KCMC and Town

Hello friends and family,
phrase of the day- sinunui( I dont want to buy)
After we left the internet cafe when we wrote our last blog, we went to a cafe to get some cokes. We managed to order them in Swahili but when we got the bill, they charged us 1200 shilling, around twice as much as they charge to the locals. Ryan, in his infinite wisdom, had the foresight to learn the swahili words for "lower the price" (pongusa bei) and "liar" (mongo), and thus we were able to negotioate to a reduced price (to 1000). While we were drinking our cokes, we were accosted by several people selling DVDs and travel trips. Since we were interested in buying some DVD's for Erasmus' family, we obliged and followed one of the men to the bus station. There we were lead to a sketchy display stand of all kinds of foreign DVD's but managed to get both Spiderman 2 and Spiderman 3 (yes 3!) for the price of about 15 dollars total.
Yesterday we went to KCMC hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals in Tanzania and actually closer to our house than the hospital that we will be working at. We only walked around for a short time but we could see that the hospitals are quite different here in Tanzania. Every room with patients has at least five and all of the beds had mosquito nets above them because there is significantly less air-flow control. Overall, we still have much to learn about how the hospitals are run here.
Last night, we amazed Erasmus' family with our American technology. We showed them our Ipods and phones. They absolutely loved to take pictures of themselves and the girls, Christina and Gloria, love to dance to our music. The girls also don't understand that when you have headphones in, you have to talk softer.
Today we met our first white people on the dala-dala. The dala-dala is the bus that we take to town. Different ones travel in different loops throughout Moshi and the surrounding neighborhods. The bus itself is not really a bus, but rather a glorified Hippy van, that is supposed to seat around 12, but usually fits around 25 (needless to say it can be VERY tight). Anyways, the people we met were German medical students who were in their last year of school and were required to spend a semester abroad. They spoke very good English and we shared stories of our experiences thus far. To our surprise, they said that there have only been five serious cases of malaria at KCMC hospital in the last four months.

Sikujema (have a good day),
Andy and Ryan