Tanzania

Heeelllloooo!!! well you'll all be glad to know that tom has now been reunited with his quitar so he s a very happy boy! It was broken but seems to have been fixed with the aid of some superglue - he's playing it a lot anyway!!

Just a correction from my last entry - 'so far Tanzania IS amazing!'

it's still really really hot but at night it is a nice temperature. Curently we are staying in a house in Arusha, tomorrow we go to the Massai village where we will be living in mud huts :-D

On monday night w went out to a club which was completely empty when we got there but the 12 of us had a great time - we got on the dance floor to dodgy 80's hits whilst everyone got incredibly drunk of Conyagi (a very very very strong drink) - Maa lessons the next morning with hangovers were 'interesting'!!

Last night (Tuesday) we all went out for a meal at a place called 'Massai Camp'. We were all sat on the floor on cushions drinking and eating pizza and chips before staying up until 3am playing cards!

For the last few days we have been learning Maa - the Massai language which is incredibly hard! Starting to get there though! Tonight is our last night in Arusha so we are having a barbeque outside which will be ace.

I've never eaten this healthily in my life!! Its porridge, fruit and toast for beakfast then pasta or a bean stew for lunch and tea or some kind of meat stew. One issue being.................

I WONT BE ABLE TO EAT MEAT FOR THE NEXT 8 WEEKS!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

when we go to camp we only eat rice and vegetables (usually beans) how am i going to cope!! I need KFC!!

Sorry mum for ringing you at 6am (i forgot that Tanzania is 3 hours ahead!!)

This is the last time i'm going to be able to write on here or e-mail for the next 8 weeks as there is no internet access at camp and we wont be back in town until just before we go to Zanzibar in March :-(

I hope to have a load of e-mails waiting for me when i next log on!

I will be able to send and recieve texts though as a Mast has been put up right near the village.... just a random phone mast in the middle of the African bush!! All of the Massai tribe live in mud huts and only eat rice etec but they ALL have mobile phones around their necks... it's really surreal! They are really poor and tradional but all have mobiles!

Anyway hope everyone is good, next time i log on here i will have some pictures for you :-)

Take care

miss you all

lots of love

Lou

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

hello from an internet cafe in Arusha, Tanzania!

We had an 'interesting' journey - the weather in Amsterdam was AWFUL so we were stuck on the plane for ages as it was too rough to land :-( so instead of the 3 hours we were supposed to have in amsterdam we had to run straight to the flight to Kilimanjiro which was 10 hours!

The food was great - we got unlimited free drinks (including alcohol), free icecream as well as 2 meals :-D

All of my bags arrived fine, tom's guitar didnt come neither did the rucksacks belonging to 2 of the girls. We've got to ring the airline later today to see if they have managed to trace them.

Tanzania is incredible so far, just so interesting and different as well as being BOILING!!

Anyway time to go because the internet is INCREDIBLY slow so its taken about 30 mins to write and save this!

hope everything is ok

miss you all

lou

(and tom says hi!)

xxxxxxxxx