It is harder than I thought it would be to communicate here but it hasn’t been as bad as a I thought it would be. Yesterday all of the networks in the internet cafes were down so I was unable to use it. Today the one by our house (I found out there is one!!!!) was not working. I haven’t walked to town yet from where my host family is staying so I decided that since I was a bit there I should see how long it takes. My teacher told me it was about 2 hours but it only ended up being 40 mins. However, It was in the hot sun and on dirt sidewalk. I am glad that I found this place and it is OPEN because we don’t really have that much time to come to town or do much other than training.

I am with an awesome group of 37 volunteers. Most of us are from the east and west coasts but there are a few of us from the Midwest (Kansas and Illinois). I am amazed at how similar all of us are. We are all science people obviously, but we also all seem to like to run, workout, journal, recycle, read, etc. The flight to Dar was a total of 22 hours but it went by really fast since the we rode on a new KLM plane that had this new video game like monitors that let you watch on demand movies, music games etc all for free. I don’t think they have that many of these planes since the Air France people were serving us too just for that one flight. It was a bit confusing about the days changing. When I got to Amsterdamn I was able to sleep for 3 hours in the chapel they have there. They also had leather lounge chairs to sleep on but they were full. It was funny because there were these muslims there vocally praying while we were sleeping. The Peace Corps has been very good to us in many respects. They gave us more than enough money to eat out in Georgetown (DC) and they pay for meals here and there. The PC loves to give us shots to protect us so I have gotten a lot of them lately. I lost count after 5 but I have gotten Yellow Fever and 2 Rabies. I am grateful that I have been in such good health these past two weeks! I didn’t have any of the “normal” travelers’ illnesses that I normally get when I travel and that has surprised me! I have been really careful about what kind of food I eat etc. The PC is also very concerned about our safety. We have to tell them everywhere we are going and if we travel etc. Know that I am safe and accounted for because they have an Emergency Action Plan. Basically if they find that we are missing they notify Washington and the family and then send the marines out to look for us. I feel like I have a parent again that is watching over me! I found out that one of the most famous PC volunteers is Bob Vila. He actually built houses in Panama. I also found out that the PC only uses 1% of the US Foreign service budget even though one of the popular generals of the military says that we should have more volunteers! There are also 20 countries that currently want us to serve there but we are unable since our man power is too low. I also learned that the PC will only place a volunteer in a place where only 2 or 3 other volunteers have served because the village quickly develops expectations for their incoming volunteers. If one volunteers builds a house or volleyball net then they want the next volunteer to do something better. This puts us volunteers in a tough spot.

I had a time stand still moment at the DC Dulles aiport when we were waiting to leave for Amsterdamn. They have all of the flags of the world hanging in the airport and they just so happened to have SPAIN’s right by our gate! It was a really awesome sign to me!

The training is really intense but the use all Tanzanian teachers (I will have to talk about them later…they are a blog entry in and of themselves!) and have a returned volunteer that trains with us to answer any questions we have.
For the first week of training we all stayed together in this really super nice NEW hasn’t even openend Catholic hostel. They were still adding the wall around it! Now we are all in our own host families. The hostel was only $10 a night all inclusive and the food that the nuns cooked was AMAZING! I haven’t had any dish other than ugali (which is this bread like stuff that isn’t supposed to have any taste) that I didn’t really like!

One time when a group of us volunteers were running in the early morning (6am) this little kid ran all the way across his yard to the road yelling how are you? How are you? The kids are always the ones that get super excited when they see white people or mznungos as they call us. Every where I go people stare and stare and stare some more. It used to really suck at first but I am now used to it. A few of them say mzungo but there has been a memorable amount of them that have welcomed us to their country or smiled when we walked by. White people are really rare here especially in a town the size of 200,000. One time we went to the market as a group and this lady said what is going on with all these white people here today. My teachers normally translate what the people tell us when we are walking but like I said so much of it has been positive.