's an early day so I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight, I love you all! 

After 22 hours of flying and three continents, I made it to Tanzania safe and sound!!! This has to have been the most interesting trip I've had so far. Everything went really smoothly going from Seattle to Amsterdam. It's a strange feeling following the sun. I kept waiting for the sun to set so that I knew when it would be time to sleep, but it never went down! It just chilled there, threatening to set, and then in the last portion of my flight it started going up again!! So then Amsterdam was really interesting to walk around in. Very different culture and there were things in the airport I've never seen before like huge lounges just for sitting and reading, and a glass box inside the airport for smoking. Getting through security there was a breeze and I sat next to a Tanzanian man so asked a lot of questions and tried getting accustomed to his thick accent.


I arrived in Tanzania around 8pm. We had to go down stairs off the plane onto the pavement and walk straight to the dingiest airport I've been to. It was just like a little building with the classic fluorescent lights that shine like a strobe because the loud ceiling fans are blocking it out. We asked a man where we go to get a CTA stamp and told us it would be $200 because we are American and rich (by this time I had met up with two other girls from this program). He thought that was really funny.  He took us into his office where one by one we sat in front of him while he looked at our documentation, passport, took the $200 and wrote out our CTA stamp into our passport. It wasn't nearly as hard to get as I thought it'd be. Don't worry thought - it's legitimate. He was an officer and knew the rest of the staff. I went through customs and the girl told me how small & cute I was. I didn't know how to respond. I don't know why don't ask. I think I thought she was telling me I'm small & young looking so I didn't know what to say to that. She looks at me and says, "that's when you say thank you." and I embarrassingly said thank you. Great first interaction I guess.


Then we were picked up by our Cross-Cultural Solution's (CCS) bus driver. He is so so friendly. The kind of guy you immediately like. As we were rolling our luggage to the van (it had the big CCS logo so I knew I was okay) three guys came up and took our luggage for us. I just thought they were with CCS but then they asked for money. We had to turn them away because we had no Tanzanian shillings! They weren't happy. Our diver had to shoo them away. I sat in the front seat with the driver and we talked the whole time. In Tanzania they drive on the other side of the road so it was scary at first but I got used to it. During the drive I was able to see a glimpse of what it's like there. Not what I was expecting. A lot of people were walking along the road, some with baskets on their head balancing it perfectly, there were many run down stores, groups of my age kids hanging out - they always stare at you as you drive past - and the vegetation is obviously something new & exciting. We got to the home base after a 45 minute drive, were greeted by our home-base workers, and now I'm in my room with pretty good Wi-fi, and exhausted. I think I have now gone two days worth of 22 hours on an airplane with maybe 3-4 hours of sleep. I will sound more excited tomorrow. I promise you I am ecstatic about all of this. This is definitely an adventure and we never get those in boring America. This is exactly the kind of exposure and cultural immersion I've been looking for. I will update tomorrow! I love you all! Goodnight.

Hey everybody!!! I'll be in Africa for the next three weeks volunteering and updating this blog! I'll be teaching at a school in a city called Moshi right next to Kilimanjaro - yes that big mountain in the Toto song. I'll be teaching 2-6 year olds English, math, reading, etc. Every weekend I'll be going on some sort of excursion, so won't be able to update during those days. Other than that I will try to keep you updated as much as possible!