First Impressions

First impressions are good! DC the morning we left was incredibly hectic--I realized the night before that I had packed my glasses into the boxes that we weren't going to see for another three months. I could probably get glasses here, but the idea of spending the flights with my contacts in the whole time sounded miserable, so I spent the morning at Lenscrafters getting new glasses, which made it really hard to get the apartment cleaned up and be all packed up and ready to leave. At the airport, a United agent looked at the rabbit crate for 30 seconds (which we spent a lot of time researching the requirements for), said it was unsuitable, and walked away. We then waited in line for about 20 more minutes freaking out until someone else came over and judged everything ok and checked us in. We then had to take the rabbits out of the crate and hold them for about 5 minutes while the x-rayed the crate. Orion was alright, but Gillig tried to jump out a few times. I had terrible visions of him darting across the busy Dulles terminal never to be seen again, though Brad pointed out later that the floor was slick so he wouldn't have gotten very far.


Our flights over were exhausting, but everything was on schedule and even a few minutes early. The scenery was absolutely amazing flying in. We flew over Switzerland which was lush and green with lots of farms. Leaving Zurich we flew west over Austria and then turned south to cross the Alps where we saw lots of glaciers and quaint Alpine towns (well, they seemed quaint from 30,000 feet). We then flew over the Sahara which was spectacular to look down on the sand (you could even make out what must have been giant dunes!) juxtaposed against the Mediterranean. Really majestic.

We arrived last night in the dark so couldn't see much of Dar es Salaam. The hotel we're staying in is alright. It's kind of confining and annoying since we'd really like to just unpack and spread out, but it's comfortable with a/c, satellite TV and internet, so we can't complain too much. We got to visit our house, which is still being finished. We have lots of room, a kitchen that's about the size of our previous Manhattan apartments, a laundry room, patio, and backyard. They had the furniture in place, so we also got a look at that. We have way more closets and beds than necessary, and there are a couple of really ugly chairs, so we're hoping to remove some of that. They've told us we can move in on Tuesday, so we are hoping to spend as little time as possible in the hotel apartment until then which shouldn't be too hard. I think we've decided the house is 5 to 6 times larger than anything else we've lived in together.

We walked around a bit this evening to a shopping area near our hotel. There were lots of small shops where you could get food, meat, household items, produce, etc. I was surprised how little people seemed to notice us. They might look at us for a couple extra seconds, but they didn't seem to interested in us, which is a definitely contrast to the time I've spent in the Middle East. The weather is cooler than I expected. It's winter here, but I still thought it would be hot, but it's pleasantly warm with a breeze. I've heard this is as cool as it gets, but I'm relieved to know there is nice weather at least part of the year. We've only seen a couple mosquitoes. I'm typing this outside at dusk and they've only just started to come out as it's becoming night, so I'm also relieved that we can go outside at least part of the time without being eaten alive. We have some electric zappers that Brad is pretty excited to use.

-MG