Thursday 17th June

Hi All

This week I've done my blog a little bit early as I doubt I will have the time on Sunday...We are planning to visit an animal orphanage which lies at the edge of Nairobi National park. I cant wait!

This week we have been working at a different school which is about a 25 minute power walk, actually its more like a hike through maize crops etc lol. The school is realy pretty as they have taken care of flowers etc. We have been helping in the library backing book and also making lots of learning aids which means drawing pictures from the subject books as a visual aid for the lesson. I have been drawing some geography and human body stuff. The headteacher is called Mrs Jenga, and she is great but nutts lol. "Hallo's" she always says to us and she tells some of us we are beautiful lol. She encourages us to go and intergrate with the children at play time which we have been doing. The boys usually play football and the girls skip with a large rope. I keep wanting to join in but I would die if I fell over and I probably would knowing me!

On wednesday we went to visit our host family. Elizabeth who is mine and Jaz's host mama again made us a mean fried egg sandwich using sweet yellow bread. Sooo tasty! She also serves us tea the "english way" with the milk seperate in what we know is her best china. Kenyans usually boil the milk in with the tea leaves you see. She makes so much of an effort bless her. Baby Elizabeth came with her mammy again which is which is Our host mamas daughter in law. Apparantly baby elizabeth doesnt usually like new people but she loves me and Jaz and just smiles all day. They keep laughing because they are supprised she doesnt cry. We were given another kikuyu lesson while the food was being made and me and Jaz washed up at the end. We still need to use that salad cream... I have given her a list of things so make a cheese savory sandwich. By the sounds of things she is going to make the cheese herself which we are going to make next visit a week on saturday and I think we our going to make pancakes to. She keeps encouraging us to make something for her so I will make some caramalised banana filling which will be easy enough to do with the equipment they hav and for them to do again.

After leaving our host house me and Jaz went for a wander around the village and had a chat with some of the locals. We got talking to one man called Zak who works for the department of health as a tester and councillor who had been testing the locals for HIV that day. I was asking him lots of questions, it turns out they can find out within 15mins and everyone is really happy to have the test. I asked whether we could join him one day to help and he was delighted. I'm trying to sort out a day our supervisor is happy with.

We really fancied a hot wach but needed coal so me and Jaz went next door to the elderly lady. I wish she could speak english as she seems a really cool person to speak too. She is 76 and a traditional kikuyu tribal woman. I have aksed my host mama to teach me about the traditions as it interests me. We bough a huge bag of coal for 40sh which is about 35p and we also took her some bread. She was sooo chuffed! The funny thing is she just chats on and on and she must know we cant understand a word lol. We are still going to buy her a lamp soon :)

That night we lit the coal in an outside stove and warmed some water. It is actually amazing and we all look forward to it. The cold showers I really cant handle more than once or twice a week, they are so brutal and I never feel clean off them so this is the way forward! These make us keep sane lol and theres not much else to do on a night apart from chat, eat and watch a DVD or read.

Thats its for this week. Please feel free to leave me a message...I love reading them.

Love Jules xxx

P.S Miss all my family and freinds xx