thank you so much to everyone for all of your thoughts and prayers. this last week has be crazy, scary. but most importantly, i am out of the hospital and getting better. it's so hard to know where to begin. it's such a long story and so much emotion goes along with it that it's kind of hard to collect all my thoughts right now. so i will give you the shortened version, leaving out the gory details. this is a conversation i think i should wait to have until i return home. =) lets see...last wednesday night/thurs morn i woke [View Full Entry]

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I've traveled somewhere every weekend since I've been here so I thought it was about time to relax a little bit and stay close to "home." =) Yesterday I came into town and met up with a teacher I work with, Madam Susan. We took a piki-piki from town to her house. (Piki-piki's are motorcyle drivers that act as taxis) I was so excited to be able to spend time with her outside of school! Her husband lives near Nairobi so she lives with her parents, 3 sisters, 2 brothers, and 2 adorable children. She lives farther away from town and [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone! i first want to say how much i LOVE reading the comments everyone has left. it seriously makes my day. also, i don't think i have thanked everyone at SSMS yet for all of your wonderful donations. they are being put to such great use. you all are a blessing! i can't believe it has been a week since i blogged. i hope i can remember everything =) .... school has been going quite well. i feel like i'm getting the hang of things more each day. yesterday i started my letter writing lesson with the third grade class. [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend was so fun! All of the volunteers on the farm traveled to Kisumu, which is right on Lake Victoria. I think there were about 10 of us. Traveling there was quite interesting. It took us 2 hours to drive, which is not bad at all but I think if it was the same distance in the US in wouldn't take much over an hour. This should tell you something about the roads. My butt was so sore from the bumps. hehe... When we got there Saturday we went to the markets which had amazing carvings and souvenirs. I [View Full Entry]

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Habare!?! (Greetings, how are you you) What an amazing week I have had so far! I've done so much it honestly feels like I must have already been here for like a month. well...i will try to begin from where i left off! so my drive from nairobi to bungoma was actually really cool. i wasn't looking forward to the long drive but it ended up being so neat to see the country side! i was kind of expecting to see just plains, grass, and mountains. which we did...but we also went through so many villages! everywhere you looked everyone was [View Full Entry]

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Hello again from Kenya, It’s now Day 23 here and time is flying by! I am beginning to feel more at home here at Kakamega. Getting to know the area better, the people better etc. I feel more comfortable in my surroundings. I guess this is normal over time. I am even able to go running outside now, even though people stare at me and think I'm weird! People have been asking about how the town of Kakamega is like where we are living, so maybe I will try to explain. It’s a town with a plenty of people and plenty [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone, I apologize once again for not being able to post my entries in a timely manner. I'm sure you'll all hear the little side stories about my issues with computers, but on the more important things that have happened........ So we thought we had a very busy day. Heather wanted to do art with more classes. AND, the big thing that excited me, we were expecting Dr. Opondo to come visit and examine our students. Who is Dr. Opondo??? He’s a highly respected and renowned doctor who worked in the Western world for awhile (not sure if it was [View Full Entry]

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Charles met us at our hotel at 8 (well actually it was 8:15 - it’s African time you know) so we could take a matatu to the nearest town, Busia, for a few things. I was excited to ride in one of these wild minivans. They squish you in, usually drive with the side door open and people hanging out, but it’s super cheap and pretty quick to get things. We ended up negotiating a deal with a taxi driver. Okay, so we won’t be squished at least. We got our bus tickets back to Nairobi on Sunday, stopped at the [View Full Entry]

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It was an early rise and arrival at the school so we could decorate and get everything ready. We were there just after 7, and most of the kids were already there!!! We had been told that people would be starting to arrive around 10-10:30 and the program was to start at 11. Okay, so we worked our butts off hanging balloons and streamers, sweeping out classrooms, the kids hauled chairs and tables from the neighboring secondary school, some men put up tarps to sit under, we had a sound system set up, etc. We were pretty much ready for 110:30, [View Full Entry]

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**NOTE: I've posted several entries today, don't start with this one, start with "Another Travel Day" and work towards this one ** We got to spend a couple hours with the kids before we headed on our shopping expedition. We’re trying to set up an art program in the school (most don’t do any drawing, painting or sculpting after nursery classs), and a project that we can do as a fundraiser. So this was our pilot testing opportunity. Heather’s an artist as well, so she held the reins on this one. She decided that oil pastels on cloth would give the [View Full Entry]

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