The traveling started in November when I made a surprise trip back to the states. I had been trying to convince my parents to come over here since I left and at the last minute I decided coming home for a surprise visit would be much more fun and a great reward for lasting 6 months in the village. It was so much fun to get to go home and surprise all my family members, it was also great to be home for Thanksgiving and my birthday. I was happy i got to see a lot of my friends and go to Little Rock for the Hogs game.
After about a month at home I left the States and headed back to Africa to meet up with two other volunteers and travel through Kenya and Tanzania. I flew into Nairobi and was immediately impressed with the place. It was so different from Dar, there was actual infrastructure and tall buildings, and all the people spoke English which was really nice. Everyone had told me before hand that you have to be careful in Nairobi because they call it nairobbery, but honestly i never felt unsafe there, and i really didn't even eel like i was back in Africa yet.
This all changed on the bus from Nairobi to Mombasa. At this point int he trip our group had grown to 4 people. Three of us, Lauren, Bree and myself all are volunteers for WorldTeach and the fourth member was Bree's boyfriend Rob who works for an NGO in the DRC. On this bus ride Lauren and I of course got the seat that did not have a window that opened and quickly began to sweat profusely, and look like an all around hot mess for the next 6 hours. Mombasa I will say this has some of the WORST traffic I have ever encountered. We literally sat in the same place on the road for an hour in the humid African summer heat. When we finally got to our hostel it was a really cool place. It was an old mansion that they had converted into a hostel so it had a pool and great place to get food and drinks. The only down side was that it was so far from town.
After spending a day lounging we finally decided to get out and see Mombasa and all it had to offer. We walked around Old Town which was pretty nice and then went to visit Fort Jesus, an old fort built by the Arabs and controlled by the Portuguese at various points. After hanging out at the beach and hostel for three days we made our way back into Tanzania and into Tanga. Tanga is the northern region in Tanzania and is on the coast. We spent one night there and went to the beach yet again before moving into the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. We visited Moshi and Arusha and went up to the starting point of the climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro and also visited some beautiful waterfalls in the area. After that we went and visited another volunteer, Lauren's roommate Allison at an orphanage she had volunteered with and meet some amazingly cute kids, it was a great afternoon.
After almost two weeks of traveling we made it down to Dar to board the ferry for Zanzibar where we spent Christmas and New Years but those are deserving of their own post.
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