I'm here!

I made it into Kilimajaro airport on Tuesday night, after spending 8 hours on both my flight to Amsterdam and Tanzania. It was a long day, and a struggle to try and keep myself awake so that I would be tierd enough to sleep once we landed, but I haven't had any problems with jetlag.

We are staying at a place called TCDC (Training Center for Development Cooperation) in Arusha. The facility is amazing! I'm scared that we will all be in for a shock when we have to move to Dar es Salaam and into the dorms... Chris, being the only guy, has a single to himself as well as Shanea because we have an odd number of girls - the rest of us have paired off and are sharing rooms. My roommate, Liz is also a student at Olaf, starting her junior year. Each room is furnished with desks, a closet, two beds, two mosquito nets and a bathroom with a real, or rather Western, toilet(!). If you have ever dreamed of sleeping in a canopy bed, the mosquito nets here are pretty dang close. Liz and I have both decided it's like sleeping in your very own fort.

Our first day in arusha started with a lecture, introducing us to Tanzania. We break everyday at 10 for chai, an excellent tradition, and afterwhich we were troduced our new mode of transportation for the next two weeks... a 10 person van. The problem is that we have 10 students, 2 professors, and a guide. We have it worked out that Chris and the guide share the front seat, while the other 11 of us squish into the back which is esentially two benches along either side of the car. Some combinations of butts work better than others, but we haven't quite mastered the art of cramming inside yet, and inevitably one or two people have to spend the ride leaning forward into the middle of the van in order to accomodate all of our bodies.

We drove to a nearby lake where we got our first Kiswahili lesson (greetings, introductions, thank you's, etc.) and had lunch. After that we took a walking tour of Arusha, went to a food market, and then traveled to two other markets which had more crafts and clothing type items.

At the first market I was awakened to the fact that my name is very problematic. A guy approached Liz and me, and introduced himself saying "Jina langu ni Joseph" (my name is Joseph) and then extending his hand, asking me my name. So I relpied "Jina langu ni Siri" which I thought meant "My name is Siri", but actually translates to "My name is secret." Thankfully he laughed, thinking that I was joking with him. But even as he continued to walk and talk with us (he spoke some English) he kept randomly saying "siri ako". I would ask him what it meant, and he would just look at me, confused, and say "You don't know?" without ever answering me. After peicing more of the language together I realized a few days later that (he thought) I had denied telling him my name and he had been walking around shaking his head saying "your secret... your secret". Every family that we have met since then has remarked in disbelief "Siri?! Really? Siri?" Our guide has had a fun time teasing me about it and decided that when people at the Univeristy ask my name I should reply in disbelief "My name?! My name is secret!"