Jambo, just a quick blog to let everyone know that I made it to Kenya. It's hot here but after the humidity of South East Asia I've been toughened up and I don't mind it at all, at 25 degrees it's perfect, although the sun is very strong. Spending so much time backpacking has been really good for me, it's making the challenges here so much easier to face. At the house where I'm living we have running water and electricity, though it is a bit variable and this morning I took the nicest shower I've had in three months - it was hot and more than a drizzle and the bathroom didn't get flooded with water.

The people here are lovely, both the volunteers and the local people. Six of us arrived here on Sunday, two people are leaving for further from Nairobi tonight, and three people were already at the accommodation. Everyone's lovely and we're already friends, but everyone is North American so I'm trying to teach them the ways of 'marmite' and benig able to pronounce my name without a overemphasising the 'r'. Kenyans are very cool people. I mean that literally (although not in the cold sense), they just have this innate coolness and ability to take anything that's thrown at me. Yesterday we went for a walk near our house and past alot of people on the road. They didn't come up and yell at us like people in Asia, or make creepy comments like people in Lebanong, they would just give us a very 'cool' nod. I feel very geeky in comparison with my pale skin and my enthusiastic, but probably unintelligiable attempts to speak Swahili.

It was scary getting here though. I've travelled by myself before, but after I waved goodbye to Chris, who took me all the way through security and made alot of friends on the way, I felt pretty vulnerable setting off to Kenya alone. It didn't help that a plane had crashed in Beirut that was the same flight that I was taking, but six days earlier. I had to watch them pull puts of plane out of the mediterranean all week, and 90 people died. I've never been scared of flying before but I was feeling pretty paranoid. Both plane trips were fine, but the first one was a game of 'spot the odd one out'. The first third of the plane was taken up by Arab men (no women), the last third by a group of African women on some sort of group trip. The middle third consisted of Tanzanian UN peacekeepers who'd been stationed the past year in south Lebanon. In between the Arabs and Tanzanians was a huge Ethipion family who took up several rows of seats. Amoung this family was the sole white girl with a little Ehtiopian girl asleep on her lap (this child was an amazing sleeper, she got on the plane assessed my knee as the best available pillow, and slept on it until we landed in Addis Ababa). The second flight had abit more variation.I was shattered when I arrived at Nairobi airport, I'd been travelling all night and it was 12pm Kenyan time. As soon as I got through, visa checks and security, which took forever, I was picked up by Joseph, who's my new best friend. He's been our driver the last few days and has helped me feel immediately at home, along with Charity, our host mother, who is probably the kindest, calmest soul, I've ever met.

I'd better go, people are waiting to use the computers. If anyone is interested in making donations (even a few NZ dollars would be fine) just let me know and I can buy anything you'd like for the kids and send you photos. I'm not starting at the orphanage until tomorrow, but am warned it will be insane to get rid of all my expectations.