Ralph's Place

This is a bit of a blast from the past, but a few weeks ago, Derek took the SMs to see Ralph's place durring one of our adventurous town days. Jacqui drove us out there, and along the way we saw a pretty peculiar sign!

Beware of the hot dogs

Ralph is a polo player who has built a house that includes everything you could ever want! From a nice meal to paintball, Ralph's is the place to be.

Only 6 people allowed on the bridge at a time.  Masai warrior enforcer included

Definitely going to take advantage of the swimming pool in the near future!

I don't think the cow was excited to meet us, as we were to meet her

A baby cow that sucked on my fingers :)

Ralph's Place

Boys

Girls seem to be better at school than boys. Hands down. This seems to be especially true at Maxwell, and even more so in my freshman class. Not only are there more girls than boys, but the girls are consistently holding the top spots in my class in both grades, and participation. If anyone is going to set the curve on a test, I would expect it to be one of my girls. Thankfully, my initial impressions never seem to be right.

Both Arsene and RJ were in the library when I was grading and recording their biology tests (it was boys night). When the boys figured out what I was doing, everyone wanted to know how they had done. It was an absolutely priceless moment (honestly, one of my favorite moments of teaching so far) when I told both boys that they had scored the highest in their class, and had therefore set the curve. Huge smiles and happy dances were had by all.

A day in the life. . .

I've realized recently that most, if not all, of my posts are about weekends or town days, and I haven't spent much time writing about life at Maxwell itself. This is for several reasons. First, I actually take my camera on town trips and weekends off, and I don't carry it to class. Second, it's relatively easy to write about certain experiences, such as the joy of seeing elephants, but it's so much harder to convey the joy I feel when I get to tell one of my students that he set the curve on his biology test, or the frustration that comes with trying to train a new reader to help grade papers.
In the next few weeks, I hope to change that, at least a little bit.

In the spirit of my fellow SMs, Tanzi and Keith, here's a look at my daily schedule:

5:30 - Alarm goes off, and I decide whether or not it's worth it to get up and turn on the hot water heater
6:00 - Actually get up and shower
6:30 - Breakfast in the cafe
6:50 - 7:45 - Go back to the house, finish getting ready, pack my backpack, and head to the library
8:00 - Open the library
8:30 - Staff Worship
9:00 - 11:00 - Planning and grading in the library office
9:50 - 10:20 (Monday/Wednesdays) - Teach recorder to the 2nd-8th graders at the elementary
11:10 - Teach freshman Biology or Health, depending on the day
12:35 - Lunch
1:10 - Open the library for tutoring
2:15 - 3:15 - Chemistry lab (on mondays)
5:30 - Close library
6:15 - Cafe opens for supper
7:50-9:00 - Library open for evening tutoring
9:00-10:00 - Sometimes I go over to the Raymond's and chill with the other SMs, but most of my evenings I spend getting ready for bed and relaxing.

I spend the vast majority of my time in the little library office I share with Macy. While I tend to be stuck there a lot, actually, working at the library all day has definite perks! Tanzi and Jacqui both stop by in the mornings to chill and get some work done, and I'm pretty close to everything I need to prep for classes, since the library is in the Ad building. Also, a major perk of working in the library is that I have 100% access to some pretty good selection of books and magazines! I've collected a nice pile of books to read on my desk, and I've been working my way through them during supervision. To date, I've finished Apollo 13, and Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis, both of which turned out to be great books!

The view from my fishbowl office

Faculty Family - Round 2

The girls writing down the lyrics to "Barakas"

Faculty family is really fun, and very chill

We had our second faculty family last weekend. All the SM's did was provide the ice cream, the students are the ones that made the night memorable!

Our newest member of the family, Archie, is a musical genius! He can use his hands as a trumpet, and actually played us a really great song!

The girls from the dorm tried to teach us "barakas" which is a super exciting Swahili song a few of us heard in the dorm a couple of weeks ago. It has clapping, dancing, and lots of cool motions.

Even though opening our home and staying up late can be stressful for me, these kids make it 100% worth it! It's times like these, when we're just hanging out, that we really get to know one another. No school, no assignments, no agenda, just family.

Baking Woes

Photo courtesy of Melissa

So far, our baking endeavors in Kenya have been interesting to say the least. Deserts have definitely been lacking, and for my very american sweet tooth, it's been a hard adjustment. Just the other day, the team A SM girls were craving something sweet so, in our attempt to fix this, we immediately consulted Pintrest. We started out with a Nutella cookie recipe, but ended up with something resembling peanut butter flavored glue... Yeah, I'm definitely going to stick with eating Bear's dog biscuits from now on! (Those things are really good!)

A Sunday Outing

Weekends off are nice. No disputing it. But this particular weekend off was extra nice! I'm pretty sure I'll never be hungry again (at least for a few days). We started out at the Raymond's saturday night with homemade pizza and a movie. I ate WAY to much pizza, and although I've seen and loved the movie before, The Gods Must Be Crazy is even better here in Kenya than it was in the States!

On sunday morning, we all pilled into the R's borrowed car, and Polly and Kurt took us to a fabulous Brazilian restaurant in Nairobi. Derek and Keith were obviously excited by the promise of eating copious amounts of flesh, but I was worried that I would end up with only a plate of lettuce and beans. I shouldn't have been so worried. The food was FABULOUS! It actually turned into the best meal I've had so far. All of us - even the vegetarians, came out of there absolutely stuffed!

Excellent Brazilian restaurant! I don't eat meat (their obvious speciality) and yet it was still 100% worth the high price tag!

After leaving Polly and Kurk at the restaurant, the team A SMs and Derek headed out towards the Masai Ostrich farm. The plan was to ride the ostriches, however, after eating so much (and Keith feeling very sorry for his ostrich) it was probably a good thing that we didn't get to ride. Turns out, there was a Turkish reality TV show being filmed at the resort. From what I understand, the show seems to be part Survivor, and part The Amazing Race. It's called Trophy Turk, a show where a group of people are traveling all over Kenya on some sort of adventure/quest. What they were doing with caged ostriches, I really don't know. The video we found promoting the show makes Kenya look SUPER intense! I don't know what parts of Kenya they're going to, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to find that many predators unless they're looking SUPER hard! Even the Masai people's dances looked dangerous when they put epic music behind it. Anyway. What we saw the contestants doing on day 16 of their quest was not nearly as epic. They were all camped out under a tree singing and talking together, which was slightly disappointing. The camera crew seemed to be enjoying the resort though. Unfortunately, an ostrich had pulled a hamstring or something, because the filming meant we couldn't ride that day. 

Because we didn't get to ride, I think that actually made us more observant on the way home. This was my favorite part of the day by far! (dad, and/or other concerned family members can stop reading here) Someone spotted some zebras off in the field, and so we took the opportunity to drive right out to them. Once we were in the field, with cameras in hand, we climbed up onto the roof for better viewing. It was absolutely incredible up there! It was a beyond perfect day full of big puffy clouds and a wonderful breeze. It was so magnificent, that most of us stayed up there for quite awhile! We only came down once we got to a main road. It's amazing what kind of attention you can attract as a muzungu hood ornament!     

Ngong Hills - Take 2!

This weekend was my weekend off, but it didn't feel like it at first. I actually wen to a teen sabbath school for the first time (instead of the little kindergarden class I teach) and I played with the "band" for church. It was really nice to be able to play for church, even if the group isn't that good. In the afternoon I joined the school on a hike up the Ngong hills. It was my second time going and again, I almost didn't make it.. (These are the same hills that I almost didn't make it up two weeks ago)

The view, as always, is spectacular!

With all the students who signed up, and without Derek's car, we started out much further down the hill than I did last time. I'm so thankful that Jacqui was there to push me on and walk with me! When we were almost at the top, she ran ahead, but she was there waiting for me and cheering me on once I caught up to her. I only made it to the rocks (the "top") just around the time that everyone started heading back down, but I didn't mind. It was a fantastic sabbath afternoon! I got to replace many of the pictures I lost the last time, was able to make it to the top, and I got a pretty awesome trapezoidal sunburn on my chest.

Jacqui was waiting for me at the top, cheering me on

I actually made it!

Most of my posts recently have been about weekends or days off. I'm going to try to fix that shortly... Stay tuned!

Wednesday = Adventure Day!

Jacqui and I recently had our town day switched from the original tuesday afternoons, to the new and improved wednesday afternoons. Since it's just Jacqui and me on this new day, Derek and Yani both came to get us both cleared for driving, as well as do a little bit of shopping of their own.

What was just supposed to be a normal town day, immediately started out on an adventurous note! Jacqui took the first driving shift and we started heading out towards Galleria. Before we had gotten too far, however, we were stopped in a line of traffic. Cars started turning around in front of us, but we decided to see how bad the backup really was. When we got to the top of the hill, all of the sudden I saw a group of people running towards us. It was just like a scene out of a movie. While we were frantically trying to turn around, Derek asked someone out the window what was going on. "Children are throwing stones!" was the answer we got, and immediately, my mind flashed to pictures of little five year olds throwing pebbles at passing cars. Obviously, this was not what was going on, because as soon as he got the news, Derek told us to turn the van around and get out of there. Turns out, "children trowing stones" really translates to "College students are starting a riot and throwing boulders at everyone in sight!"Jacqui, with her masterful skills, got us turned around and onto a backroad quick enough to keep us out of danger, and after an hour and twenty minutes, we finally got to the markets.

It was really unfortunate that our first stop was the Karen market, because despite having a pretty good relationship with the sellers there, I still got majorly ripped off. I wasn't really prepared to bargain, and I was guilted into a couple of purchases which I shouldn't have been. After the Karen market, we headed towards another market where you can get anything you could ever want, from Jerseys to crocks and beyond. I didn't get much (only a few necklaces at a deal that made me feel slightly better about my previous purchases) but Jacqui got quite a few things at great prices!

After the market, we stopped by Junction and ate wonderful Indian food for dinner! After grocery shopping and gathering art supplies, it was my turn to drive us all home. I definitely feel more comfortable driving here now. It seems completely natural to be on the left side of the road most of the time. The main challenge driving back was seeing the road, and then the crazy amount of traffic. I was able to "establish myself" but it's hard to keep on the road and out of the other cars way when you have crazy headlights in your eyes, and no line on the road to guide by.

We got back to campus around 9pm, but the outing was well worth it! I'm really looking forward to Jacqui and my new wednesday "dates" and the mini-adventures they will bring!

Side note: Sorry for the lack of pictures! I really haven't taken my camera anywhere in the past two weeks... fail. I need to work on that.

One of those days...

Today was the first tuesday since I arrived that I haven't pilled into the big blue van with all of the other SMs and rushed off on our weekly town day. At lunch, it was odd to hear everyone else planning and scheduling when and where to meet when I knew that I wouldn't be joining them. For various reasons, Jacqui and my town day was moved to Wednesday, while the rest of the SMs stayed on the normal tuesday schedule. I don't really mind that much. Jacqui's one cool cat, and awesome to hang out with (she's now my official tuesday buddy and ruler of all things office skills), but it still feels weird having everyone go on adventures without the two of us.

Since I wasn't going to town, I had grand plans for all I would accomplish today. Unfortunately, it's already past 9pm and I still don't have my powerpoint finished for tomorrow, let alone a lab planned out for thursday. You could say I'm a little behind. The piles and piles of ungraded (and un-gradable) papers and tests are starting to mount, and I'm at a loss of what to do with some of them. While I do have workers to help me, it's hard to pass off to them a test that almost every freshman failed...

There is hope though. I still have tomorrow morning (minus the time I have to teach recorder) and I still have plenty of time in the library this week, but I'm definitely pushing it!

I love my job teaching, and I love my freshmen. I wouldn't trade them for any class! (with the possible exception of the seniors every once in a while...) I really felt like I'm starting to earn my students respect, which is a great feeling. Now if I could only get my act together for more than one day at a time!

Weekend update

The sun is rising on yet another week, and it seems like I've been here forever; yet as I look back, I can still count my sabbaths here on one hand.

I'm so blessed to be able to serve here in Kenya. The weather daily reminds me of perfect camping weather; I wake up to the cool morning air, which blossoms into a warm and inviting afternoon.

This sabbath was absolutely wonderful! My team is on this weekend, so it was my turn to teach the children's sabbath school. While I ran out of things to do before we should have finished, coloring pages came to the rescue and everything ended well.

After church, a pizza lunch, and a Skype date, the real adventures began! Tanzi, Melissa, and I went for a walk outside the gate, and we definitely attracted plenty of attention. Turns out three white girls is not something people see everyday. We had plenty of kisses thrown our way, as well as a couple of guys taking pictures with their cell phones. The funny thing is, I feel safer here in Africa than I do in certain places in the states.

My saturday ended with Junk Night, a class-against-class event where I won my freshman a point! They didn't end up doing so well, but we still had a blast. Afterwards I was sure that I wouldn't be able to talk the next day, and that my hearing would be permanently damaged, but the event was totally worth it!

new adventures

It seems like every time I turn around, the SMs are headed out for an incredible adventure! Team A's first weekend off started out with a sabbath afternoon hike, and then on sunday the Raymond's took us out to the Elephant Orphanage and Kitengela Glass Factory.

The elephant orphanage was definitely the highlight of my weekend. Even gourmet pizza and froyo couldn't top their adorable faces! I actually got to touch a three week old elephant. He had sunscreen on his ears, and the keepers followed him around with an umbrella to protect him from the sun. He was adorable, but really shy.

Town day was also and adventure! Since three of the four SMs on A team (my weekend team) had already been cleared to drive, so I was very doubtful that I (the fourth memeber) would ever be called upon to drive the van. Today, I was wrong. Jacqui decided that she didn't want to drive back to Maxwell, so I was volunteered. We were only at Tuskys, which is as close to Maxwell as you can get, so I didn't have to drive too long. It was different being on the right side of the vehicle, but it almost seemed normal being on the left side of the road. I think that's because I've been spending so much time in countries that drive on the left in the past few months.

The 22 elephants take these bottles 8 times a day

We were all really excited to be able to touch the elephants!

Best of friends

The glass factory had a lot of crazy stuff!

Beautiful hand-blown glass

The top of our neighborhood

We went on a sabbath afternoon hike this sabbath, and let's be honest; I almost didn't make it.
Yani, Polly, Melissa, Tanzi and I all hopped out of Derek's car at the bottom of the hill hear an Adventist church and we hiked all the way up to the rocks at the top. It was only a 45 minute hike (with me, it took us a bit longer), but it was still a major accomplishment for me to make it all the way up to the top! I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with it. I'm also incredibly grateful for Polly and Yani. Both of them, despite being super fit themselves, slowed their paces and stayed with me for the majority of the climb.

The view was absolutely spectacular! It was wonderful hiking because you could always turn around and see for miles. I unfortunately lost ALL of my photos from the afternoon (a very sad tale, I know) but Tanzi and Melissa were able to capture some great ones. (these photos are from Tanzi's camera)

The top of my neighborhood

I made it!

Derek's wonderful car

Me looking at my wonderful photos that didn't make it.... Actually, they probably weren't that wonderful, but they would still have been nice to have

It was a wonderful sabbath afternoon!