Yikes, I definitely didn’t mean for a week to pass before I wrote another post, sorry!  And it has definitely been an eventful week… so here we go!

Tuesday was quite the day.  I walked to class with some girls that live near by me, and first thing in the morning we had Swahili.  We realized that three people from our group were gone and that they all walk together, but we just assumed they’d left late.  Well, an hour and a half later, we realized that definitely wasn’t true and then the three students got to the SIT office.  They had been robbed on the way to school- one girl had her laptop stolen, another had a camera taken, and everybody lost the bags they had with them.  They were very shaken up, but everybody was fine, thank goodness.  The rest of the day was a little off, while we still had a lesson in the afternoon a lot of people were distracted (and understandably so!) and then we spent a good chunk of time figuring out how to safely get us all home and how to safely commute for the rest of the semester.  Our program decided that it was no longer advisable for any of us to carry bags of any kind to or from school, because that is obviously a target.  So that night, one of our academic directors drove us all home because we all had bags.  Starting on Wednesday, I have just been stuffing my bra full of all of the most important things: my phone, money, thumb drive, etc., and then just carrying a notebook and pen. 

           

Wednesday and Thursday were fairly uneventful, but still interesting.  On Wednesday we didn’t have Swahili and instead we had two lectures from guests.  In the morning we heard the political history of Kenya (which was a little bit of an information overload, but still very interesting!) and then in the afternoon someone who works in the human rights sector in Kenya came and spoke to us, which was very interesting.  On Thursday we had a broad overview of Islam and more specifically Swahili Islam culture, because the village that we will be going to at the end of this week is Muslim.  And then it was back to Swahili!  We have been learning a LOT, and while I am actually enjoying it more than I thought I would, it is really difficult to retain as much information as they are giving us on a daily basis.  Anyway, evenings at my homestay have been very pleasant but low key.  I have been getting home around 6pm and there isn’t normally anyone home except Flo, who is my family’s house help.  So I tend to study some Swahili and read a bit and then spend the evening with my family once they all get home around 7:30 or 8.  We eat dinner fairly quickly after they all get home, watch a little tv and visit, and then we are normally all off in our rooms by 9pm to get ready for bed.  It is funny going to bed so early, but it does give me a chance to journal fairly regularly, get some reading done, and get plenty of sleep.  While our program doesn’t give us a considerable amount of homework (at least up to this point) we are all still completely exhausted at the end of the day because everything is so new.  Our classes are taught differently than they are in the US, our home environment is foreign, our commute requires a lot of attention and pretending that we know what we are doing… basically everything is new and we are learning from everything, so even though going to bed before 10 is ridiculous given what a normal night at Wooster is like for me, here it is kind of necessary to make sure we are still getting the most out of our experience!

Friday was a whole other ballgame.  We met at the SIT office like normal, but on Friday morning we had our first site visit: we went to see WOFAK, or Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya.  We had a lengthy drive to their office, which is right on the outskirts of the second largest slum in Nairobi.  When we arrived, we gathered in the small office and spoke to Helen, who is in charge of the office.  She gave us a background on WOFAK and what they do.  WOFAK was founded more than 20 years ago by an HIV positive woman who felt that there needed to be services and a support network for women with HIV in Kenya.  Now WOFAK provides counseling, support groups, home care, meal programs, and more for women, men, and children affected by AIDS.  After hearing from Helen, we all split into small groups of 3 or 4 to walk into the slum and meet some of the women that WOFAK serves. 

I went with two other girls from my program, Mama Mary (who is from SIT) and Helen, and we didn’t have to walk very far to reach the home we were visiting.  With only a curtain as a door, we entered a one-room home.  When we arrived, the woman we were supposed to be visiting wasn’t there, but her two daughters were, so Helen spoke to them and we sat down.  The home was miniscule: there was a twin bed, a couch, a coffee table, and some trunks that were stacked to make a shelf, and on the makeshift shelf there was a tv.  As we looked around, we realized that there was a third child in the house that we hadn’t even seen when we walked in, he was so small.  We later found out that he was in fact a 10 year old boy with cerebral palsy, but he could have easily passed for 5 years old with how small he was.  He couldn’t support himself at all, his sisters were helping him bathe and get dressed, and he just looked like a rag doll.  While Helen told us he can hear and understand people, he has virtually no control over his body and he can’t speak.  But boy oh boy did he have a big smile when Helen told him he had visitors!! We sat and spoke to Helen for a while about WOFAK and AIDS in general, and then the mother arrived.  We had been fairly quiet and somber up until that point, but that all changed when she walked in.  She is a large woman with an even bigger smile and she happily shook all of our hands and then sat down. 

Helen introduced us to her in Swahili, and one of the only words I picked out of what she was saying was “Obama”.  I laughed, and when they looked at me, I said “Oh, I just heard ‘Obama’”, and Helen said she had told the woman that we came from Obama’s country and that the woman said we were all from the same nation, then, because Obama is Kenyan.  After the introductions, we asked some questions and learned a little about this woman.  She was diagnosed as HIV positive 11 or 12 years ago, and although it is common for men to leave their wives when they contract HIV, her husband didn’t leave.  However, 10 years ago when she gave birth to a disabled son, he did leave her.  So there she was with four children (there was an older daughter also, who we didn’t meet) and HIV.  Now she pays $6 a month in rent for her one room house, and I’m honestly not sure where all five of them sleep.  The bed is half covered with stuff, and there is a couch, but I can’t imagine more than one person fitting on the floor.  Anyway, this woman makes chapati and chai and sells it in the morning to people who are on their way to work and she makes about $2 a day doing this.  $2.  She has to support herself and four children, one of whom requires a lot of attention and extra resources.  She is not sure if she will be able to send her daughters to high school, because high school isn’t free in Kenya.  She says what she wants more than anything is a special chair for her son so he can be taken out of the house, because right now he is essentially housebound.  She said the stigma of having a handicapped son is even greater than the stigma that goes along with her HIV, yet she is still ridiculously upbeat and optimistic.  I can’t quite fathom why, but she still wears her wedding ring, and everything else she and her children are wearing is riddled with holes and covered in dirt; I watched the two girls put a baby onesie on their brother as a shirt with the snaps between the legs undone because he’s small, but he isn’t quite that small.  After asking our last questions, we said goodbye to the woman and thanked her for talking to us, and we walked back to the office… and we were pretty quiet the whole way. 

Everyone else in our group met incredible women as well.  One of them was taking care of her 6 children and 8 grandchildren.  One had 10 kids of her own that she was taking care of in addition to her HIV.  It was a very humbling visit and while it was important and in many ways inspiring, it was also very hard to see.  After thanking Helen for her hospitality, we loaded back on the bus and drove back to the SIT office where we all had lunch.

After lunch we had Swahili, where we had a HUGE quiz.  Oh goody, just what everyone wants on a Friday afternoon.  We learned a lot of Swahili this week, but it was still a really difficult quiz and we were all taken down a couple of notches after finishing it as best we could.  We still had a two and a half hour Swahili lesson, and by the end of the day everybody was a little on edge and tense.  It was the end of our first real week, we had had a good but rough morning, and then we had all just bombed a quiz.  So we all headed out of the office pretty quickly.  Two other girls and I ran to an ATM, and then soon after that we met several other people at a little local bar for a couple of drinks.  It was just what we all needed.  We just unwound a little bit, laughed a lot, and discovered a fabulous local drink called Snapp- a hard, sparkling cider. Yum.  Anyway, at about 7:45, I split a cab home with two girls in my neighborhood, and I was home in time for dinner.  After a good meal with my family and chatting for a little bit, I headed off to bed because we also had activities bright and early on Saturday morning!!

On Saturday we all met at Java at 8am to take our bus to MYSA, or the Mathare Youth Sports Association.  We were all very impressed by the organization: they are a community development initiative that targets youth through soccer, arts and music, and library programs.  They work in low-income areas and their services are free to kids.  They have impressive facilities and very dedicated and welcoming staff members, and we had a great visit.  We went to several different branches and at one of them, we got to see a short dance performance, which was really neat. Except then they made us all dance with them, and I DON’T DANCE!!! Oh well, all the kids watching got a good laugh, I guess.  After the visit, we all had lunch at a little hole in the wall restaurant (among the people at our table, we found rocks, plastic and hair in our food, but whatever, we didn’t et sick!) and then the bus dropped us back off at the SIT office at about 2pm.  A few of us walked to Java and chatted and had smoothies, and then around 5:30 we all walked home. 

We all planned to go out around 8:30, but we didn’t want to be gone all day, so I came home and spent some time with my family, had dinner, got changed, and then a couple of the girls came and picked me up in a cab.  Went downtown to a bar called Galileos, which had fabulous (and distracting) lighting and VERY loud music, but 6 of us sat there for a couple of hours, talked, had a couple of drinks and enjoyed our first Saturday night out in Nairobi J  Around 11:30 we headed home, and one of the girls came home with me and slept on the floor in my room since it isn’t safe to go back to her neighborhood late.  We stayed up and chatted for a while, but finally went to sleep around 1:30. 

This morning we got up, had a quick breakfast, and I walked her out to the main road so she knew where she was, and she walked home.  As of this morning I still hadn’t done laundry, so I was finally able to spend an hour or so washing almost every article of clothing I brought with me and hanging them up on the line to dry.  After showering, I had to finally face my first real homework I’ve had here.  I had to write two short papers, and even though they are due later in the week, I wanted to get them done so I can just work on my Swahili this week.  We leave for the village on Friday night, and they don’t speak any English, so I definitely need to focus on some language stuff this week! We’ll see how it goes…

Anyway, now I think I’m off to skype with a couple of people from Wooster (yay!), and then it’ll be dinner time, quickly followed by bedtime!!  I’ll try and write another post before we go to the village, because otherwise it will be 3 weeks or so until I write again.  So, bye for now! 

And the real part of this adventure has begun!  After a bus tour and lecture about Nairobi by one of our teachers, we went back to the SIT office with all of our baggage and had a quick pizza lunch, and then it was off to meet our homestay families!  I was the second one dropped off in the neighborhood of Jamhuri.  My mama, Jebichi, met me at the gate, and gave me a big hug.  She is very, very friendly and immediately showed me to my room.  I have a room to myself, and it is outside the main family house, but still within the gate.  Apparently the housegirl, who isn’t here at the moment, has the room that is right across from me.  Then, just a few steps outside my door is the main house, which is a beautiful two story home.  After Mama Jebichi showed me around, she said she was going to run up and shower, and then we would be going to a wedding.  Oh my!  She said I didn’t need to change, so I sat and read my book for about half an hour and when she was ready, we got in her probably 30 year old Mercedes and drove to the Nairobi arboretum, where the niece of a friend of Mama’s was getting married. 

Once we found a parking spot, we walked just a few yards and there were huge tents set up with enormous amounts of food and seating for all the guests.  We met Mama’s friend, Elizabeth, right away, and she told us to get some food, which although I had just eaten lunch, we did because it is rude to refuse food at a wedding.  As we were taking our plates to sit down, a hawk scared the living daylights out of me by swooping down and grabbing the chicken off my plate!! As Mama and I laughed hysterically, someone related to either the bride or the groom ran over and said “Please have more on behalf of Leah and Kevin (the bride and groom)!!” and when I said I still had plenty of food, he just kept repeating himself and all but dragged me back to the food line, while I was still laughing.  When we finally did find a seat, we ate, and Elizabeth came over and said hi.  Apparently the bride and groom are from the Luo tribe, so they had Luo traditional dancers performing, and when the bride and groom entered the courtyard area from their car, a huge dance processional ensued for at least half an hour, with people welcoming them to their reception and then following them around in a massive, dancing, train.  I realized, that it just so happens that the day they got married (Sept 8) is my parent’s anniversary (Happy 28^th anniversary mom and dad!!), and I got a good chuckle out of that.  After watching the dancing, listening to speeches by family members, and talking with Elizabeth for a while, Mama and I decided it was time to go, and we left. 

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and bought a few things, and it amazed me that my mama ran into no less than four people that she knew just at the grocery store… I feel like that just doesn’t happen in the states.  After she chatted with all of them for a while, we got in the check out line, and then loaded up the car and headed home. 

Once we got back, we made some chai and sat and visited for a while with the tv on in the background playing (you’ll never guess….) Keeping up with the Kardashians.  Oi.  Throughout the evening I met my two homestay siblings that still live at home.  Kimi has finished secondary school and is taking a gap year, but he plans to attend college in the states to study computer science- he wants to go to Princeton!  He is very, very friendly and we chatted for 15 minutes or so once he got back from studying for the SAT’s.  And Jero is 13 and is studying for her national exams in November- she is definitely spunky and full of energy!!  She immediately commented on all of my piercings, explained how she hates exercising and that even climbing the stairs at school is a struggle, and said that she loves science and animals.  There is also a medium sized dog, Rex, in the house, who is adorable and LOVES to be petted, even with my feet :)

All in all, it was a great first day with my homestay family.  Here are some other things I learned about my family though conversations throughout the day.  My host mama is one of 16 kids, although her family was polygamous, so her mother had 8 kids, and her stepmother also had 8 kids.  Wow!!  She was raised in a village in the Rift Valley and her family is a part of the Kalenjin tribe.  She came to Nairobi for her education and to work, and she was a dentist for many years before getting a Masters in Public Health and then an MBA (I was misinformed about the PhD, although she says she does want to pursue a PhD in Leadership at the University of Nairobi once Jero is in high school).  Mama works for the government in the Public Health arena- she helps with training and such.  About 10 years ago, my mama’s husband decided that he wanted to take a second wife (they are also polygamous), and my mama decided that she didn’t want to have two homes and be one of two wives, so her husband married another woman who he now has two little girls with.  He comes and visits Jero and Kimi more than once a week, and mama says she is still good friends with her husband (she still does call him her husband), they just aren’t really a couple anymore.  I think that is so fascinating!  Anyway, her husband is an architect, and he actually designed the house my family lives in, which is incredible.  Also, the oldest daughter in my family is studying at MIT, she is also a junior, but she is an Electrical Engineering major.  Yikes! Apparently my entire family is incredibly bright, too; the oldest daughter was the #1 student in all of Kenya in primary school and in the top 10 through high school.  And Kimi was in the top 100 students throughout Kenya in high school.  This family has some serious high achievers. 

On Sunday, it was a lazy morning around the house; I got up, showered, had breakfast, and visited with Jero for a while, and then mama and I went to church.  We walked just down the street and made it in time for the 12pm service at Nairobi Pentecostal.  The church was full of energy when we walked in- people were singing and dancing and it was actually a lot of fun.  And then the sermon started.  While the man delivering the sermon (he wasn’t the regular pastor) was certainly passionate and had most of the congregation supporting him, I definitely took issue with some of the things (ok, most of the things) he was saying.  He was quite emphatic that homosexuality was wrong and evil and must be stopped, he said that anyone who doesn’t go to church and isn’t Christian isn’t courageous and doesn’t have a backbone, and then said that it is up to good Christians to force Christianity on others.  Definitely not my cup of tea, but at least it held my attention!!

After the service was over, mama walked me down to the SIT office so I would know how to walk to class on Monday.  We came back and had chai, and then mama said she needed a rest.  She quietly asked me to go read or do something in my room because Jero really likes to talk and gets distracted easily, but she needed to go study for her exams.  So I excused myself and went and caught up on my journal entries and then after a while, Jero came knocking on my door.  She came in and immediately grabbed my iPhone, which was out, and started looking through all my apps and photos.   When she was finished with my iPhone, she grabbed my laptop and did the same thing.  We had a good time laughing as she took pictures of herself and recorded herself singing “Old MacDonald” in garage band. 

After a while, mama called us both into the house and I helped a little bit with preparing dinner.  I chopped up a few things and then mama taught me how to make ugali, which is the Kenyan staple food.  It is millet and maize which is all ground into a flour, and then added to boiling water.  It makes a very thick, dense and incredibly filling paste which can be eaten with other Kenyan foods.  Around 8:30 we sat down to a nice big Sunday dinner and then everybody went to bed soon after.  Luckily, I was able to skype with a few friends from Wooster, which was definitely a great way to end the weekend :)

This morning I got up, showered, had breakfast and then headed out of the house around 8am to walk to school.  Since none of the students know where anybody else is staying, it was tricky to find meeting places to walk together, so a few of us just decided to leave around the same time and hope we ran into each other.  I didn’t find the girls I was supposed to, but I ended up finding other students from my program that I walked with to the office, which was good. 

And then Swahili started.  I don’t know, its not that I dislike the class, its just not my favorite.  I’ve never picked up languages very easily, and this is definitely very different from Spanish, so it’s a little tricky- especially when it’s a 3 hour class.  But when we were done, we all gladly went out to lunch.  We get a per diem to buy lunch everyday, so it is up to us to budget, but we can get what we want, which is nice.  A few of us walked to Prestige Plaza which is a small mall, and we got sandwiches.  Another girl and I also went into the grocery story within the mall and bought a few things (peanut butter, crackers, and almonds) to keep in the office so we don’t have to go out every day for lunch- we can stay in, eat what we have, read, use the internet, or whatever else we want to do. 

When we got back from lunch, we had about an hour of Q & A time with our Swahili teachers and Mary about Kenyan culture, which turned out to be very helpful.  Now that we’ve spent a couple of days with our families, we all had some questions and were able to get it all cleared up, which was good.  Then we went on a walk around our neighborhood with our Swahili teachers, which was fine, but seemed kind of pointless, since they didn’t speak to us in Swahili or anything.  Oh well! But we ended up at another mall type place, so a bunch of us decided to go to Java, which is a very American coffee type place.  I had a long overdue diet coke and we all just talked and decompressed a bit- I think it was definitely good for all of us.  At about 5, we all walked home, and I agreed to meet another girl in the morning to walk to class.   Back at home tonight we just visited, watched tv, had dinner, and then I came out here to my room to practice my (very poor) Swahili.   And that’s that for now!  Hopefully there will be more exciting stories to share, soon  :)

Ok, so the real excitement minus most of the jet lag has finally set in J  We're staying in Nairobi now, but still at a hostel for another night.  Yesterday we had our first normal-ish lecture on Kenyan history, which was in two sections, just general history and then a political history that we heard from a Political Science Professor from the University of Nairobi who is on the Commission for the Implementation of the 2010 Kenyan Constitution (my inner political science geek was totally freaking out!).  And then today we walked from our hostel to the SIT office, which is about a 10 minute walk from here.  The office is where we have most of our classes (unless they are field trips), and it is just a house that they use as a little schoolhouse.  So it looks like we have our big lectures in the living room, and then we split into four different groups for our Swahili lessons, which we officially started today! It’s me and three other students in my Swahili group, and boy oh boy, that class will be a struggle.  We had three straight hours of Swahili today... that was a little tough.  And that will happen five days a week, for the next 6 weeks or so.  Goodness gracious, save me now. 

Anyway, then we had about an hour and a half to walk back to the hostel and have lunch, but me and another girl each had to get some money- I needed an ATM and she needed a money exchange place, so we asked Mary, one of our program directors where the nearest place was.  She told us to go to a place called Adams Arcade, but when we got there, we discovered that the ATM was broken and they didn't do money exchanges any more, so we asked around, and got directed to another place, which also didn't have what we needed, and finally the third mall type place we got directed to had a store and ATMs and money exchanges, which was perfect.  She exchanged her money, I used the ATM, and then I bought an internet USB stick thingy, so theoretically, I can have internet where there isn’t wifi or any other internet (we’ll see how that actually ends up working).  At that point, we turned around to walk back to the hostel, and since we wandered a bit farther to find what we needed than we originally intended to, we missed lunch, but that was fine.  We both agreed it was good to get out and walk around for a while.  This was the first time we’d been out without all 17 of us and advisors and stuff, and it is really important to be able to get around on our own, so it was worth it.  When we got back to the hostel, we had like three minutes until our next lecture was starting in a conference room in the hostel complex, so I grabbed a luna bar that was left over from the plane and we walked to our lecture. 

This afternoon the lecture was from a guy from the Kenyan Gender Based Violence Recovery center, which was fascinating.  I do have to say, my geekhood continues- other than the extremely lengthy Swahili classes, it is so good to be back in a classroom!  It feels like forever since I've been in that environment, and I definitely missed it.  And then we had a quick tea break and then we met with the homestay coordinators!! We meet our families tomorrow, but we learned just a little bit about them today.  I'm staying in a neighborhood with four other girls from the program, so we'll all be able to walk together to the office everyday, which is great.  I have a mama's and although they didn't mention a dad I'm assuming there is one (they didn't mention the dads for some other people either but then when they asked they said there was a dad in the household, too).  My mama is a PhD dentist (wow) and has two university age kids (one of which is studying at MIT, another wow) and there is an 8th grade child, who I believe they said is a girl.  So, we were all basically bouncing off the walls and were so giddy we couldn't stop giggling- we are VERY excited to meet our families tomorrow!! One of the mama's for one of the girls in our group came to help answer questions and stuff since she's hosted students before (my family has also apparently hosted lots of students) and she was incredibly nice, her name is Mama Rose.

Anyway, now I'm busy charging laptops and all that jazz and it'll be bedtime soon.  Tomorrow we have a bus tour of the city and then we go meet and move in with our families, on Sunday we have a free day with our families, and Monday we start classes again!!  I can’t wait to update you all once I have moved in with my family! 

Here are a few pictures from our first day where we visited the giraffes and elephants! 

 Hungry, hungry hippo... except its a giraffe :)

 Giraffe kisses!!!

 What a cutie....

 Baby elephants, oh my goodness!

I made it to Kenya!!! As of now when I’m writing this (Sept 5^th) I’m finishing my third full day here in Nairobi and have already had a ton of experiences here, but I can tell that it is just the tip of the iceberg.  I guess I can start with a brief summary of getting here…

I left LAX at 8am on Saturday morning Sept 1^st, and then flew through Dallas and London Heathrow to get to Nairobi.  There were several other girls from my program on the same flight from London, so we all met up in the airport, which was really nice, because then once we got to Nairobi, we all went through the visa process together.  We finally had all of our bags and visas and all that jazz by 10pm on Sunday and then met Mary, one of our program coordinators, and got on the lovely blue van owned by SIT that says “Jazz Quartet” in humungous letters across the front.  We drove straight to our orientation site, which is in a suburb of Nairobi, had dinner, paired off into rooms, and then collapsed into bed. 

On Monday morning, we all got up (most of us quite early thanks to the jet lag) and had breakfast here at our hostel.  Then we all loaded back onto the Jazz bus and went to a giraffe sanctuary, which was a lot of fun.  This facility houses several giraffes in a huge area and you can see them, feed them, and even get a kiss from them (which pretty much feels like sandpaper being rubbed across your face- they have VERY rough tongues…).  After spending an hour or so there, we went to an elephant sanctuary, which cares for orphaned elephants.  We couldn’t interact as directly with them as we could with the giraffes, but it was still a lot of fun to watch them be fed and roll each other through the mud.  We came back to our hostel and had lunch and then a couple of hours to nap, read or whatever else we needed to do to cope with the jet lag.  In the afternoon we all met to do an overview of the rest of the semester, learn some very basic Swahili words, and ask any important questions.  Eventually we made it to dinner, and then most of us were in bed not too long after that. 

Tuesday began on a more dramatic note- we did what our program calls “the drop-off”.  They split us up into groups of three and dropped us off in different parts of Nairobi.  We didn’t have any specific objectives, just to talk to people in that environment and to try and learn 3 new Swahili words.  I was dropped off with Sara and Kim at Kenyatta Hospital around 10:30 am with the promise that Jazz would be back to pick us up around 12pm.  The hospital campus is huge, and so we started wandering.  We ended up in the office of the School of Public Health (apparently Kenyatta Hospital is affiliated with the University of Nairobi Medical School) and spoke to the secretary there for a few minutes and them moved on.  We decided to try and find the main office of the hospital to see if there was someone who could give us some basic facts and figures, and when we eventually did find it, we were referred to the PR department, who we realized after a few minutes of waiting, were just about to have a press conference.  We were clearly in the way, so we dodged out and kept wandering.  We ended up finding three medical students who we talked to for a while, asking them about their studies, and if they knew any particulars about the hospital.  By then it was about time to wander back to the place that Jazz was supposed to pick us up, so off we went.  We waited at the bus stop for more than an hour, but finally Jazz did come, and we headed back to our hostel for lunch.  We spent the afternoon doing housekeeping stuff- we covered safety in Nairobi, issues of money and belongings, our assignments, and more expectations for the semester.  Our meetings went pretty late, and then we went straight to dinner.  After dinner we hung around the table chatting for a couple of hours and then went to bed for the night.  Also, since I haven’t mentioned it up to this point, there are 17 students on this program, and while I’m the only student from Wooster, there is another girl from Ohio.  Lots of the other students came with someone from their school (or that’s just how it happened, either way, they know people in our group) so that’s interesting too since some people know each other and some of us are getting to know everybody.

Anyway, today we got up, and after breakfast our Swahili language teachers met us out here at our hostel.  We split up into four groups and there was one teacher with each group and we headed in to the city.  We walked down our street and then took a bus into Nairobi.  We just walked around for a couple of hours.  There wasn’t a particular objective other than pointing out some landmarks and getting comfortable walking around and starting to familiarize ourselves with the city.  Two things stood out to me on this walk: 1) Nairobi’s scent is that of dust mixed with exhaust, and 2) there is virtually no trash lying around, which compared to India, is quite remarkable.  After we walked around for a while with our language teachers, we went to a big bus stop area.  Although we took a bigger bus into the city, one of the more common forms of public transportation in Nairobi that we will be using a lot while we are here are matatus, or minibuses.  These are quite interesting because they are mostly unmarked minibuses, or vans, but they dart around the roads picking up people and flashing a card out the window with their route number.  These are fairly cheap to take, but they are quite small and cramped, and we are told they are an extremely easy place to get pickpocketed, so we are all a little nervous to take them on our own or in pairs.  Anyway, we were in our groups and looking for a matatu to take us back to our hostel.  Most of my group got in a matatu, and it was just me and one other girl waiting to climb on and shimmy into a seat.  But then it started driving… and we started running, because our teachers were on the matatu and we didn’t exactly know where we were or where to go.  So they helped us run into seats on the bus- I got shoved into the front seat with the driver which was pretty funny, I sure had a great view of us almost hitting all the other cars as we were driving!  Anyway, we made it back without incident and then we had about an hour where we all just visited until lunch.  After lunch we had more meetings and housekeeping stuff to take care of.  At about 4 we were done with everything for the day, so we all sat around having tea and talking.  I talked with a group of 3 other girls for almost 3 hours, which was really nice and relaxing.  Then it was time for dinner, and then I came back to my room to pack up, because tomorrow we head to a different hostel in Nairobi for a couple of days before we move in with our homestay families. 

So there’s the update for now- I’m sure there will be many more stories once we are living in the city and with our families!