Hello from Hannah and Kayla!

Hannah and Kayla here, writing for Ben (who's crippled arm makes typing difficult)! We are at the computer lab at the trade school in Hanga, and this it the first time we have gotten a chance to use the internet! We have had a blast the last couple of days since arriving in Dar es Salaam. We went to a beautiful beach on the Indian Ocean, and made friends with locals at the guesthouse in Dar. Yesterday we traveled from Dar to Hanga, which we expected to take about 12 hours (Thanks, Ben) but with a few stops and delays ended up lasting 17 hours. Thank goodness our driver Good-Luck is a champion and got us to Hanga before midnight! The drive was pretty thrilling, because we drove through a national park and saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, baboons, and gazelles. The views we saw while driving through a very mountainous region were spectacular! Since arriving in Hanga we have gotten to explore the town thoroughly. It is bigger than most of us expected, and the spiders are bigger than you can imagine (and rampant). We went to the St. Laurent's primary school, and it was awesome to see the kids. They were all extremely excited to see us, and extra excited to see Ben! They flocked around us, they were interested in everything from our email addresses to our shoes (Kayla's weird feet shoes to be specific) and loved to talk to us in English! We toured both the Dispensary (which is a medical clinic) and the Monastery, which included a large farm with cows, pigs, chickens, sugar cane plants, avacado trees, banana trees, and orange trees. We have been eating the banana's which are delicious, and got to try eating the sugar cane raw, which was super sweet. We have also been trying to learn as much Swahili as possible from the locals. We are fluent in hello (mambo), how are you (habari), thank-you very much (asante sana), water (maji), and banana (ndizi). The food has been better than expected so far, with meals consisting of potatoes, rice, beans, collared greens, some sort of meat, and bananas. Tonight we had egg drop soup, and papaya for dessert! Tomorrow we should be able to spend more time with the kids at the school, or at the dispensary. Hopefully we will be able to update the blog more often, but until then kwa heri (goodbye)!