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!
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