First few days...

Finally made it to Tanzania!...32 hours later but at least made it in one piece. As per the way things were going had to endure yet one more plane change in Nairobi but at least the flight was on time! Landed at the Dar Es Salaam airport by 9:30 but traffic was pretty heavy so did not make it to the hotel until after lunch. Met all my team mates for the first time which was pretty neat after 3 months of weekly calls....it was easy to figure out who was who based on the voices.

We decided to trek back into the city centre as a group to figure out currency exchange and cell phones. We each have a cell phone for local calls which is helpful. We also went to the local Shoprite for water and discovered a heathly sampling of South African wine....figured things were about to start getting better by the minute!

It is strange getting used to the TZ schillings....the exchange rate is 1330 Tz schillings for every dollar...for $300USD I received 399,000....2 large bottles of water and 1 750ml of wine was about 29000.

It was extremely hot and humid in Dar - felt like about 35degrees

We stayed at the Mediterraneo Hotel just outside of Dar and on the Ocean and had a great dinner followed by the monthly party the hotel hosts (this went on til 6am!) Unfortunately we had to be on the bus by 8:30am so many of us went to bed much earlier than that (of course I slept in due to jet lag...but made it on the bus in the nick of time)...it was a very very long bus ride but very scenic and the bus was air conditioned.

We did not arrive in Dodoma until 6pm and hadto rush off to a dinner at 7pm with the University Deans. It was a formal dinner and we were required to wear our suits...although we were told it would be fairly casual from here on in.

Attaching a couple of pictures taken from Precision Air Flight from Nairobi to Dar....can you guess which Mountain this is?