HUGE BLOCK PARAGRAPHS BWAH

Woke up, ate eggs and bread and butter, literature class, mostly on Narwhal, biomes class, on various things, break, head into town. Eat at this hotel buffet, Indian food, it was alright. Very little chicken on my chicken. Watched the beginning of 1408 while we were sitting there. Headed out, fiddled around with various ATMs (not me, but I waited with people), and then Clay started talking to some guy, just various small talk.

This guy proceeded to jerk us around the city for probably over an hour. We wanted to go to the market, so he led us there, pretty legitimately. It turned out to be mostly a food market, which was kind of cool to walk through, but not really what we were looking for. He led us further to a small hole in the wall that was full of music, mostly tapes. Now, it was cool to see a local music store, but not really anything I could reasonably buy, between the rarity of CDs and me not knowing what any of it was. Clay and I were in there for a bit, people wanted to keep moving so we did. Anh by this point was getting tired of this guy, so she started to lead, taking us back towards the main street instead of letting him take us wherever he wanted us to go. He really wanted us to go to his mom's shop. We passed various stalls, ignored most of them, bought a few necklaces at one, probably got ripped off. Kept moving, the girls wanted to get postcards, Clay and I split off to appease the guy by seeing where his store was while Anh, Nate, Brenna and Liz looked at an ice cream place, we came back, they had decided against ice cream, all of us went to his mom's store.

By the one, I miswrote all that, I made it sound like there was just one guy. There were probably about four guys constantly walking with us, as well as ones that would come up, try to sell us something, give up and leave. But these four or so were with us the whole way, leading us to specific routes or whatever. It was like India, but worse, since they stayed with us the whole way instead of just bothering us near their shop.

So we finally go into this store, which does legitimately have some nice stuff, not to mention postcards. (I am the worst friend/family member ever, having not sent any or bought any yet. Sorry folks.) We looked around in there for a while, it was odd, there were probably half a dozen or more guys in there, all trying to sell you their specific stuff within the store, and all assuring you they would give you the good price, don't trust the other guys, they would rip you off. The guy we came with kept telling us that since it was his mom's store, we should talk to him about any price. Whatever. So I looked at a few things, actually didn't have ANY money (1000 tanzanian shillings is less than a dollar, and what was in my pocket), but I did see a few things I liked as gifts. Well, I tried telling this guy I didn't have any, even showed him my wallet, told him I'd come back tomorrow, he was persistent as hell, kept talking about “support,” kept lowering his price, kept lowering his price... finally I walked to an ATM with him and got it for a fifth of the original price. Probably a good deal, at least I hope so. That done we sat around a bread shop for a bit, I talked to the shopkeeper who was an Indian, but born and raised near Arusha. His family came here 200 years ago as traders, settled down, and they'd been here ever since, but they preserved the Indian culture. I thought it was pretty interesting. I had a mirinda, basically an orange fanta, and we headed out and back, having to ignore a few more street merchants on the way.

Don't get me wrong, the stuff they're selling IS beautiful, it's just tiring dealing with, even for only 3 hours. I have to do a fair bit of shopping in Egypt, after that it settles down, thankfully.

Friday, February 26th, roughly 3:50 PM