night safari, Maasai village, black mambas and more!

this is going to be super short, because my battery is about to die but im going to list a few highlights from the past couple days at Ndarakwai:
1. i havent showered in 5 days and everything i own is covered in fine red dirt. my hair is one giant dreadlock. its actually hilarious though because everyone looks like that as well.
2. we found a black mamba in camp two days ago. its the most poisonous snake in the ENTIRE world so that was kind of freaky but also kind of cool because it was in a water bottle so we could look at it up close. it was only a baby so they let it go far far away from camp.
3. i got to go on a night game drive the other night...SO amazing. I saw hyena, giraffe, water buck, impala, dik-dik, zebra, fox, bush babies, gazelle, and lots of bats.
4. we visited a maasai village yesterday and i got asked why i wasnt married because i had breasts. kind of awkward for our male translator to ask but it was funny. i cant wait for our homestay there. also i was super excited because they literally had a hundred baby goats wandering around that i kept picking up and playing with. our academic director gave us 5,000 shillings to spend (about $3.40) so i got some cool necklaces and bracelets.
5. we met the owner of Ndarakwai, Peter Jones, who gave us a lecture on conservation and his views on it etc. pretty cool cause i think hes a big deal here...he has Animal Planet come and he had Kate Moss in his camp last week....
6. after church at a nearby village we had this bbq type thing and got to sample all the local beer and Konyagi (basically african gin). the beer bottles are really cool they are all named after Mt. Kilimanjaro, Serengeti etc.

i obviously wish i could write a novel about the experiences i am having here but my computer is about to die...tonight is our last night at Ndarakwai and we leave at 9am to go to Arusha tomorrow!
oh my Kiswahili is coming along nicely as well. i can now introduce myself, ask where someone is from, etc. there are all these proper greetings for elders and stuff we had to learn about to.

ok, gotta go....Kwa herini!

Orientation at Ndarakwai Ranch

So for some insane reason i actually have internet! I'm literally in the middle of the african savanna but this guy who runs a ranch next to us has wireless, which we're pretty sure he gets from Kenya. we're about 30 miles south of the kenyan border, in northern Tanzania, at a place called ndarawkwai ranch. we have a fairly good view of mount kilimanjaro as well! ive only been here 2.5 days but i have already have the most amazing time so far. we landed at mt. kilimanjaro airport and were quickly loaded up on a big bus and taken 80 km on the bumpiest dirt road i have ever experienced. although 80km is only about 50 miles it took around 2.5 hours because we were going 5mph at most times :) we saw zebra on the way to camp, which was so cool because it was our first time seeing an animal here! once at camp we were fed a great spaghetti and leek soup dinner at 1am and all fell asleep after setting up our tents in the dark. well, i didnt really sleep, i woke up at 5am and just decided to get up and have some coffee. we have coffee and tea about 4 times a day here. the next day the goal was to "keep us all awake" because we were all suffering from 10 hour time changes. we had an amazing breakfast (fresh papaya, toast, eggs, juice...the food here is SO good, and the camp crew that cooks it all are local Tanzanians) and then went on a hike up a small mountain where we had an incredible view. we are really in the middle of nowhere..you cant see anything for miles. but on our walk we saw warthogs, zebra, elephants, and even giraffe way off in the distance! its amazing to think that its all just wild, we're not in a contained area. i got a million ticks but theyre small and dont have lyme disease so thats good. the rest of the day we discussed the different aspects of the program and went to bed at about 8pm, and i can happily say i slept right through until 6am, which i really needed. oh yeah, i also took a shower yesterday which was good. it lasted about 4 minutes and i probably still have shampoo in my hair but hey, its a shower.
today we had our first swahili lesson and learned all the proper greetings etc. tonight we have a night game drive where we drive out in big safari cars and see some more wildlife that only come out at night. tomorrow we're going to village to go to church and then have a sort of bbq type thing after. We have orientation unttil next Wednesday when we are bussed into Arusha and officially start Kiswahili class and our homestays!
ok i meant to write more but i just found out the guy whose internet we are stealing pays per megabyte through his phone so i feel bad so im gunna cut this short. i'll probably be able post next week!

AMSTERDAM

So i've made it to Amsterdam! I'm crazy sleep deprived but overall my flights went really smoothly. I think I've slept 7 hours in the past 48, so excuse my spelling/grammatical errors. I got up in Seattle at 3:30 am for my 6am flight to Houston, and then I had a layover there before I left for Amsterdam. AND somehow I managed to have an entire middle row of 3 seats to myself on my 9.5 hr flight to Amsterdam. It was awesome because it was practically like a bed.
I'm currently in Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, sitting in the Sheraton Hotel Cafe, because I can't check into my room yet. Its FINALLY hit me that tomorrow I'll be in Tanzania. It all of a sudden dawned on me when the plane was leaving Houston that I wasn't going to be back in the US until December, which is weird to think about! Right now I'm just so excited to meet up with most of my group tomorrow morning in Amsterdam. Then we have another 9 hour flight down to Tanzania, where we are picked up at Kilimanjaro airport to head to western Tanzania for a week of orientation activities.
Ok gotta go, my internet time is about to run out! I have no idea when I'll be able to post next, but I'm guessing it's going to be at least a week because our orientation involves a week of camping straightaway... :)
-Alex

Countdown...8 days!

 My lovely pack with tent and sleeping bag attached

So I have decided to make this blog after my sister Taylor made one for her year abroad in Argentina. My internet access will be VERY limited so I can't really guarantee that I will be updating that often, but when I get internet I will try to post!

I should also probably explain what I am doing in Tanzania this semester. I am studying abroad through a program called SIT, which is short for School of International Training. There are 24 of us in my program, and our central theme is Wildlife Conservation and Political Ecology. I will take 4 classes while I am abroad, one of which is Kiswahili. The program travels all around Tanzania, but we have 2 homestays: a 3.5 week stay with a family in a city, and a 4 day homestay in a Masaii village! When we are not in our homestays, we will either be camping or in guest houses/hostels in Arusha, the city we are based in. I plan on traveling afterwards in Zanzibar, which are the islands off of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. After that I plan on spending four nights in Amsterdam where I plan to meet up with a friend from home.

I cannot even believe that I leave for Tanzania in 8 days, on the 24th. This summer has gone by so incredibly fast, and I have been planning for this trip for so long that it amazes me that I am already in a single digit countdown. I've wanted to travel to Africa for as long as I can remember, and its finally happening.

I've slowly been packing over the last week, and while most kids going abroad are limited to two 50 pound suitcases, I am bringing a single backpacking pack!  Pretty hard when you have almost 4 months of clothes to fit in...plus a tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad! Besides packing, I am just trying to get as many hours in at my two jobs as I can before I leave. 

I'll post again when it gets closer to departure time!