Thursday, August 21, 2008

Today was the most random but fun day…Running, Chocolate cake, cutting down a large tree, farting, small cars with too many people, and a Kenyan discotech were all part of it
This isn’t so fun but first, I went running today for the 2nd time! Yesterday I went for the first time in over 6 weeks and it was awesome! It’s a bit of a challenge because we cant go outside of the compound for safety reasons, but the property is about ½ mile around so about 2 laps equal a mile or so, apparently…



I say apparently because no one really knows and were only guessing, but that’s not the point. The point is that I actually ran and it was awesome. And definitely needed because of all the Chipati and biscuits with peanut butter and nutella we’ve been eating lately…and when I say biscuits I mean cookies…
I also loved it because it’s a bit of something normal and regular for me, so getting to do it here was refreshing and somewhat theraputic…
Another awesome thing that happened on the compound today included a giant tree outside chris’ window getting ripped out…They had to, again for safety reasons take it out, if someone was able to get onto the compound they could easily climb up the tree and into chris’ bedroom and kill him…Which would suck, so they had to get rid of it. Getting rid of the giant tree consisted of a group of street children spending 3 days digging it out by hand then having Stonic pull the trunk out with his car





I think one of everyone’s favorite events of the day was when James got back from Nairobi with a huge chocolate cake…Allison had asked him when he went to Nairobi a couple days ago if he could get us chocolate cake mix…Well, James being the awesome Kenyan that he is, bought us an entire chocolate cake! So we had a nice surprise when we woke up this AM..its almost already gone!
We actually did get some business done today, while all of this was going on we were having meetings with all the people we are going to be working with in the following months…




Later we went to a place called Pinewoods for dinner with a huge group. While we were waiting for Stonic to come and pick us up we noticed there was some music playing next door…I guess I should tell you that Pinewoods is a nice hotel/restaurant (that has great Chinese food).
Well, apparently they have a discotech as well, so while we were waiting we decided to go check it out…They sucked us in with their awesome music and we ended up staying for about 45 min. We were the only ones in there besides some random Kenyans that were either the DJ or homeless.



The DJ was actually legit. He played the most random but good stuff from Black Eyed Peas to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to Enrique Iglesias…I know, those of you who know me, probably thought I was cringing, but sometimes you just have to let it go and dance…Which we did cuz we had the whole dance floor to ourselves…
I think one of the highlights was Caroline dancing with the random homeless man that had wandered in from the street, he also happened to be smoking in an entirely wooden building. And when I say dancing I mean he just stood there as Caroline ran around him in a circle…



I don’t know if it gets better than that but it was definitely topped off by the taxi ride home, when we tried to fit all 6 of us into a Toyota Carolla…7 if you include the driver…