Free Time Means I Can Be Both a Student and a Tourist

(Wrote this post a couple of days ago but internet has been bad so enjoy now...)

Classes are getting into a bit of a more regular schedule now and all of mine have actually met now, but they are still starting slow and we have lots of free time. So last weekend I went to part of the group to town. After a fantastic lunch at this Chinese restaurant, we headed to the National Museum, which is now called the Museum and House of Culture Dar es Salaam.

We successfully found the museum next and paid our foreign student rate of Tsh 2,600 to get in. We first went upstairs for the room on the history of Tanzania. It was pretty good though definitely not the best museum I’ve ever been too. What they covered was interesting, lots of pre-colonial which was good, only a tiny corner on the slave trade and a big wall with photos and captions about Nyerere. We then headed down the stairs again and outside and into the biology hall. They had a not very exquisite-looking display of some amazing hominid skulls which was really cool and then a few interesting exhibit on some Tanzanian animals, including this marine mammal called a dugong, which I had never even heard of. The other side of the hall was the Ethnography part which different explanations of objects and practices from different Tanzanians tribes. That goal turned out to be a little industrious for such a small hall but some of the artifacts were interesting to look at as we fanned ourselves with our small brochures to try to keep cool in the sweltering hall.



We then left and went back to the street that was very-nicely lined with large trees (keeps the hot sun off) and went in the direction of the Botanical Gardens to see what they were like. Well, they were not very well kept up or large, but still kind of nice. We made the short loop around most of them, enjoying the couple of peacocks strutting around and taking some photos of some flowers.

This afternoon I am going to see a Tanzanian film showing at this free film festival which should be interesting and tomorrow probably going to head into town again. Last night we went out for dinner and had amazing Indian food for one of our group members, Sara's, birthday. So tring to do interesting things with all this free time.

My other big news is that I finally have a Tanzanian roommate! Her name is Mary and is studying political science. It looks like that it will work out well though she only moved in yesterday. Probably more on her later and once I have a solid week of regular classes I'll write about those, I promise.