Arriving in Tanzania

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We arrived in Tanzania tonight. Staying in the city of Arusha, tomorrow going to our village, Meteves, which is close by. Got picked up at the airport by managers of our program, a few UCLA kids, taken to the hostel where we will spend our weekends. During the week we'll stay with our homestay families, and come into town on weekends to have a break, relax a little, take a shower with running water, and use the internet. They drive on the wrong side of the road, and they probably have no traffic laws because they drive crazy! But it's slow enough that if there was ever a problem, they could stop. We met up with the other volunteers when we arrived at the hostel, and exchanged our money into "Shilingi." 1450TZ = $1. It's fun having bills with 10,000 written on them! For lunch I had an avocado salad. It was an avocado sliced in half, the pit taken out, and filled with diced tomato, onion, and cilantro into a little salsa. So good! We also went to an outdoor market down the block. Each little space sold different fabrics or foods. Each of us got a skirt made. (Becaue everyone is very Catholic and conservative, women have to make sure to cover there knees at all times with long skirts, as well as their shoulders.) Also, the women all have very short hair, the same length as a mans. I found this is because the government restricts females from having longer hair when attending school. After the age of 15 or so, women can choose to grow it out if they so choose, but few of them do.

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Photos

Fabric for our skirts
Where we picked out fabrics and had our skirts made