My first few days...

I don’t even know where to begin! My journey to Tanzania started at 1 PM on Friday June 26th when my mom took me to the airport and I didn’t arrive until 9:00 PM (about 2 PM EST) Sunday June 28th. I had a 2 ½ hour window to make my connection in Amsterdam so of course my plane took off from D.C. 3 ½ hours late. I had to spend Saturday night at an airport hotel in Amsterdam and take the next flight to Kilimanjaro the next morning. It was a very long, lonely night! As soon as I walked in the front door of the CCS homebase I was greeted with a big hug from Mama Lilian, our house “mother”. She is a wonderful woman and really takes good care of her volunteers! My first two observations were that the stars are too numerous to comprehend – truly unbelievable, and the air smells sweet with woodsmoke, even if slightly tainted by gasoline. The sounds here are amazingly different than anything I’m used to – I’m woken every morning by the call of a rooster (around sun-up) and he continues to sing through 7ish. I don’t like him very much. In addition to the rooster, there are pigs, dogs, babies, strange birds, Muslim chanting, and of course the crickets. On my first morning we were broken up into teams and given tasks to complete within the village. My team had to go to a local house (more like a mud hut) and buy sugar cane using only Swahili (God bless the phrase book)! We walked up to the house where a young girl was washing linen in a bucket and asked for sugar – her mom then came right out with a machete and asked us to follow her. It was really intense. Needless to say we got our sugar cane and didn’t lose any limbs. The rest of my days have been filled with Swahili lessons, a trip into town (I can’t understand how these women balance so much on their heads!), and of course my first day at my volunteer placement! I could go on forever but I will dedicate other entries to my first day teaching as well as a lecture we got today on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Tanzania. This weekend, 11 of us are going to Zanzibar! I’m super stoked. We got a bungalow on the beach so were going to celebrate July 4th in style! Next weekend were all going on safari to Ngorogoro Crater and Lake Manyara with a brief stop to visit the Masaai tribe! That’s all for now, leave me messages! I miss everyone so much!