While many of you celebrated Native American Day this week, we also had a holiday here! Nyerere's Death Day. that sounds morbid, but it was a holiday yesterday on Tuesday to commenerate the day that Tanzania's first president Julius Nyerere died. We celebrated by going to our South African friends' house Monday night and cooking up a feast. It was a big deal because we haven't had access to a kitchen since we arrived! We all cooked something and I did milk shakes which were horrible b/c the milk in Tanzania so sour and lumpy. Not so good. But Anna made a great chicken cassarole and jello so I felt like I was at home at a church potluck. Gerard being

from right outside New York made a posh, fancy pasta called pasta a la vodka or something like that. It was penne pasta with

fresh tomato sauce cooked in vodka. It was very tasty! We also had a

huge salad and garlic bread. yum! Anna and I spent the night and we

watched three movies and played chess until 3:30am. Then we slept in and

spent the rest of tuesday at the beach catching up on sleep and sun.

Also, I cut my hair! It's so short. I think the shortest it's ever been.

I had to cut it real short because of all the wax in my hair from the

dreads. Anna affectionately called in the Holocaust survivor look. I

prefer the swimmer's look. Anyways, it is so blonde when I cut it short.

I hope it grows back! Today only two classes.



The big news in town is that a movie theatre is opening today! The first in Dar. Supposedly it

is going to get all the latest movies so we are hoping that we will be

able to see the long await Lord of the Rings and Matrix movies. The best

part is it is only a 15 minute dala ride away. I'm so excited, I've been missing movies so much here!



The other news is that the daladala bus service, (ie- cramming as many people as you can in a fast movie minibus that ignores traffic laws), is going to be replaced

starting in december with an actual city bus service. The minister of

transportation said they hope to only have daladalas on minor roads by

2005. Kind of sad, but probably good for the city considering the big

growth and crowdedness.



That's the latest from Dar. It's getting hotter as the days pass and I think I have a permanent farmer's tan...or should I say shamba tan. Now, I'm off to research on democracy in Zambia. Fun stuff!