First week!

Jambo!

Hope all is well with you! I am finally on Kenya time (yay! No more waking up at 3 am!) and am having a great time! We’re doing a lot of orientation stuff this week like going to the hospital, taking buses into Nairobi  to our soon-to-be education center, and going into downtown Karen (suburb of Nairobi) to check out our local shops.

It’s been really beautiful weather here but I guess it’s always beautiful. I’m sure I’ll get tired of the sunshine eventually. I heard New York has seen some snow; I’m jealous! I wanted to play in it before I left, so y’all throw a snowball at your neighbor or something for me if you have snow. Or maybe make a little snowman.Anyways, our compound is really comfortable and has a lot of great staff members living here. I’ve been enjoying getting to know them. (by the way the FOOD IS GREAT. )

There are all sorts of exciting biology stuff that I have found in Kenya. We’ve seen a couple triceratops-like chameleons, three camels crossing the road, huge birds, small birds with long feathered tails, weird trees, an artichoke looking plant with shadows of pastel splashed on it …. I can’t wait to start my biodiversity class, though I don’t think we’ll be concentrating so much on learning biodiversity as studying the broad, conservation issues associated with the area.

We have Swahili classes every day and my teacher is named Esther. She’s very nice but moves pretty quickly. We’ll be going on our rural homestay tomorrow for the week so we’ve been practicing practical things to say such as greetings, introductions, how to talk about our family, where we’re from etc etc….

Well, I had better get going since it’s almost dinner time! As I mentioned, this upcoming week I’ll be staying with a Meru family near Mt. Kenya. I’m looking forward to it!