I am writing this is Word as I have no internet connection at this stage. Will copy and paste it into the Blog when I do-hopefully it's just matter of putting in the St Jude's password and all will be good. The flight was long but not nearly as difficult as I thought-lots of people doing long haul flights to all over the place. Emirates is a very comfortable airline to travel on- a choice of over 200 movies and heaps of entertainment. I think I watched 5 movies between Christchurch and Dubai. The stops at Sydney and Bangkok were just long enough to get off the plane and stretch your legs, Dubai was longer but like Singapore it is a huge Duty Free shopping area so the 4 hours went quite quickly-not that I bought anything as their main specialties are gold, chocolates and perfume-none seemed appropriate to bring here! Obviously the Africans go there and buy up large! I saw one family with all their stuff spread out over the floor of the airport trying to fit an amazing amount of duty free stuff into their bags. Nairobi was interesting and although I thought I had heaps of time had not allowed for how long everything took. I ended up paying $20US for a transit visa that I probably didn't need! Then the flight to Kilimanjaro took off early.

I arrived an hour earlier than I had said and the processing there was quick. The people were nice though although convinced that I had made a mistake and really wanted to go to a hotel in Arusha. . Jess soon arrived -and John the driver and his beautifully satin attired wife (she works as security guard here) put all my bags in the back of the king cab and we began our hour long journey back to the school. It was night time and I had forgotten how ill lit these third world countries are-everyone is out walking and it is a real art to make sure you don't hit them. John drove well and I think at this stage the traffic is better behaved than in Indonesia. We wove through little villages with poorly lit dirt floored huts. The road was generally good but at the end he took a "short cut" and that was very bumpy-I'll be interested to see what happens to those dirt roads in the wet season, We arrived at the school and I was taken straight to my "room"-well actually it's 3 rooms a little living room /lounge with some very ugly furniture in it. But actually quite comfortable, a bedroom with a comfortable double bed and an en suite bathroom. The bathroom feels very third world but everything works-the water comes out of the showerhead at the back only which makes washing a bit tricky. It's basic but I reckon I can make it look ok if we're allowed to add our own touches to it. You'll laugh because everything is blue-not my favourite colour but I have lived with it before-my house in Palembang was mainly blue and I managed to make that quite beautiful. I had a shower and went straight to bed. The temperature was just right and I had a great sleep! There doesn't seem to be too much danger with mosquitoes here on campus and I slept without the net. I've woken up feeling quite good. The sounds are very like those in Indonesia-frogs, birds and maybe monkeys but with the addition of lots of dogs barking and cows mooing. At 6am the church bells rang out-better than the 4am mosques in Indonesia.

I snuck down to the kitty kitchen and grabbed a cup of coffee-it is a good set up with everything you need-I was a bit dubious about having anything else as I probably need to pay some money to someone. All in all it looks good and sooo much better than landing as a volunteer in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around. I can hear people chatting outside but will probably wait until Jess comes before I venture out again.