We are Here!!!!!!

I think God is playing a joke on me.  I really think He is sitting up in Heaven in the sweetest easy chair ever seen, just laughing his katookus off at the darling lion sized ants that he sent to crawl up, around, and inside of my clothing today.  Ha. Ha. Very. Funny. 

Aside from the bugs,...Kenya is beautiful.  It was a hard 31 hours of travel spanning over two days, but one I am so grateful we are finally done doing!  We started by taking a 3 hour bus trip to the JFK airport, followed by a 13 hour plane ride.  This was pretty brutal, but thankfully I got to sit next to AJ, and this really sweet Iranian girl named Mina.  Mina is 25 years old, working on getting her PhD in physics in Boston, and was going home for the next month to spend with her family.  She was so excited to get home, and as is custom in Iran, to have family and friends basically throw a huge party that would last about two weeks.  She told me her favorite food was Kabobs (just like our shish kabobs, but with beef and other things on it), and I just loved how her face lit up when she was telling me this!  The best part about it was we got to talk about our beliefs for a little bit, and I got to share my faith in Jesus.  Do I think any seeds were planted? I don't know really.  I wasn't out for a conversion or to change her mind, or persuade her to believe the way I do...but I loved to be able to share how Jesus transformed my life 4 years ago.  It was great to hear about some of her customs, and because I always have a million questions - I asked her if she has to pray when she's on an airplane.  She told me that for each person it's different (she's Muslim).  She said that some people might do it, but you can really choose how often or whether or not you want to pray.  It seemed much more lax than I thought.  She was really amazing though and I made sure to give her a huge hug before we parted ways.

I got this nice delicacy on the Plain Ride...and in case you weren't sure what kind of cheese it was, you now know...it was TASTY cheese! Lol.  Needless to say,...it was NOT very tasty!  (Check out those expiration dates!!)

After our 13 hour flight, we had a layover in the Dubai airport.  I have to say...I have NO idea how they heck they come up for their prices for drinks!  From $1.12 in water, to 20 or 30 cents for soda, and then $5 for a coffee...it's just insane!  Then after our layover, we proceeded on our next leg of the trip - 4-5 hours to Nairobi.  This was really hard for me. Thankfully I was able to sleep the last hour, but the seat I was in was in all kinds of shambles! There was a bar in the middle of the seat that was broken, and stuck out, all the way across the seat, into the middle of my back. I was basically sitting there with my stomach and chest sticking out, but my was head really far back because the recline part was broken...and broken in recline position.  Not exactly comforting. 

When we reached Nairobi I couldn't stop staring.  Everything was so new, so different.  It was so so so busy!!! I wish I could post pictures now, but as it turns out, I forgot my camera cords to upload everything, so I'll make sure to do that when I get back.  Traffic is horrendous too.  It's funny though because I'm pretty sure people are taught HOW to drive extremely bad,...and be good at driving bad.  If that makes any sense.  Apparently here, if you are a pedestrian and you get hit by a car - it's your fault.  Go figure.  But I'll tell you, people get out of the way!  We had quite a few close calls when driving in the buses/taxis...but thankfully we came out in one piece. 

We stayed at a hotel in Nairobi the first night and ate at a pretty Americanized restaurant, so I was grateful for some comfort food.  It was different...as in not really American, but still yummy and good at the same time.  The hotel was straight up...uhh...interesting.  Daniel was really sweet by booking AJ and I together, so that was awesome.  The room consisted of a bed, a table, a bathroom (that looked to have been put into a closet), with a shower that had an electric heater on it, and a toilet.  The shower had NO curtain, the electric heater had wires all over the place above the shower (NOT safe!!), and the toilet decided it wanted to be clogged,...the entire time.  So yeah...that was humbling! lol.  I will tell you though - I will never talk bad about my porcelain throne at home that numbs my legs when I sit on it again!!

This is where the magic happens.  JUST KIDDING!!  hehe

Our closet/bathroom

Terrible picture, but you can get an idea of the showerhead/heater...

The Potty that never flushed...

The bathroom door was a sliding door like the closets we have here in America!

Don't be dumb like us.  We went to bed thinking we wouldn't get eaten by Mosquitoes.  We opened the window (AJ was hot), and fell asleep only to be woken a few hours later getting eaten ALIVE!!  Slept under the mosquito net the rest of the night.

AJ killed one of the mosquitoes that had been feasting on us all night long.  A little uneasy about how MUCH blood came out of that guy.  The question is,...is it even our blood? Eek...

Us at the restaurant after 2 days of travel - lookin sharp huh!? 

Everyone pretty tired...

The next morning as we arrived at the bus station to drive the next 8-9 hours to Kitale, I experienced my first 'Squatty Potty' - aka a hole in the ground with a hose for toilet paper.  First, we had to PAY to use it (wtheck!?), and then because I have undoubtedly gotten Vertigo again for the first few days (probably due to the Malaria Meds...), I was so dizzy and nauseous that when I went in there, saw the bodily ingredients all over the place, I started dry heaving.  It was not pretty. 

The bus ride was by far my favorite part of the travel.  I spent about one hour reading, and the rest of the entire time just looking out the window taking pictures with my camera.  The countryside is so beautiful, but poverty is just everywhere.  It's so weird to see that people can live this way.  My favorite part of that bus ride though was when we were driving by these two boys running down a really steep, muddy hill.  When they got to the bottom, they saw me looking at them, taking their picture, and so I waved to them.  Their faces just came full aglow as they furiously waved back at me.  I just loved it!  And whats weird?  Somehow that small little act just moved my spirit and I began to tear up.  I have no idea why...but I just felt the water spring to my eyes from this. 

Then we finally got here!  The compound is awesome!  It's not at all how I imagined, but it's home for the next 2 weeks.  All the girls stay in the main house, and the boys stay in the man-shacks (big tents out back).  Girls get a real potty (that also has flushing problems), but the boys have to use a squatty potty.  It was funny to hear the tales of trying to figure out how to 'use' these squatty potty's effectively! HAHA!!  No one holds back here! lol.

Tree house on the Compound

The Man Shacks

Best place to sit and relax! =)

Front of the House

Our ferocious Guard Dogs ;)

The boy's bathroom!! Lol.  SO grateful for toilets!!!

I think this was the chicken coop.

This is where AJ and Bob slept in the man shack (first man shack on the left shown in the above picture)

The back of the House

That, my friends, is an extremely large ANT HILL on the compound.  I managed to step in this one night when it was dark and started freaking out!  Gross!

I wish I could have captured this as beautiful as it was to see in person...

We have a night guard, and 3 dogs, as well as a silent alarm - and I couldn't feel any safer.  Today was our first real, full day spent.  Many of us were tired, as we haven't been sleeping well for days, but it was nice to just begin what we came here for.  We started at 8am with devotions (worship, devotions, prayer), and then went off on our merry ways.  The boys went to build the school at the Veronica Home (where HIV positive kids live), and we stayed on the compound and met and worked with the Neema and Shimo Girls.  The Neema girls are former street girls learning a trade to help support their family, and the Shimo girls are pretty much the same, except they have children.  One girl was 12 years old when she to pregnant with her first child, which is just heartbreaking.  We started to get them warmed up with a little Frisbee and a pretty intense game of kickball (we won by the way!), followed by work.  Some of the girls did sewing where they were making boho purses, while the rest of us created necklaces...all to be sold.  Around mid-afternoon, everyone parted ways and we all just struggled to get to our second wind before we would pass out.

The WINNING kickball team!!

Steph (another girl here) and I spent much of the day just walking around, talking, and taking tons and tons of pictures!  I'm sooo glad I brought my good camera!! One of the Neema girls, Elizabeth and I really started to bond when I took her picture and we got to talking.  She told me about her family, and I even busted a few jokes her way, which thankfully she got!  It was great to see the girls really warm up to us so quickly.  Even Faith, our team leader, who has been here many times said this was the first time that the girls have warmed up to people as quickly as they did!  So thank God for that answered prayer!

Me & Elizabeth =)

Here are some pictures from our first day when the guys went off to build the school, and we stayed back with the Neema and Shimo girls:

The boys as they headed off to do construction for the day - they had to fit 4 grown men in the back of a taxi!!

Working on the Jewelry

Sewing purses and clutches

The outdoor kitchen - where our lunch was made every day

Hard at work making Jewelry

Our typical lunch - rice, cooked cabbage & potatoes

Many of the girls had their sewing machines outside on the porch

Tonight we all had dinner together, talked a bit, and now here I am.  I'm pretty tired...even more tired trying to catch up three days in this blog!  But am glad to be able to fill all of you in (especially you Michelle since you are missing me on Skype-clean!!). 

Oh yeah, and we've had some Kenyan food! So far my favorite, and AJ's I think, is Samosa's.  They are these pastry type things filled with beef and onion...and just so different, and yet soooooo delicious!  Look at me now Mom - trying new food!!!!  I guess it's either that or starve!!

Love you all, can't wait to fill you all in on everything that I don't have the energy to put in here tonight. =)

Here are some random pictures from the Bus ride from Nairobi to Kitale.  Sorry if some of them are blurry - I haven't quite mastered taking pictures through a dirty window from a moving vehicle! lol =)

People sleep anywhere.

The Rift Valley

One of the nicer Mud Huts that I saw.

This boy and his friend were so cute! They couldn't stop waving when they saw us watching them. =)

Potatoes are a staple food here.

...so is cabbage.

This is not even a good depiction of the amount of litter that is just everywhere.  They don't have trash facilities like we do, so they have to burn their trash.  The smell of burning plastic is pretty awful, not to mention terrible for your lungs.

This building is just beautiful.

One of the many outdoor markets.