Just an update

Well, I don't have to much new. Zanzibar has been great. It is so hot and humid. Over 30 degrees everyday. Except for today it rained, our one free day to go to the beach. It is really easy to get lost here in stone town, the buildings are so high and you can't see where the sun is to tell what direction you are going. so every time i've gone out walking i've gotten lost. The people here are nice and helpful though and tell us which way to go. We've done a bit of shopping but mostly have been catching up on school work. We have quite a few assignments due coming up so we've all be working on that. But overall, things are going good! I can't believe we only have 9 days left here!

Zanzibar

We had to wake up at 500 this morning to leave by 6 and catch the ferry over to Zanzibar. The ferry was 2 hours long. It is really nice here, some people say it looks like spain, but i don't know what that's like so i guess i'll have to go find out :) We are in a place called stone town, the buildings are really cool, the doors are really neat too. Our hotel is really nice, we are right on the ocean. Sarah and I went for a long walk today in the opposite direction than what we thought we were going, so we wound up in basically a different town, off the map that i had. We took a rest in the park and a guy came up to us and was telling us about his studies, he studies languages because it opens up so many opportunities and he's met some really nice people through knowing other languages. So we chatted with him for about an hour and then he showed us the way back to our place. There is a really nice room up in the sun facing the ocean that we can read and do our school work in so that's what we are doing now. We will be here for the rest of the trip, 14 days. :)

Dar Es Salaam

We are in Dar es salaam right now, it is the big city here. We went to the bbq place that we had went to on our first night here again. It was just as good, ordered waaaay to much but it is sooo good. I think i have a picture of it it i'll put up when i can. We have an awesome hotel here but it is so expensive to do laundry so i have a bit bag of dirty clothes :( We have 2 more nights here. We went shopping at the markets today, it is really good. i need to go again because i ran out of money! We leave to zanzibar on the ferry in 2 days. It will be so nice there. anyway better go!!

welcome to africa....

well, where to begin. This is my first internet access for more than 3 minutes since we got here, almost a week and a half ago. So much has happened.

First of all, the flights were terrible. When we got to Nairobi (kenya) they would only let half of us on the plane and said there wasn't enough room for the other 10 of us and that we were to go on this other plane. So we did, but it had already left. 8 hours later Aliyah had to yell at the people to get us on the next flight and we almost missed that, had to run across the tarmac to make the flight, so obviously when we got to Dar es Salaam our bags didn't. Half of the other groups bags didn't make it to Mwanza either. So we were supposed to get on a flight at 6pm but they gave 10 out of 11 of us boarding passes then said there wasn't enough room! Soooo, after another 6 hours of yelling at them, we forced them to put us on the flight at 6 the next morning, we got our tickets and got out of there. It had now been around 45 hours of flights/transit.

For that night we went to this awesome street side bbq where only locals go. It was awesome. We asked Aliyah what area of the city it was and she said 'the hood'. awesome. a big shock for a lot of people who hadn't been out side of canada. There was a big group of us so it wasn't dangerous or anything. plus we had a guy with a gun gaurding our money and everything that was in the van. Then we went to the hotel for a shower and slept for a few hours, got up at 3am and went to the airport. There all of our bags had arrived and we got on the plane to Mwanza and everything was fine.

Mwanza was really nice, we stayed there for 3 days, it is quite a prosperous city for Africa because of the fishing industry so everyone is in nice clothes and everything. we didn't do a whole lot there, walked around a bit, went to this dance show thing, and just tried to get used to the time change.

Then we went on on Safari. It was really fun, some people weren't to into the camping thing but it was fun i thought. We saw a ton of animals, the big 5 (Rhino, Elephant, leopard, buffalo, lion) We saw 22 lions, one was right beside the road, i have some good pictures. A leopard is really rare to see and we saw 3 of them. we saw cheetahs, a million zebras and wildabeasts, hippos, warthogs (pumbas! :)) and so many more things i can't remember them all. We almost got eaten by lions for the first 2 nights. They kept coming into our campsite. Once Tayler and I got up to go to the bathroom at about 10:50 and when i was waiting for her i heard soemthing big move in the tree so i didn't say anything but we just went back and then 10 minutes later the safari guys were like simba simba (lion in swahili) and right befoe that i had heard them sniffing by my tent right outside the door and we heard them make their lion noises right outside. Then the guys had to get in their trucks and chase them away. Pretty much the same thing happened the second night too. Theeeeen the 3rd night... basically to put it shortly, i fell in the sewer. i was walking in the dark back to my tent and fell in the sewer. disgusting. i got over it quickly, i'm glad it was me not one of the other girls because i don't think some of them would have handeled it to well. I thought it was funny.

We went to see a maasai village where they have kept the old culture ways, i won't got into explaining those, but they are in the middle of no where living in mud huts made out of cow poop. quite unfortunate, espeically for the women, they don't get treated very well. And we saw the crater (8th wonder of the world), it was pretty amazing, pictures don't do justice. We had an awesome guide, his name was joeseph, he was so funny and smart!

We just got to our hotel now, it is soooo nice, bath tub and real shower. sit toilet. internet. back to civilization! I should be able to write more often, we are in cities from now on. The school work isn't too heavy, Aliyah is pretty cool about most things, she's here for fun not all school which is good for us!!

Anyway, this is enough for now!

Are we there yet?

Yikes, i did not know what i was in for with these flights! 9 hours to london, 8 hour wait, 9 hours to Nairobe (??), 2 hour wait, 2 hours to Dar, and i'm not sure how long to Mwanza! 4 flights! as if my bags are going to make it! They better though.

Right now I am in London, nearing the end of the wait. Had an amazing sleep on the chairs here, woke up and could not for the life of me figure out where i was. Once i got that sorted out I decided to go on the internet... well i accidently paid for 50 minutes... i don't even want to know how much that cost me!

The flight was good on the way over here, watched Dear John (not a good idea), slept quite a bit, had some good food. I am going to be jet legged majorly, I can't decide weather i want to be awake or sleep.

Anyway, I'm just excited to get there!!!! I hate all these flights!!