Welcome!

Well, this is my 'Tanzania blog', welcome! I thought that it might be easier to keep a lot of people regularly updated using this blog rather than sending out e-mails. At this point I am not sure how often I will be able to get online while I am in Tanzania, but I hope to update at least every other week. Just to let you know, I am not a great writer, but I will try to make this as interesting and informative as I can (and maybe put jokes at the end or something).





I want to quickly thank everyone who is praying for me and my upcoming trip as well as those who are helping financially to send me far away for six months. I appreciate every bit of it.





In 38 days I will be flying out of St. Louis with my friend Claire. We will fly from St. Louis to Detroit, Detroit to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Nairobi (Kenya), and then into Tanzania. Claire is an amazing friend who I know from my two summers working at Camp Lakewood as well as from my time at Mizzou. She is going to be working in the same town as me (Moshi) but we are going with separate organizations and will not be living in the same volunteer house. If anyone has jet-lag-curing advice for us, feel free to share it; we will be en route for around 20 hours! Moshi is a small town in the north-eastern part of the country with a population of around 144,000 people. It sits at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro and is the start-off point for treks up the mountain.

Fun Fact: Every year Moshi is host to the 'Kilimanjaro Marathon'. I will not be old enough to run the full marathon, but if my schedule permits it I would love to run the half! http://www.kilimanjaromarathon.com/

Hakuna Matata, Abby