We Made it to Africa

After very long flights across the globe and mind boggling time zone changes through out tuesday and wednesday, we made it to Dar es Salaam around 9:30pm Dar time. That would make it 1:30pm in the Central Standard time. The flights were not too bad, but got a little tiring from sitting in the same position for eight hours.

After staying at the Catholic guest house for the night, we took off from Dar this morning to make the three hour journey down to Morogoro. The ride was very interesting as the standards for driving are sketchy at best. A lot of risk taking was had by the other drivers around us, but our driver was very safe I will have you know :) . When we reached the seminary we split up into rooms and got unpacked. The rooms we are living in are great. Tim (my roommate) and I have two bedrooms, a living room and a bathroom. Steve has his own bed, bath and living room and Sara has her own two bedrooms living room and bathroom. It is nice that we don't have to share a bathroom with people and wait in lines and things.

On the way to Africa and even here at the seminary, we have run into people from Iowa...Iowans are everywhere and they all are connected to at least one of us in some way shape or form. On the plane from Amsterdam to Dar es Salaam we met a man whose daughter worked with Steve this past summer at Riverside Bible Camp. There are a bunch of little stories like that throughout our journey here.

We met a few of the teachers that will be leading our lessons of the next few months. It was nice to put faces with some of the people that we had heard about from friends that have come over May term. I can't until the lessons start and I can begin my journey in Swahili. It should be challenging but fun.

Tomorrow we head out to a Massai village with Pastor Hafermann. Then on Saturday we are going to a wedding, which I hear are quite the sight to see with so many people attending, and then finally on Sunday we are headed to yet another Massai village. This is all happening before we start our Swahili classes on Monday...so the four of us will be jumping into deep cultural emersion with only a few words we have picked up along the way. All of us are very excited and can't wait to go.

Until Later,
PHW