Welcome Home

I am in Africa!
It's been 5 days, but it feels like 5 years and 5 minutes all at the same time.
I already have so many stories to share, I don't even know how to organize my thoughts.
I arrived on Friday night, and walked off the plane into the warm African breeze.
I was a little panicky that no one would be there to pick me up and I would be all alone in Africa, but someone was there to greet me when I walked out of customs.
She smiled at me and said, "welcome home."
Welcome home.
It's a weird place to call home. But I love it.
Driving to the house from the airport with the moon shining over a shadowy outline of Mt. Meru, I breathed deeply for the first time in days. I had been freaking out about leaving, but now I was here.
I inhaled the smell of Africa.
It smells like dirt.
But I don't say that in a bad way. Dirt is earth. Dirt is real.
Dirt has become my life.
It is embedded in my fingernails, permanently clung to my feet, and settled in my nose and throat.
I love the nature in Tanzania.
I wake up in the morning and can see Mt. Meru in the distance standing tall and proud.
The sky is bluer and the stars are brighter.
But I work in the city.
An African city is nothing like Philly or New York.
I walk out of our little neighborhood and get on a Dalla Dalla.
A Dalla Dalla is like a fifteen passenger van that functions as a bus mixed with a taxi mixed with a mechanical bull.
It is the craziest mode of transportation I've ever experienced.
You could be sitting in the dalla with an African man half-way on your lap, and a woman sitting next to you holding a basket of chickens.
I get off the dalla at a stop called Kona, which after a few days I realized is corner.
I walk about ten minutes and get on a different dalla to swahilini, where I walk a few blocks to get to my school.
I am greeted by an incredible chorus of  "teacha teacha teacha! Mambo Teacha!" And a hundred little brown hands reach out for a high five.
We walk from the main building to C-2 which is about a block away. I can't walk very quickly for fear of tripping over one of the ten or fifteen kids who are gripping one of my appendages and fighting over who gets to hold my hand.
I love them. I love their bald heads, and their lack of any kind of hygiene and their lack of any kind of personal space, and their lack of knowledge of socially acceptable behavior. And their abundance of love, and their tendency to start singing and dancing out of nowhere, and their patience with me as I try to teach them things I don't even know myself. I love how easily they accepted me. I love that they love me. I love them through and through.
I am exhausted and there are a million things I could write about Africa already, but its all just floating around in my head. I'll try to write a post every few days, so that you can experience this with me.
But for now, know that I am here, and although it is difficult, I am so happy.
Through and through.