I finally am having the chance to sit down and reflect on the past few days of traveling to Tanzania! Wow what a journey. My flights were all so long, the longest I have been on that’s for sure. One ten hour flight then a ten hour layover in Egypt then a nine hour flight to Dar. On the first flight I slept really well because no one was in the middle seat so I got to lay down but the second flight I had an aisle seat and it was awful!! I could not sleep at all and had a very bad migraine.

How bout that ten hour layover though!! I did not think for once it would work out the way it did. When I got off the plane I just asked if I could go see the pyramids and the airline got me a car, a visa for the day and I was off! My driver spoke no English so I was pretty sketched out at first but then once I got there after about a 40 minute drive the man in his little shop spoke English and we worked out a price. Next thing I know I was on the back of a camel in full (not kidding you) gallop to the pyramids! Haha. Please just imagine that. I am pretty sure my guide was supposed to ride a horse beside me but instead just rode the camel with me it was so cool! I got to go down inside the pyramids, it was a 100 meter climb down and you saw where the king and the queen were buried as mummies J.  There are 9 pyramids. Six for the king and 3 for the queen. Thousands and thousands of slaves built them and then the king had them all killed because he wanted to keep them a secret. (thought that was a neat little fact). After the pyramids I went to my tour guide, Sam’s friends shop and I bought a charm for my necklace that was a pyramid! I seriously cannot add anymore! Next my driver took me the Nile River. It was SO beautiful. Not anything like I imagined, surrounded by beautiful hotels and skyscrapers.

I finally made it back to the airport three hours before my flight just enough time to check in, go through security, and wash my face and brush my teeth, take a sleeping pill and get on my flight to Dar. I was pretty anxious for this flight. Just because I knew once I got off I would be in Tanzania. I was also superrrr exhausted at this point but couldn’t sleep so none of that really helped. I arrived in Dar about 5:30am and got a taxi to the YWCA where I will be staying for the next week. I was the second one to arrive and I didn’t get there until around 7:30am that’s how long traffic took. I forgot just how many people live in Africa J. They were very nice when I arrived and helped me carry my bags to my room. My room is very basic. It has two twin beds each with mosquito nets, a sink in the middle and cubbies at the end of the bed to put your stuff in if you want. I put my stuff down and hurried down to breakfast before it ended. My breakfast consisted of a hardboiled egg and a slice of bread, with a slice of watermelon. I’m glad I practiced eating hardboiled eggs before I left! I went to my room and literally had to unpack my entire bag to find my shampoo and conditioner which I realized oh wait I didn’t pack conditioner so minor down fall but I managed. I got a shower in the communal area in the hallway and it was nice low water pressure and good cold water. Refreshing to say the least. I’m glad I was definitely used to it from my Haiti and Nica trips.

My roommate arrived shortly after and she seems really nice her name is Emily. She is from St. Louis and is going to teach Math at a school about 45 minutes away. (She is the same age as me) Our other roommates is a return volunteer and is a retired teacher named Laurel so we won’t meet her for another two weeks. I chatted with her for a while and then I met our field director Kim who I LOVE. She is so cool! She taught a year in Rwanda and a year in Columbia and then was the field director for Columbia for a year and now for us! She lives in Dar, she used to live in NY and work for a nonprofit in the JP Morgan office and help people find jobs when they got laid off, but when the economy crashed she lost her job so she signed up for world teach!

Emily and I took a nap until 6:30, which was dinner. I met the other teachers at dinner I think there are 9 of us total. One girl, Shawna is went to school in Orangeburg, SC I thought that was a neat commonality! One girl is from Canada. The one guy in our group is from Alaska he is teaching Physics. Another girl is a lawyer and she is super cool! She said she just wasn’t happy at her job so she had enough money saved and quit and wanted to do something abroad for awhile. We are pretty much split half and half, half of us are teach math/science and half of us are teach English so that’s cool.

Everyone seems to be super excited about their placements. I got the most urban placement and I don’t even know if you can consider it urban under American standards. I have a gas stove, which will be wonderful for cooking, but I just have to learn how to cook their food first! Our water is iffy we always have to have some on reserve and most likely will shower out of a bucket, which supposedly there is a proper way to do that which we will learn during orientation haha! Some people requested super rural placements and they were very excited about it. So lots of differences in placements we are literally all over Tanzania to the point that once orientation is over we wont see each other again until mid or end of service conference because we are just WAY to far away.

After dinner we went to the rooftop of a hotel and watched the World Cup. I had a glass of South African wine it made me miss South Africa L. Kim wanted to stay up as late as we could to try to get used to the time zone. A South African man sitting by us heard that we were here to teach secondary school and he paid our entire bill. I thought that was very nice, people get so happy when they hear that you are here to teach their kids. Its like they have so much respect for you. We left around ten and headed back to our hostel to bed down.

I had to figure out had to get my mosquito net fully around my bed! It is such a snug little fit, you have to tuck it in under your mattress and its so hard because you can do three corners of your bed but then you have to climb in and get the fourth corner and it was just a struggle. It felt like a little fort at first but then it would slowly loosen in the night and get closer and closer to me haha. I slept in a long sleeve shirt, pj pants and bug repellent. I just don’t want to take any chances. They are having a bad outbreak right now of Dengue fever, which is what you get from mosquitoes sooo I do not want to get that! Kim is so serious about it too she’s like if you have any holes in your net try to sew them or tape them I’m like uhh I have neither of those things so I slept in long sleeve stuff. She suggested we buy at home malaria tests too before we leave Dar to take to our sites. She said its like a pregnancy test. I did a lot of malaria test in Haiti so I know how to do them! She said its not getting malaria that sucks its treating it that is the awful part so lets cross our fingers I don’t get it!

This morning I woke up for breakfast and we had the start of orientation. Orientation is at the Holiday Inn a block away. It is so nice! We have a conference room with AC. We did ice breakers and talked about teaching expectations at the school and in the classroom, cultural barriers etc. Then we did a talk on safety in Dar. We also went over an evacuation emergency plan just in case something happened but they have never had to implement that in Tanzania. We had lunch at the YWCA then came back to the hotel and finished with another session on expectations as a teacher and the role of a teacher in the classroom. We ended at 4 and headed to a café that Kim recommended. I checked out a super market after that and looked for conditioner but no luck, Kim said she knows a place but it will be kinda expensive. We came back for dinner at the YMCA only rice and sauce tonight! Our canteen was closed, and then I came back to the hotel to type my blog!

Tomorrow is another day packed full of orientation! Miss you guys! I will write again soon.