Tanzania Week One in Photos

Hello Everyone!
It's high time I share with you all the photos from my trip to Tanzania. I mean, I promised pictures, so it's high time I followed through! I'm going to take you on a picture tour week by week to try to give you a glimpse of what I did. I hope to publish two posts every week (Monday and Friday, ideally), but we'll see. I'm back in school (starting Senior Year!) and I may just run out of time.

Tanzania Travel Journal Week One

Week one of my Overseas Adventure was actually spent in Minneapolis for three days of training. I flew out there from home Monday, June 11.

Flying into Minneapolis 

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were spent in training. We went over information for travel, how to deal with conflict, culture shock, the gospel, and more.

My Team!

We tried to see a Incredibles 2 on opening night at the Mall of America, but by the time we got there, the tickets had sold out. Sad times. :(

Tuesday's "Big Event" was going to the park in the evening. We ended up playing a giant game of frisbee with some of the local Minneapolis kids. 

Enjoying Ice Cream at the Park :)

On Wednesday, we talked about culture shock. Let me just say here that the program I went with did a fantastic job with training. Going into a new culture, I felt very well prepared. My emotions encountering the new experiences didn't catch me off guard. Sure, things were tough. But I felt prepared for it. Anyway, enough about that. Maybe I'll write a different post about culture shock...

On Thursday, we went on a prayer walk and did an activity I'll explain in a moment. 

 Jesus, please advance your kingdom
in this city. Amen

The other activity we did looked like a normal egg drop activity. We had to create a contraption to protect our egg...except the instructions said eggs (plural). The REAL goal of the game (that NONE of us caught on to) was for all the teams to work together to save ALL the eggs. Although my team's egg survived, we really failed, because we didn't work together.

This was more than a team building exercise. It was a lesson on how every member of the body is important and we all have different talents and strengths. We have to work together in order to work at all. 

Building our contraption

All the teams

Let it drop!

Yay! Ours survived the drop!

On Friday, we flew out of Minneapolis on a long flight to Tanzania. First stop, New Jersey.

Out the window coming into New Jersey

After New Jersey, we flew to Zurich, Switzerland.

Some time to see the stunning scenery
from the airport observation deck.

 

Our final stop was an hour sitting on the runway in Nairobi, Kenya. No pictures of this one since we didn't even get off the plane. And it was night. And I was in the middle aisle of seats. No windows nearby. 

Finally, Saturday evening local time, we landed in Tanzania. One final picture (although I took it during week 2):

Our final destination!

That was week one! So far I'd been through 6 airports and on 3 continents. I'd spent a total of over 21 hours in the air. Fun times! :)