The day we had prom!

Monday

I always sleep in until Julia leaves for school and just before she goes she wakes me up, so I get ready for the day.  Usually I’m pretty eager to get out of bed and work on emails/ blogs/ my project for school.  (well, maybe I’m not so eager to work on my project for school)  Julia has do do announcements at 8 am, then watch the kids go to their first class.  The kids all have breakfast (usually chi (tea) with some bread) and then they start class again at 10, which is when Stephanie teaches her first Art class of the day.  Stephanie started hot water boiling, so we got to eat oatmeal for breakfast!

The oats were plain, but we added honey and raisins, so we were thrilled!

I worked on finishing my reflective essay for school in the morning.  It was amazing all the things I had learned in the past month about International medicine, I almost couldn’t narrow it down to a one page paper.

I also took my malaria pill.  I have visible mosquito bites from last night (for the first time since I got here, and I really don’t want malaria!), so I’m praying the medicine in the pill is actually working. 

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I ate lunch with one of the girls, Pili, and she showed me around the school afterwards.  She showed me each classroom and then showed me the room that was set aside to be “the library.”  I almost cried.  It was full of workshop equipment and there was not a book in sight.  Pili told me they were supposed to get some computers, and once they did the library would be put together.  I hope that happens.

Pray for it to happen?

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Later I got a tour of the school with Julia where we got greeted by each class, “Good afternoon Julias and her friend.” They shouted in unison as they all stood up.  Julia took several pictures of the campus.

She also told me the “library” space was being used as a workshop now because the playground is under construction.  There have always been age appropriate books in each classroom that the kids can check out.  But a central library with computers is in the plans (if they can raise enough money and they get a grant for solar-powered laptops that Chris applied for).

Julia and I also took pictures all around campus, including with the Masai, who are basically the equivalent in their culture of Ninjas.  One killed a lion a few days before I got here.

With his bare hands. 

Or maybe it was with a knife.  Either way, it wasn’t a gun.

They basically are super-hard-core legit guys that guard the compound at night (so you can sleep easy knowing that nothing is going to come in and attack us with our Masai warriors  guarding us all!)

At lunch, Chris and Kayci wanted to thank us for all our hard work (well, Julia and Stephanie work hard, and I’m just along for the ride I guess) by taking us out do dinner in Mwanza.  They have some errands to run and then we were going to eat at a fancy hotel called Tilapia.  Chris and Kayci also had to get a plane ticket from Mwanza to Nairobi, where they would catch a flight straight to New York.  They had the international ticket for a month at least, but still had yet to buy the ticket to Nairobi.  They managed to get 4 tickets for $45 each 2 days before the flight.  Only, they didn’t exactly get the tickets they wanted so they had to leave a day earlier than expected, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that it cut dinner short (we didn’t get to eat fried bananas topped with ice cream which would have made this meal the best I’d ever eaten in an African restaurant) so I was pretty bummed that they waited so long for tickets since we went home to pack instead of having desert.

We also had to make copies.  Julia and Kayci walked into the copy shop but they couldn’t get the papers printed.  Chris walked in, talked some Swahili, and suddenly the printer worked.  Interesting.

It was going to take forever to make copies, so Chris drove Stephanie and I over to Tilapia, ordered some Indian food, and then left to go pick up money and Julia and Kayci.

On our way over to Tilapia, we got stuck in a line of cars that had their 4 way flashers on and were all honking their horns incessantly.

A wedding parade!  Just to humor Stephanie and I, Chris put on our car’s 4 way flashers and honked his horn so we could join in the parade!! 

 I had a glass of chilled white wine at Tilapia (apparently you have to specify that you want your drinks cold here) and Stephanie had a cold Safari Beer.  It was fantastic.  They rest of the party arrived just on time for food, which was delicious.  I had no idea what I ate, but I loved it!!

We returned home full and sleepy, but with no water jugs.

I hope we get water to work out!!