Daladala's, Snakes, Alligators, & Camel Humps

Basecamp is awesome! Everyone is really nice & orientation week allows us to really get to know one another & the town of Arusha. We are living in a four bed room (2 bunk beds) with only one other women. She is in her early 50's and was in Arusha last year with volunteer abroad, so she is a good resource of what to do & where to go around the town.
The house is gorgeous, it is called the "White House" and has a great balcony across the front of the house. We also have a small balcony off of our bedroom which is quite nice for some extra light. There is a small lawn out front which is great to lay on & read a book, or write in the journal.
Neither of us has started our placements, we have been involved in orientation activities including: language training, tours of the town, museums, and markets. Today we went to a poor area that is actually just down the street from our house. We went with our language teacher and attempted to speak with the people there, with some success and many failures. The children were adorable and yell Mzungu Mzungu (which is a tourist, or white person, esencially us) to get our attention. The also were grabbing at our skin and holding our hands, really just adorable.
In the afternoon we went to a snake park which had a lot of poisonous snakes as well as constrictors and alligators. We got to hold a small alligator and a snake. Afterward we were given a tour of the Massai (a local tribe) museum and their traditions and way of living. After which, we took a camel ride to a Massai village. The camels were very cool until we almost fell off a couple of times on the way back from the village. Luckily we had each other to hold on to. When we got to the village we were surrounded by smiling children. It was amazing to see them but also quite sad as some of the children did not have pants to wear, and there were flies all around.
We are having an amazing time and are looking forward to the rest of this week and the activities planned for us. We are thinking we will have a different account for pictures as we can only upload one at a time on here and the internet is far too slow to do that.

- Leah