Kenya Part 2

Day 4- First day at Elangata

Saw: The most adorable school assembly where they rose the Kenyan flag and sang some songs, the only part I understood was "I love you Jesus, you are my savior"

Learned: There are 65 students in class 6 (the class I would be helping with all week). Also, I will never beat a Kenyan at duck-duck-goose, no matter how old they are. Many tests that teachers are supposed to give their students are faultily translated, so my teacher (William) had me look over the english tests.

Laughed: Trying to explain how to play elbow tag to a hundred kids who don't speak much english is a task. Once they got it, we all had a blast!

Day 5- Elangata day 2

Saw: The school and villages from the top of Mount Elangata (which was the steepest hike I've ever been a part of).

Learned: Small children are fascinated with white skin and want to hold your hand forever. They do not understand hair on our arms, and they can not comprehend how cold snow is.

Laughed: While helping with science class, I was asked to get the "duster" I didn't know what that meant, and by the time I figured out that it was the chalkboard eraser, I had already picked up a rock. The students thought this was hilarious and we all had a good laugh about it.

Day 6- Wednesday of Elangata

Saw: A Maasai village, including adorable children, women bagging corn, new born goats, and a snake!

Learned: English language articles are very difficult to explain. Washing your hair in the river is very entertaining to the Maasai people (none of them have hair). CHAPATI IS DELICIOUS (it is a very yummy type of flatbread that Jackson (our translator/new best friend) taught me how to make). William would be gone the rest of the week, leaving me in charge of the class.

Laughed: A 2nd grade girl named Timon thought that I was going to die because I was bleeding. She walked me back to my tent holding my hand so that she knew that I got there okay... I must seem pretty frail. At night, we went to the school to help students with their homework, but Jen and I got stumped by some word problems (mostly myself)... college student fail.

Day 7- Teaching/Hanging out with students

Saw: 65 students silently working on their swahili lesson, despite the lack of teacher... amazing. A real live Kenyan track practice where the students ran in sweaters and sandals (or barefoot) and were still faster than lightening.

Learned: Kenyans love Barack Obama and firmly believe that he was born in Kenya. Teaching 6th graders who are so smart and eager to learn is difficult because they know when you are wrong and/or making things up.

Laughed: After class, we taught many of the students some english slang such as: what's up dude? yep, nope, and cool. They caught on very quickly. We told them that dude means friend and one boy wrote me a note that he signed "your dude, Stephan". Too cute.

This is a picture of some of the students in our classroom (I am the one in the middle in the red).

Kenya Part 1

Hello folks!

I just got back from Kenya this morning! It was absolutely amazing! I loved every single moment of my time there. We spent about a week at Elangata, which is a school that we have a partnership with. We spent about a week in Narok, which is outside of Nairobi. Because I have a lot to fill you in on, I'm going to do a short re-cap of each day. I will tell you something that I saw, something that I learned, and something funny/embarrassing that happened. Here we go...

Day 1- Buses, Planes, and Airports

Saw: The MEGA bus. I took it from Chicago to KC... it was very appropriately name.

Learned: After having to ask a flight attendant, we learned that people who live in the Netherlands are referred to as Dutch... haha it was late and we were tired. oops

Laughed: On the bus, the emergency hatch popped open at about 3a.m. and everyone got substantially wet. I was extremely confused and asked the girl next to me why the sprinkler was on. Then we both laughed.

Day 2- Hello Africa, Nairobi, Narok

Saw: There were giraffes and zebras along the side of the road from Nairobi to Narok that were just grazing, it was awesome!

Learned: There are 77 shillings to every US dollar. Sopa means hello in Maasai (the language of the tribe we would be working with).

Laughed: In my journal I was writing about a card game that I had learned. We left the car in the middle of doing this and when I came back, at the top of my page, all I had written was "it turns out I'm pretty." I intended to say that I was pretty bad at the card game... I got made fun of to say the least.

Day 3- The road to Elangata Interit

Saw: Elangata (the school we worked at) for the first time and how beautiful the Great Rift Valley is.

Learned: It is extremely difficult to photograph a thompson gazelle... sneaky little guys. Elangata Interit means "where the dust crosses".

Laughed: The road out to the school was very bumpy... it was like a roller coaster. Me and my backseat buddies (Jen H and Jimi) tried really hard to protect the large bag of bananas (known as the banana baby) from getting injured. We inevitably failed, but had a lot of fun in the process. I believe I said "this is the most crazy fun I've ever had!"

That's all I have time for right now. There is more to come!

Hello followers of Aubrey Balk's blog!

Aubrey's list of things to do before her trip across the globe is finally dwindling down, but she was running out of time to do some of the little things, namely writing her farewell blog entry and showering. I volunteered to help with what I could, so this is a special guest blog from Megan (Aubrey's roommate/tall friend/packer extraordinaire).

I've gotten to spend most of the day with Aubrey packing up her stuff, making final arrangements for travel, and eating burritos (it's always a good idea to load up on Chipotle before you leave the country). She discovered a minor setback at the beginning of the day: the bus she's taking is actually going to the airport in Kansas City that she is not flying out of. But thanks to some nice folks in Kansas City, she has a ride to the airport with someone's dad, an employee of the Kansas City police department who has agreed to turn on the sirens to ensure a speedy trip to the airport (just kidding about the siren thing--but maybe not if Aubrey is persuasive enough).

It's crazy how close to leaving Aubrey is- she's already been taking her malaria medicine for two days (I tried to convince her they were causing her to hallucinate, but she didn't believe me) and there's only about six hours until the bus leaves tonight. I think she's pretty excited. We spent a long time talking about all the places she is going within Kenya, the animals she might see, and all the people she is going to meet. Seems that our little Aubrey is all set to go. With clean undies and her panda stuffed animal, she really can't go wrong!

Signing off,
Megan Lutz

So much to do, so little time...

I will be leaving for Kenya in 3 days!

I am leaving for France in 32 days!

I have a lot of packing to do... better get to it!