The Overland tour has begun!

Wow! So I have absolutely no concept of what day, date, or time of day it is, ever. It's a little weird, but I'm pretty much used to it. Whenever our last full day in Nairobi was (I think maybe a Friday?) turned into a nightmare! Just trying to change money. It's a long story. I actually just typed six lines about it and erased it when I realized how boring it was. ATMs, Forex Bureaus, taxi to airport, blah blah blah. Wow. I just rambled about rambling. Not a good start. So the group on the tour is super cool so far. We're the only Americans. There's a few Australians, a Scot or two, a couple Icelanders, a New Zealander, and I think everyone else is from UK. There's a few eighteen year olds. The oldest is probably forty-ish? We're running low on cash. Trying to average a few bucks a day each for sodas and bottles of water and some snacks for some of the super long truck rides. It's a huge bright yellow truck with seats along the inside that face each other. It's filled with all kinds of storage space for food, bags, tents, cooking stuff chairs, spare parts, and lots of other stuff. The sides are open, and there's a sort of loft thing behind the driver where the roof comes off if you want to lay in the sun. It's nothing at all like I pictured. The guide is cool, and there's a guide trainee. The driver is from Australia. I want the driver's job, but you gotta be able to fix about anything that could go wrong on this huge diesel engine on the side of the road. I don't know shit about cars. The crew has got some super cool stories of doing other trips through the Middle East, Southeast Asia, West Africa... The trainee lived in Zanzibar for three years (where we'll be tomorrow for the next four days) and he knows all the spots. Hmm. What else? Kristin's on another computer. She'll take over in a second. Here she is.------>wait back to kenya... the last night we were starving and the only place open was this chinese restaurant. so we walk in and i literally thought we just went in someones house but sure enough this guy leads us to this room with a table sat for 6. we go in and he closes the door. so we are just hanging out in this room with karaoke going on in the back ground, some chinese guy teaching his son karate out front, and a menu in chinese serving things like pig intestines. to top it off our waiter came in to put gospel songs on the tv. it was the creepiest dinner i ever had... like a bad trip on shrooms or something. we paid and left asap but i dont think i will ever be able to explain the weirdness of that situation. anyways we are on the safari now and its totally awesome. all the people are cool and at the moment we are camping right on the beach. literally, there is sand under our tent. and in it for that matter. the safari we took was insane. we literally were camping in the middle of no where. i had a incident with an elephant when i was trying to go to the bathroom sean turned on the flashlight and there he was! i turned around and decided to wait until he moved on... they look even bigger when you are on the ground next to them. and we got really good pictures too, even a video of the elephant coming at the truck so close we could have reached out and touched it. and we saw a cheetah with 4 cubs teaching them to hunt which as far as i hear is a rare spot. o yea and a lion with its cubs. im running out of things but i did just remember when we woke up to leave the campsite there were tons of girraffes just hanging out around us eating leaves and just doing their thing. it was nuts. Sean----->Hmm. So I just went to go smoke, and the security guard for this bank nextdoor is just a regular guy with a t-shirt and an M-16. Anyways. It's cute that Kristin always refers to the whole overland trip as a safari. The actual safari was BADASS! The Ngorongoro Crater was supercool. While we were eating lunch these babboons jumped into our truck and started stealing shit! Then the brave little bastards walked right up to this girl and took her banana! Then we went literally right smack into the Serengheti and camped after looking at supercool animals all day. Everything you can think of. I got some badass pictures. I was sitting on the roof of the truck when the elephant chraged at us and the driver had to floor it in reverse. Don't ask me how, but I somehow managed to stay on and catch the whole thing on video! There were lions in the campsite the night before we were there, and while we were sleeping, our cooks had to chase off some hyenas that were getting into the garbage. Those damn hyenas. I hate when that happens. After leaving the Serengheti, we headed east. Now we're in Dar es Salaam. It's not the capital, but by far Tanzania's largest city. It's right on the coast, and we leave tomorrow to Zanzibar Island. After that we're headed for Malawi, with a night of bush camping (somewhere "safe-ish" on the side of the road because it's so far). I was trying to think of good ideas to help out the people and Africa, and I came up with a really good one. Tell me what you think. I'm going broke, so if anybody wants to get my bank account number from Brooke, you could donate money to me so I can drink more beer and less sink water. It's for a good cause, because cholera is a problem here, so I'm safe as long as I drink beer. Just trying to make the world a better place. You guys are welcome to help. Kristin---->we have like 11 minutes left so im going to wrap this up. i have to cook dinner tonight with the 2 other ladies in my cook group tonight. it should be interesting coming up with something for 24 people considering we only have a bunch of fruit and veggies, rice, and whatever else we got at the market that i already forgot about. its good to be back at the ocean its piss warm again. we went out last night at low tide and looked at some sea anenomes and stuff. just a typical night in africa. i know there are more stories but as soon as i sit down at the computer my mind goes blank and ill remember them again tonight when im sitting by the fire or something. happy early valentines day to everyone following! Sean ----->Oh yeah. So we're in these cook groups. Every night a different group cooks. My group went last night (our first night at the ocean while everyone else swam in it), and we made this badass stirfry. It's hard shopping for twenty-four people, especially when they only give you 35,000 Tanzanian shillings! Those cheap bastards! That's actually about twenty-something dollars. Check it out. Zimbabwe's currency: I don't know what the exchange rates are, but they have these bills for like one and ten million dollars, which apparently aren't worth shit. AND THEY HAVE EXPIRATION DATES! To top it all off, the government just recently came up with this brilliant idea to print a bunch of 500 dollar notes, when there is absolutely nothing you'll find that cheap. It would be like if the United States just all the sudden decided to make a coin that was worth less than a penny. Those guys are geniuses. Obama should go to them for advice to fix the economy. Shit. Well, we're outta time. Gotta go eat, and jump on a ferry and be stared at like we're aliens.