Made it to Dodoma!

After a 8 hour bus ride with no air conditioning, and driving through what looked like the desert, Sean and I finally made it to Dodoma. Marty, our Jesuit "boss," picked us up and drove us to our new home. It is so so nice, especially compared to the volunteer house in Dar Es Salaam. It is an old convent or something, so it is spacious and clean (minus intense amounts of dust - this place is very dusty), and has running water. I feel very very blessed.

After dropping off our stuff, Marty took us to meet the other Jesuits for dinner - we went to a pizza place. Dodoma might not be so bad after all :) But actually, we probably won't frequent places like that considering they are usually pretty pricey, at least for our stipend.

The weather here is perfect. Yes, it is still extremely hot but unlike Dar, it is a very dry heat so any shade makes the temperature drop immensely. The night was actually a bit cool. So again, I feel so blessed to not be in Dar.

I haven't seen too much of Dodoma, but today we took a 4 minute drive to the Jesuit residence where we can use their internet. Marty showed us around. The Jesuits have a pretty big TV, surprisingly - they love to watch "football" (aka, soccer). The church is absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to start attending. We attended Mass in Dar this week and I loved it. The music is outrageaous! SO beautiful and exciting. Unfortunately, there is only Kiswahili Masses, so hopefully I will pick it up soon!

Speaking of language, the school is going to be delayed a little in opening. The construction apparently is still not done (we're visiting the school later today). Marty said that he has one teacher whose contract is to start soon, so instead of teaching at the school, Marty has arranged for him to tutor us! This is fantastic news because most JVs get minimal language training. I am hoping this will be a good opportunity for me to learn a lot and get a good start. I think also in a few days will begin a tutoring session for students going to secondary schools in the area who need extra help with their English. This is what Sean and I will be doing until the school opens.

So the internet is not so good here. Marty says the Jesuits have a limited amount of time alloted for internet each month, but he is allowing us to use it as much as we need for the first few weeks. But after that, we may have to find another arraignment. There are internet cafes in town, so maybe I'll be able to find one of those.  So we will all just have to wait and see how this internet thing turns out. But for now, emails will work fine, but Skype calls may take some figuring out.