It's the little things.

I absolutely love it here. Overwhelming heat, language barrier, constant heckling, and all. Two years of all of that and more and I may not love it as much as I do now but either way, I'm pretty content with my decision.

Andrea and I went into Nairobi last week to do some work. Meaning I had to get a letter from Peace Corps to send to my student loan company. Spent an arm and a leg DHL-ing it to Texas but hopefully that satisfies them so I can defer it for the two years I'm here. Aside from that, Andrea blew out her flip flop in the middle of downtown Nairobi so she bought some replacement flip flops that most Kenyans wear as shower shoes. Needless to say, she felt as though every Kenyan was staring at her feet (which they probably were) so we quickly found her a shoe repair guy and an hour later all was well again. From there we went to a place called the Kenya Book Foundation which was quite an adventure to find. We were told this place was on the basement level of the building we went into but really it was in a parallel universe through a maze of dimly light hallways, parking garages, and eight foot tall stacks of office furniture from the 1970's. When we finally found the place it was mainly (entirely) textbooks for all grade levels but no novels. So while it wasn't a complete waste of time, it wasn't all we had hoped it to be. But the iced coffee, chicken pita, ice cream brownie cookie sundae, and Mountain Dew at the movie theatre (!!!!) were all I expected them to be and more.

The next day we began our journey to Jill's for the weekend. It's incredible that she and Clare live in the same province as Andrea and me because their part of Eastern is almost entirely green while ours portion is incredibly brown. On the drive up we saw fields upon fields of rice paddies and banana trees in every direction. Unfortunately, we couldn't see Mt. Kenya but I've got a little less that two years so I'll see it eventually. Jill lives in a town called Maua (Ma-ooo-a) which isn't exactly the most pleasant place to visit. There is an overwhelming number of men in the town and very few of them have anything nice to say. On top of that, there is a large number of boys ageing from about 7 to 13 who walk around huffing glue all day and when you walk along the streets they run up to you and ask you for money while they hold their bottle of glue in their hand. Thankfully Jill lives on a Methodist hospital compound and once you walk through the gates it's like a completely different world where everyone is nice and no one bothers you. And Jill's apartment is fantastic but the best part is the kitchen which has a fridge, stove, and oven and is where we spent a good majority of our weekend. On the menu was BBQ meatballs, baked potatoes, peanut butter cookies, banana pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, vegetarian chili, butternut squash au gratin, brownies, stuffed bell peppers, and some more baked potatoes. Not to mention cold milk to go with the cookies and brownies. We also made ice cubes which Andrea almost cried over (it's the little things that make us happy).

We stayed for one day longer than we had originally planned because we went and met up with an education volunteer who lives nearby. His name is Matt and he is working on starting a library for the school he works at and asked if we would come help him sort through the boxes and boxes of books he got. Since I am interested in do the same I thought it would be a great opportunity to pick his brain about the logistics of the whole ordeal. This is where I learned almost everything there is to know about an organization called Books for Africa. It's pretty awesome really. What they do is pack a huge shipping container full of books, throw it on a boat, and ship it this way. All of the books are donated and the only input of money that is required is the shipping costs. Now that number is a bit high but Matt did this project with three other volunteers and between all of them, their communities, and friends and family back home, they were able to make the amount needed. Clare and I are going to team up and try and do this. We're hoping to enlist one or two other volunteers from our class who either live on a school compound like Clare does or are involving themselves with the schools like myself. Now I realize I've already sent out a request to all of my readers to start gathering books to possibly send my Mom's way BUT with this new development I don't know if I'll be having you do that. Instead Matt informed us that there was a large amount of empty space in the container when it arrived and said that Books for Africa allows you to ship items to them to be put in the container. So once we get the ball rolling on this project any of you that were planning on sending books can just send them directly to their company and they will thrown them in the container and they will all get here at once. I'm really excited about this and I have yet to talk with the principal about everything but I've discussed it with my supervisor and she thought it was a great idea.

Speaking of my supervisor...SHE'S ALIVE! And talking to me again! Wednesday was Kenya's independence day. It was previously called Kenyatta Day but the new constitution changed the name of it to MashujaaMashujaa Day with her on Wednesday where my DO, chief, and some other big-wigs were in attendance. Of course, in typical Kenyan fashion, they had me get up and introduce myself to the crowd. My chief prefaced my introduction with about five minutes of talking about me which only increased my anxiety but I finally got up there, rambled off my name, where I was from, etc. and then quickly returned to my seat. Aside from my brief moment of humiliation, overall, the day was pretty cool. It was no 4th of July but still pretty neat to see how they celebrate their independence (and I got free lunch!).

I met up with my supervisor again the next day and even though we just sat in the office all day, I'd still call it a success. I looked up places we could send proposals to and we had quite a few good talks. Highlight of the day was when one of the village crazy men tried to steal our office's broom so my supervisor told him to take her phone to go have it charged and when he walked towards her to get it she stood up and he turned around, dropped the broom, and ran away in fear. Pretty awesome. She's got some serious authority in my village and many of the areas around it.

Most exciting part of the week though was it rained yesterday. A lot. It started raining around 5pm and didn't stop until the early hours of the morning. The rain on my tin roof sounds slightly like there's a hurricane outside but I loved it. Although, I quickly realized that my roof has more than a few leaks and I may need to invest in a couple more buckets before the rainy season is in full swing. Downside to the rain is that when I opened my door this morning there was about a billion ants marching in a line around the perimeter of my house. They weren't entering my house, thankfully, but no matter how many times I've swept them away, they still return. Upside to the rain was I was able to walk into town today without getting my feet covered in dust. Remember, it's the little things.