140 days

The wait for my trip to Tanzania is half way over. It's close enough now that I need to start actually DOING things to get ready as opposed to just talk and think about what needs to be done.

I'm regularly tracking the costs of the flights. I realize I'm probably not going to see a significant drop in the airfare but I do want to be on alert in case there is a significant increase.

One of the reasons I have been so excited about this trip is the challenge of doing something totally on my own. It appears that a likely first test will be a very short layover in Amsterdam - a place I, of course, have never been. Assuming all goes well with that transfer, I'll arrive the night before I'm scheduled to meet someone in the former Tanzania capital. That means I'll either have to walk around the Dar es Salaam airport for 10 hours while trying not to look suspicious (not even sure that is possible) or trying to find transportation to a hotel.

I'm going to try to go in next Monday for shots and then perhaps begin the slow accumulation of the insane amount of supplies I'll need and start to think about how I'm going to fit it all in two bags.

Lynsi, the fantastic person that has been helping me from Global Volunteers sent me the link to a set of pictures from a previous team. It's certainly enough to make me think these next 140 days will pass by very slowly.