Well I have finally made it to Nairobi, Kenya. Kristin and I flew out of Chicago O'Hare on Tuesday night and took an over night flight to London, England where we had a 9 hour lay over. We decided to take the tube out into central London and do some sight seeing . We saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, House of Parliament, Tower Castle, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, the changing of the guard and maybe a couple other things I'm forgetting about haha.....Our next flight was from London to Nairobi. It was another over night flight which I didn't get much sleep on....We arrived in Nairobi at 6am and were picked up and taken to our host families house for orientation.

The Matatu ride from the airport was interesting. I don't think I have been that scared for my life in a long time....The drivers here are insane! Basically they don't really have any traffic rules they follow, they have street lights but even when they are red people go through...and it's not like running a red light in the states where maybe one car will go through....seriously everyone just keep right on going. Another thing I noticed was people were walking all the time and everywhere. The cars don't stop and wait if someone is crossing the street, it's up to the people to get out of the way of they get hit....I think our driver almost hit like 20 people walking and riding bikes on the side of the road...the people don't even flinch haha.....we got into a traffic jam in Nairobi and so our driver decided to off road it for a while....seriously hit pot holes 4' deep. I never thought we were going to get out of some of them....

We finally arrived at our host mom's house (mama Jane) where we were going to stay for the next two nights. Jane was a fairly wealthy women. She lived in a gated community and had running water (hot water) a flush toilet and electricity. I appreciated it at the time but not as much as I would right now haha....

There were 6 of us girls total that stayed with Jane, Kristin and I were the only two American's then there were 3 from Canada, and 1 from Norway. I had a great time getting to know the girls and two of them are now in Ngong which is currently our home village.

Orientation was good, we learned a lot about the culture, tribes, religion and basic information about getting around and things to watch out for. One thing I found frustrating during orientation was the attitude of "our life isn't good, but there is nothing we can do about it" our leader kept stating things wrong with the country and then she would say "that is how we have always done it and that is the way it will always be" Another topic she touched on was beating children in school. The government has just changed the law and once again teachers are allowed to beat their students. Her comment was..."that is the only way they will lean" She said we are not allowed to speak up, if we don't like it to simply turn our heads. It's just very different then my up bringing and what I'm use to.