Okay, it's official. My ocean swimming cherry has definitely been popped. And how weird that as an American my first taste of ocean water was in the Indian Ocean?..............which was really warm by the way.........I mean not like pee warm, but pretty warm. I wouldn't know from experience, but I've heard that the Pacific is a tid bit niply (maybe we should ask Nathan? hehe). But anywho, after our trip to Bagamoyo yesterday (which is roughly an hour north of Dar), I can now safely say that I have both swam in an ocean AND eaten Tanzanian pizza.......not at the same time though........posssibly something to pursue before the semester is up however. Due to the fact that coastal Tanzania (and Eastern Africa in general) has such a rich Arabic influence and history, the purpose of our safari was to check out some ancient Arabic ruins (over 600 years old) at these Nationally protected sights in Bagamoyo, some of the oldest left in Africa. For example, we saw the remains and existing structure of a 12th Century Mosque and adjacent burial grounds. Short history lesson: Zanzibar was and is still the largest cloves exporter in the world. As a result of all of these cloves needing to be harvested and sold, the Arabians, who had settled in large numbers on Zanzibar and coast towns like Bagamoyo after having wiped out the Portuguese, decided it was a "good idea" to get themselves some slaves. Slave traders would trek their way inland, find themselves a nice village to ransack, and would then force their now endentured servents to help them in slaughtering a couple elephants. After the hunt, they would then shackle and chain the men together while having them carry the elephant tusks (the carcas would probably be left unused in the jungle because of its weight......or maybe they'd just make the Africans carry the carcas?) and would march them hundreds of miles back to the coast. Many would become sick, more would die, but the ones who survived were obviously the strongest and would sell for the most money. But yeah, these Arabian traders (and later on German colonists) did pretty well, considering that in one big swoop they were able to sell ivory and slaves without any cost, other than time, to themselves. Towns like Bagamoyo and Dar grew fairly rapidly and were later popular areas for German and British occupancy. Another historically cool thing about Bagamoyo, Dr. David Livingston, the famous English missionary who devoted his life to anti-slavery campaigns all over Eastern Africa, was brought to Bagamoyo after he died during his last excursion so that his body could be viewed for 24 hours by the people who he was supposedly helping before it was taken back to England. Bagamoyo also has a Fine Arts Institution where Tanzania's most talented professional performers hone and perfect their skills. We didn't get a chance to visit or see it, but I think you can take a week long lesson/class in practically any area of fine arts for like $75, and Thomas has said that it's only a 1000 shilingi to take the Dala Dala from Dar to Bagamoyo. Anyway, aside from the historical stuff we also had a chance to go to this cool little beach, which became really full of primary and secondary school students once school was out for the day. We ate pizza (which I was double fisting at one point) for dinner and then came back to the dorms for a quiet rest of the night.................we were suppose to go dancing at this local club that had a live band last night, but things didn't work out and our evening escort, Thomas, had to pick up some more International students from the airport...........which also means I no longer have a room to myself. My new roommate's name is Nate/Nathan and he's from a small Christian college in San Diego. He's no John, but he seems pretty cool. He'll only be my roommate for a couple more weeks though, and then we'll both be getting Tanzanian roommates at the start of school. As for today, after sleeping in until 9:30 and having myself some ndizati (chapati and ndizi), I opted for a 1500 shilingi swim in the campus pool since the water wasn't running in our dorm. I had the whole pool to myself and imagine I'll be frequenting this secret wonder for all my hygiene needs throughout the semester. It was nice to just wade bymyself for awhile, but I felt slightly lame. I wonder if I can buy some goggles somewhere, then I could play all sorts of fun water games with myself! And since I have a stop watch on my cell phone, maybe I'll even do some time trials (I will beat you someday Lucas...). Anywho, I'm currently feeling slightly uncreative and am thinking I'll bring this post to a close. Let me apologize for this being the lamest post I've published thus far; I only hope you can trust me when I say that the next one will be...let's say, fantabulastically fresh. So yeah, sorry for that, but I'm sure that we'll talking real soon....until then....salama.