Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar

So, let's not mince words: Tanzania is awesome.

I arrived here in Dar on Friday... at least, I think it was Friday.  From Philadelphia, to New York, to Zurich, to Nairobi, to Dar es Salaam, it took about 29 hours total.  Not fun.  Not much to report on the trip, other than the fact that I watched a ton of movies.  For the record, "Kick Ass" was mediocre, "Unforgiven" is still totally badass, and "Shrek 4" made me want to hurt something small and innocent.

In any case, the past two days have been pretty fun.  The folks here don't trust us to go wandering off in Dar by ourselves (probably because we have about six words of Swahili among all 39 of us), so we've primarily been confined to the convent/community center/dormitory/canteen/bar area the whole time.  Mornings have been spent listening to lectures regarding culture, language, safety, and other vital stuff while evenings have been dedicated to hanging out, staving off jetlag, and coming to terms with the fact that we're totally in Africa right now.  We'll be shipping out to the Morogoro region (west of Dar) on Wednesday to get a few more days of training before dividing up to live with our host families for the next 9 weeks.

Accommodations are quite nice here.  Single rooms with running water and electricity, maid service, cheap beer, you name it.  I'll post pictures as soon as I have a chance (or, rather, when I take any).  Mosquitoes are a bit of a problem, but they're NOTHING like the tiger mosquitoes we have in DC.  While tiger mosquitoes can quickly escape danger, bite through clothes, and will essentially stop at nothing to drain you of your life force, the mosquitoes here seem much more... lethargic.  Although I guess they do transmit malaria... eh, not important.

Actually, slightly funny story/sage advice regarding mosquitoes: make sure that there are ZERO mosquitoes on the inside of your mosquito net when you go to sleep.  Otherwise, you could spend a full hour jumping around your bed with a flashlight trying to kill the little ****s only to fall off and faceplant on the floor like an idiot.  This is hypothetically speaking, of course.

Okay, this post is long enough.  And it's dinner.  Tutaonana!