Despite traveling for 27+ hours and going to bed around 2:30am, I was up by 7:45 the next morning. Already a little short on the rest, these 5 hours were far from restful. There were lots of slamming doors that went on all throughout the night and sleeping under the mosquito net was far from comfortable. This long tall sally definitely needs some more practice with sleeping under a mosquito net and actually take advantage of what it is really there for. Anyways, even though Kim did not have anything for us to do until lunch at 12:30 we were at breakfast by 8. We got the standard 2 slices of white bread, 1 slice of watermelon, and 1 hard boiled egg. While breakfast wasn’t exactly exciting, it was more than exciting to meet Kim on our way up to our room with my lost backpack! The airport called her that morning and confirmed my suspicion. Someone had accidentally picked up my bad instead of theirs and was nice enough to bring it back. I wasn’t all that worried all along but I was certainly relieved to hear the great news. Since we did not have anything scheduled until lunch, we had a good bit of free time on our hands. After a little bit of relaxing, we finally ventured out for our first, self-guided walk around town. Let’s just say it was quite the adventure! It was unbelievable that I was in Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, in Africa. Though this bustling city is nowhere near representative of Tanzania or anywhere close to my little town of Bariadi, it was so interesting to walk around and just take in the culture. Car horns were constantly honking. Streets were packed with taxis, bajaj’s (3 wheeled open vehicles... I guess closest to a golf cart), daladala’s (crowded busses), and pikipiki’s (motorcycles). People were walking all in the roads. Bajaj’s and pikipiki’s were driving all over the sidewalks. Let’s just say that there seemed to be very few traffic laws/ pedestrian rights. Many people were constantly walking along the sidewalks, trying to sell their, often second-hand, goods, many times balancing their products on their head. Many other people had stations set up on the ground, frequently a white sheet littered with shoes. We were nearly back to the YWCA when Jim attached himself to us and gave us his own little tour of the city center and even took us to an area, albeit a little sketchy, where we could see the Indian Ocean! Here we met Bushman, who showed us his beautiful canvas that we completed with knife art. Jim was all in it for the money but we enjoyed the wanderings and the sightings and gave him a small amount for getting us back to the YWCA. All in all, a weird, awesome, funny experience. We finally made it back for lunch at the canteen. For 3,500 tsh, I got veggies (basically just very finely chopped greens - veggies = mboga), beans, and a piece of chicken. I actually didn’t order the chicken but that’s what happens when you order in a different language. It was actually quite delicious. After lunch we started our first few sessions for orientation and it was great to get into the teaching side of things. Our session break turned into an accidental nap party, which was much needed even though it was for maybe 20 minutes. Dinner was again at the canteen and they had run out of mboga so it was rice and beans for me. They normally give you this red sauce. No one really knows what is in it but it gives a little flavor to the rice. FYI... my first creature sighting was a rat before dinner. It was much larger and darker that those we have in the US. It crawled along a ledge on the wall near the ceiling before diner. Exhaustion finally hit and bed called at 8pm.
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