Friday, February 6, 2009
Hello from a far!!!!
Hey I know I keep promising to write and this weekend I will. I was in Arusha the last few days and it was amazing. It reminded me why I came to Tanzania!!! It has been rather hard the last few weeks…you never really get used to being staredat, hit on or asked to teach someone English constantly. But on top of all of that I haven’t really made any real friends, but a lot of the Tanzanian students just got back last week so hopefully things will change. Even with all of the hard patches I am still having a great time. I saw lions this weekend. I also have gone swimming in the Indian Ocean. I teach English to woodcarvers that are awesome and we have some really great conversations. I went anti-capitalism on them yesterday which was fun. Plus every where we go we hear people shout OBAMA!!! It is crazy how many things have his face on it. I will write a lot more this weekend…I promise this time.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
I am still alive
I fail miserably at being a good friend. I would like to apologize to everyone for not writing sooner. There is so much to tell you and so much to write and even more to try an analyze and instead of doing any of it I’ve just not written anything for the last three weeks... Is three weeks or more? I don’t even know how long I have been here. It seems that I live one day at a time here. Each day brings its own set of challenges and andventures... I swear each day feels like a week and by the time it is over I am so exhausted. We have a day off, so I will write up all of things that have gone on over the last three weeks. Preview... pickpocketing, following the wrong person, circus, and many miscommunications.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
The first two days!
Hey everyone!!!
I made it safe and sound! I honestly can’t believe I’m here. It still feels so surreal to me to finally be back in Tanzania. I arrived at the dorm at 5 last night, which I still do not know what time that is in the U.S. After 2 days of traveling, 20 hours in flight, and very little sleep( who sleeps on airplanes when there are so many movie and tv options) we arrived at the dorms. Anastasia, also known as tasi, and I got a prime piece of real state for our dorm room…it is on the 7th floor! Which means that we don’t have to worry about bugs and mosquitoes as much, for it is not in their best interest to fly 80ft off the ground, we also have a ocean view from our balcony(see attached photo) and it also means that we got to carry all of luggage up 8 flights of stairs! The room is wonderful and last night we were serenaded to sleep by frogs and woke up this morning to people laughing. I can hear running water from my room but I am still not sure what the source of that water is. It is so lush and tropical here and the weather is not nearly as bad as I had thought it was going to be…or at least yesterday was not bad. It is very humid, but there is a breeze. I think the breeze is going to save me. It cools down at night and it is 10 am and it is still not very hot.
I took my first shower today and I was shocked at how cold the water is…it sure did wake me up and I think I will be taking much shorter showers here. In and out as quickly as possible, but the water pressure was great.
I loved flying emirates, it is like a five star hotel. We were served two meals on our flight from NYC to Dubai and then 1 meal on our flight from Dubai to Dar. The food was amazing!!!! It’s better than Mt. Holyoke food by a long shot and it was on an airplane!!! I could believe it. The ceiling on the first plane had sparkly, specs of light resembling stars. There were at least 50 new movies and that is not including 100 of other movies and shows. I will never get over how awkward it is to watch emotional movies on the plane. Whether they make me laugh or cry I always feel so awkward, because I am surrounded by other people who have no idea what is going on. I could not help myself I just kept laughing out loud. So I traveled with Tacy, another girl on my program. We didn’t sit together on the airplane, but it was nice having someone to travel with. So in our layover in Dubai, we found our gate and then sat down and talked and got to know each other better. We were having a great time and we decided to walk around to keep our legs from cramping. We look at the info screen to make sure we were at the right gate and no were not and it said final call!!! We ran to the new gate and everyone had already been seated and we were the last two people on the plane. It was so ridiculous we got there 10 minutes before were suppose to depart, my clock was wrong, very wrong. Other than that little excitement, our journey was perfect and went very smooth.
Today I am going to meet my Swahili teacher’s little brother and deliver a laptop that I brought for him. I think that tacy and I hopefully will be invited over for dinner! We are going to go explore the campus some, throw around my Frisbee and maybe then try to find an internet café so I can send this very long, incoherent message to all of you! My goal is to write at least one entrée for the blog every week if not more.
I am so excited and can’t wait for the true adventures and semester to begin. The other students arrive today and we start class/orientation on Monday.
Take care
Mary
Yesterday was great! Tacy and I were basically alone exploring the campus…we went walking for 2 hours and I am burned to a crisp, on the first day! I think I will be getting pretty tan, pretty quickly. There are monkeys all over campus. Wema, my Swahili teacher, her little brother came to pick up the computer that I carried for her. We all just walked around campus and talked…it was very ackward, but nice to get out with people who kind of knew what they were doing. They hasn’t spent much time on campus and didn’t know where much was. So we all explored together. Tacy got the pleasure of riding on a Dala Dala, local bus, for the first time. It was pretty painless compared to my other experiences. I then taught them how to throw a Frisbee, and let’s just say they are naturals…which annoys me since it took me forever to learn how to throw. They had never seen a Frisbee before and could throw fairly well, even a forehand! After they left, we were greeted by one of the security guards that had asked for Tacy’s number earlier, we told him we did not have a phone. So when we walked over and our security guard mama zubeta asked us if we had a phone and I told her we did, we were caught in our lie, expect that Tacy really did not have a phone. He then proceeded to try and sell her phone. When we asked for how much he told her just to check out the phone. When we decided it worked, we then asked how much. He asked her what she was willing to spend. I then intervened and began negotiating, and was then called a unfamiliar word in Swahili. I asked what it meant and it apparently it means “technical”-I am not sure if that is the real translation, but we had such a good time bargaining and talking with them. I then proceed to tell them how I didn’t want to have children, which then led to the logical question of “do you want to be a sister?” meaning do I want to join the nunnery. I said no and then they asked if I planned to get married I said yes. They then laughed and asked me what I thought my husband would think. He asked me if I would then have an abortion every time I got pregnant, and so I tried to explain birth control and condoms and then it got to awkward and I changed the subject.
More stories to come I promise\
Mary
I made it safe and sound! I honestly can’t believe I’m here. It still feels so surreal to me to finally be back in Tanzania. I arrived at the dorm at 5 last night, which I still do not know what time that is in the U.S. After 2 days of traveling, 20 hours in flight, and very little sleep( who sleeps on airplanes when there are so many movie and tv options) we arrived at the dorms. Anastasia, also known as tasi, and I got a prime piece of real state for our dorm room…it is on the 7th floor! Which means that we don’t have to worry about bugs and mosquitoes as much, for it is not in their best interest to fly 80ft off the ground, we also have a ocean view from our balcony(see attached photo) and it also means that we got to carry all of luggage up 8 flights of stairs! The room is wonderful and last night we were serenaded to sleep by frogs and woke up this morning to people laughing. I can hear running water from my room but I am still not sure what the source of that water is. It is so lush and tropical here and the weather is not nearly as bad as I had thought it was going to be…or at least yesterday was not bad. It is very humid, but there is a breeze. I think the breeze is going to save me. It cools down at night and it is 10 am and it is still not very hot.
I took my first shower today and I was shocked at how cold the water is…it sure did wake me up and I think I will be taking much shorter showers here. In and out as quickly as possible, but the water pressure was great.
I loved flying emirates, it is like a five star hotel. We were served two meals on our flight from NYC to Dubai and then 1 meal on our flight from Dubai to Dar. The food was amazing!!!! It’s better than Mt. Holyoke food by a long shot and it was on an airplane!!! I could believe it. The ceiling on the first plane had sparkly, specs of light resembling stars. There were at least 50 new movies and that is not including 100 of other movies and shows. I will never get over how awkward it is to watch emotional movies on the plane. Whether they make me laugh or cry I always feel so awkward, because I am surrounded by other people who have no idea what is going on. I could not help myself I just kept laughing out loud. So I traveled with Tacy, another girl on my program. We didn’t sit together on the airplane, but it was nice having someone to travel with. So in our layover in Dubai, we found our gate and then sat down and talked and got to know each other better. We were having a great time and we decided to walk around to keep our legs from cramping. We look at the info screen to make sure we were at the right gate and no were not and it said final call!!! We ran to the new gate and everyone had already been seated and we were the last two people on the plane. It was so ridiculous we got there 10 minutes before were suppose to depart, my clock was wrong, very wrong. Other than that little excitement, our journey was perfect and went very smooth.
Today I am going to meet my Swahili teacher’s little brother and deliver a laptop that I brought for him. I think that tacy and I hopefully will be invited over for dinner! We are going to go explore the campus some, throw around my Frisbee and maybe then try to find an internet café so I can send this very long, incoherent message to all of you! My goal is to write at least one entrée for the blog every week if not more.
I am so excited and can’t wait for the true adventures and semester to begin. The other students arrive today and we start class/orientation on Monday.
Take care
Mary
Yesterday was great! Tacy and I were basically alone exploring the campus…we went walking for 2 hours and I am burned to a crisp, on the first day! I think I will be getting pretty tan, pretty quickly. There are monkeys all over campus. Wema, my Swahili teacher, her little brother came to pick up the computer that I carried for her. We all just walked around campus and talked…it was very ackward, but nice to get out with people who kind of knew what they were doing. They hasn’t spent much time on campus and didn’t know where much was. So we all explored together. Tacy got the pleasure of riding on a Dala Dala, local bus, for the first time. It was pretty painless compared to my other experiences. I then taught them how to throw a Frisbee, and let’s just say they are naturals…which annoys me since it took me forever to learn how to throw. They had never seen a Frisbee before and could throw fairly well, even a forehand! After they left, we were greeted by one of the security guards that had asked for Tacy’s number earlier, we told him we did not have a phone. So when we walked over and our security guard mama zubeta asked us if we had a phone and I told her we did, we were caught in our lie, expect that Tacy really did not have a phone. He then proceeded to try and sell her phone. When we asked for how much he told her just to check out the phone. When we decided it worked, we then asked how much. He asked her what she was willing to spend. I then intervened and began negotiating, and was then called a unfamiliar word in Swahili. I asked what it meant and it apparently it means “technical”-I am not sure if that is the real translation, but we had such a good time bargaining and talking with them. I then proceed to tell them how I didn’t want to have children, which then led to the logical question of “do you want to be a sister?” meaning do I want to join the nunnery. I said no and then they asked if I planned to get married I said yes. They then laughed and asked me what I thought my husband would think. He asked me if I would then have an abortion every time I got pregnant, and so I tried to explain birth control and condoms and then it got to awkward and I changed the subject.
More stories to come I promise\
Mary
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Predeparture Jitters
Instead of worrying about New Year's Eve plans, I am freaking out about studying abroad in Tanzania. For all of you who do not know I leave at midnight on the 1st or the 2nd depending on how you look at it. Let me tell you it is very misleading when your father tells you that you leave on the 2nd, but it turns out to be at 12am. I thought I had an extra day-which at the rate I am going it would be really helpful to have!!!
I have officially bought everything on my list, except sunscreen, and now have no idea how it will all fit into two suitcase, a backpack, and a carry on. My initial intention was to only bring one suitcase, oh how I like to dream. But I will finally use my parents hiking backpack that has been in our garage probably before I was born...it still has the tags on it. Sometimes it really does come in handy to have packrats for parents.
I went to Florida on the 19th for orientation and most of you I have yet to talk to about the very informative and very overwhelming two days. Here is a paragraph I wrote while on the airplane home:
So I am actually on the airplane as I write you. Orientation was very helpful and it got me really excited to go to Dar es Salaam, which is good since I leave in less than 2 weeks. I now plan to teach English to woodcarvers in a market in Tanzania, maybe help at an orphanage and go to village a hour outside of Dar to teach English…the possibilities just seem endless. On top of that a missionary couple organizes a ultimate Frisbee game weekly-can you believe that???? I dream of scuba diving in Malawi, traveling to Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, along with going close to Mozambique to Help the Clinton foundation with their HIV/AIDS inniative their- all of these things a student who went last semester did
We will all just have to see what is in store for me. I know that I will have an amazing time, but right now all I can think about is leaving my family, my dog and my friends for 7 months!!! I guess it it is wonderful that I have so many things to look forward to coming home to, but it is really hard to have to continue to say good-bye.
I was asked yesterday by a student, who went last year to the University of Dar, to help organize a small micro-finance group to help 4 woodcarvers( mentioned above about teaching english) start a small business. They have prepared a business plan and I will help them understand the terms of the loan, help with creating the budget and organizing the repayment. I am really excited about this for it is a way for me to truly help the people that will teach me so much over the next 7 months. If you have any experience with micro-finance or know anyone please give me all the advise you can think of. Two other undergraduates came up with the idea and I will help them implement the program since I am on the ground in Dar es Salaam, but none of us have any experience so we would appreciate any help!
I wish you all a joyous new year and hope your's is as adventurous I believe mine will be!
Love lots and please keep in touch with me over the next 7 months...I'm sure I will get home sick and any little news from home always is appreciated.
Mary
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