This weekend we began our safari to Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater. Our first stop on the three hour drive outside of Arusha was Lake Manyara National Park. The drive to the lake was through a pretty rural stretch of land. As we were driving, we passes Maasai villagers herding their cattle. We also passed a group of Maasai men dressed in complete black with white face painting. We asked our driver why their faces were painted white and they were dressed in black. It turns out that Maasai young [...]

Yesterday we had a free day at school, so we decided to go to Arusha and go shopping. It was the end of our second weekend in Tanzania and we all had mixed feelings about it. It seems like we have been here for so much longer because of all of the things we are doing and the experiences we are having. On the other hand, we looked forward to plan trips for the following weekends and realized we only have three weekends left to plan. We hope to go [...]

Well our first weekend at our homestay was quite interesting. On Saturday, we woke up around 8:00 am and had breakfast with the family. Unfortunately, both Kelsey and I started feeling sick on Saturday morning. We were able to go to the market at Tangeru with dada Lilian and dada Jacquelin by taking the minibuses. It was so crowded and I will never complain about a crowded campus connector again. When we got to the market, it was pretty hectic, everyone trying to pull us this way and that to [...]

              A large fig tree that was originally two trees, but had grown to form one tree over the road   Our Minnesota group + Steven our coordinator!    

Today we had our visit to St. Thomas hospital to visit our instructor Dr. Msuya and to see where he practices. St. Thomas hospital is a privately owned hospital in Arusha and they see approximately 80-100 patients a day. When we arrived to the hospital at 10:00 am, the waiting room was already packed full of patients waiting to see Dr. Msuya. He is an OB/GYN and serves a good majority of the pregnant women in Arusha. We were given a tour of the facilites by one of the workers [...]

Last night was our first night of home stays after spending three nights in TCDC. We were very nervous about meeting our host families at the college for tea and coffee before moving to the houses. My Baba (father) is James Tikai and he is the head of security at the college. He speaks English very well and is so nice and happy to have us here. My Mama is Evelyn but we can call her Mama Victor or Mama Eve. She does not speak much English but we seem [...]

So I’ve finally been able to write in my blog (Google cancelled my account because apparently trying to access my account in Tanzania is suspicious). Today is my second full day at MS-TCDC that is the college where we will be taking classes. The flights to Tanzania were pretty brutal, but they went by faster than I thought. We arrived in Tanzania at 8:30 p.m. their time and were driven to the college by our coordinator Steven Ndosi. On Monday we had our first day of orientation where we heard [...]

I can’t believe it’s less than 24 hours and I will be on a plane to Amsterdam. After a four hour layover in Amsterdam I will be on my way to Tanzania. People keep asking me if I am nervous about going, but to be honest I don’t even know what to expect. I’ve never even left the country, so I can’t imagine what it will be like to live in Tanzania. Thankfully I’ve gotten a lot of help from my coworkers that have either lived in or traveled to [...]