Day one. Out of order.

Day 1 at CCS. Happy to be here--everything's nicer than I expected. Missing home still. Two days ago, we got on a plane bound for ethiopia and now, we're here and it seems surreal.  We transferred to Dar es Salaam, and got into the airport at 1:20pm. We emerged from baggage claim and customs, overjoyed to be on solid ground and out of small, confined places. We took an airport taxi, marked by a green stripe on the side of the white car. When we got to the hotel, after driving by streets of one stories open aired concrete shops, we were slightly underwhelmed. Our room had air-conditioning and a tv that worked sporadically with a high content of static, but our toilet would only flush on occasion, and our beds didn't have blankets. We were told that the Scandinavia Bus Company, the line that was referenced to be the best, was in fact, no longer in existence. So we took another taxi, with a man who would prove to be instrumental in getting us to TZ, and  went to an outdoor stable, where in each stall, people were crowded in fighting over pricesin order to get a seat booked for the following day. We were charged 55000 shillings each, roughly equivalent to 40 USd, and because we dint have enough Tanzanian money, I gave the man a US twenty. So all told, after I did the calculation, and told our stunned driver, we paid 136600--FAR than it should have been. So our driver turned around, he seemed collected but angry, and helped me to get most of the over hares fee back. Sixty thousand was returned to us, and we had our ticket fir the following day. We were told to be prompt at six thirty the next morning, and the bus would leave at seven. That night, neither Lydie nor I could sleep, so we got up at two in the morn gin, and got an hour of Internet, wrote to our moms about what was going on, and packed our things and waited for five-fourth five to come so we could check out of our hotel and leave for the bus station. We got to the station at six fifteen, and the bus didn't leave until 9. The same four songs played the entire twelve hours that we were on the bus. The first, a pop song about, we think, a guy who cheats on his girlfriend and wishes he could doe it all again, because she gets hit by a car and dies. So in the end, he asks for her hand in marriage and then they go upstairs to the bedroom, we presume. The second, and by far, the worst of the songs, was twenty mintues long, and utterly abrasive to the ears. The woman singing had no appeal (there were videos playing to go along with the songs) and she had a shrill voice, which lacked the ability to hit and sustain notes. The third was a part of a poorly made soap opera, and the fourth, a man singing while women in tracksuits and bad makeup belly danced in the Vermont fall. We got to the airport at six thirty and proceeded to walk from the main road, to the airport, which we were told was only three kilometers from the stop. Instead, we found out that it was seven, but luckily, a group of guys in a white van picked us up and dropped us at the airport, where we met with CCS volunteers who then contacted the drivers. We waited for another group to come for three hour s, then made our way to home base.