August 6th

This is my bed with the mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. That door leads to the balcony. We're essentially on the 8th floor.

I'm at the University of Dar es Salaam, and the rest of the students will not arrive until September, so it's pretty empty. When they all get here, there will be about 8,000 of us. And the city of Dar is about 4 million. I will have much more limited internet access at least for the moment, so I will try to keep updating, but I give no guarantees.

Ok so from what I have seen so far, this is what I've got for you. We sometimes have running water. We sometimes have wireless internet connection in the dorm, sometimes not. We have Western toilets in the dorm, but other places are not guaranteed. We always have to bring our own toilet paper. The outlets in my room don't work, but they do in other people's.

We went to Dar the other day, and I loved all of the movement and color. It reminded me a lot of Fort-de-France in Martinique. We also went to another market via a "daladala" which was really fun. Daladalas are small public buses which have seats for 15 people, but they also have "jump seats" that flip down in the aisle, and then another person squeezes in between the driver and shotgun, and the rest stand in the small place behind the driver in front of the door. Basically, you can get another 10-15 people in there, and that's what we did. The other girl from Olaf ended up sitting on my lap. However, since they only cost about $0.30, we're willing to put up with it.

We also went to a couple other markets, one of them was all for art called Tinga Tinga, which was really cool. I have been more tempted to spend money on things that I don't need here than I ever have before, which I acknowledge doesn't say much, but I'm just saying. I really love the markets.

Oh, I forgot about the weather. Now it's finally hot. So far it's ranged from 80 to 85 depending on how humid it is, but the nights are always really cool. All of the buildings are designed to handle the heat, so it's never too bad inside. There are very few solid walls, our dorms have screen doors to the hallway and also to the balcony.

We have two student guides who are helping us out this week, and they are really cool. They are both poli sci majors, which is cool for me. No one else in our group is a poli sci major; we have a pretty good mix.

We also met the students that we are supposed to be teaching English to next week. My teacher that I'm taking over for is actually another student at UDSM, an ed major who is getting practice teaching. They were all very excited, and since they are in Standard 6 (like 6th grade), it should be interesting to say the least. They are currently learning about personal pronouns, so hopefully I'll be able to teach them something... I honestly have no idea what is going to be expected of me because I don't know how to teach... but we'll see! At least I will learn something, haha.