Sorry it has taken me so long to update my blog! I have a cell phone, which I can check my email on, but it costs a lot of money to load big websites (and it is pretty annoying to try and type long messages), so this is the first time I have headed to an internet café in town.
A short overview of our activities since we got here:
We spent a few days in Nairobi and then we drove to Loitokitok where we will be for the rest of training. I am living with a host family, and I absolutely love them. They don’t speak a lot of english like some of the other host families, but that means that I have been able to practice my Kiswahili a lot, which has been really good for me! My mama is amazing, and she has taught me to wash my clothes by hand and how to cook some Kenya dishes (chapati, ugali, sukuma wiki (kale), spinach) and in return I made my family guacamole this week which they really liked!
A typical day in training consists of waking up at 6am, getting ready for the day (bucket shower), eating breakfast and then helping my mom with chores until 8am when language class starts. Language class is at my house so our trainer (Grace) and another trainee (Dom) come to my house every morning. We have language from 8-12:30 when we walk to town for lunch. There are a number of small places to eat in town and a typical lunch for me is beans and chapati or sukuma wiki and chapati, everyonce in a while I will order getheri (beans and maize). Lunch usually costs less than 100 shilings, which is about $1.50. Then in the afternoon we have technical traning from 2 - 4 or 5. Our technical training can be a variety of things, from going to Kenyan secondary schools and observing, or having guest speakers come and tell us about the differences in education systems, or writing lesson plans, and doing mock lessons for the other trainees. Then at 5 we are done for the day, and ususally a bunch of us go to town to have chai and chapati or we go for a walk. We have to be back at our homestay by 6:30pm because that is when it starts to get dark, so we all head home. At home I do my homework, usually with the help of my 9 year old host sister, and I try to help with dinner the best I can. We usually eat around 7 or 8 and then watch the news or tv. By 9pm I am exhausted and I head to bed, and I am usually asleep by 10.
Training is busy, but I absolutely love it here!!! The other trainees are amazing and they have become like a second family here. We had a Thanksgiving celebration yesterday, complete with a turkey, making hand turkeys, sharing what we are thankful for and eating way too much food. We made mashed potatoes and stuffing and everything tasted amazing! We also played some football, some volleyball and later in the evening we sat around a fire talking and drinking beers! It was nice to have a full day of Americanness! I am going to attempt to upload photos now, so hopefully this works, the internet here is super slow! I miss you all and send all my Kenyan love! Feel free to write me emails at ceboyer@gmail.com, it is by far the best way to get ahold of me!
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