Friday was a day of sadness. Everyone was sad that we were leaving, and then Nacy's was closed. At 6:30 we boarded a school bus with all of our bags and headed to the airport. After we unloaded our bags we had to say goodbye to all of the friends who came with us - one of the hardest things I've ever done. Then we had to ride on planes for lots ( Read more... )

Our trip to Mombasa a couple of weekends ago signaled that we were nearing the end of our time here in Kenya. It's just now starting to hit me. The weekdays have mostly been filled with the norm - some trips to town, studying for finals (finished on Wednesday, whee!), hanging out. Last Friday we had our Farewell Dinner at Carnivore, which is a ( Read more... )

Last Wednesday at 9pm, the KEI group took the school bus to the bus stop in town to get on the night bus to Mombasa, a coastal town in Kenya. I slept a lot on the bus, so not much to tell about the ride except that my neck hates me now. Upon arrival we were taken to the Travelers' Beach Hotel, a very nice hotel on the beach. Apparently USIU ( Read more... )

The past weekend was a fairly relaxing one, spent in good ol' Nairobi with friends. A lot of the people from my KEI group actually went to Uganda this weekend, so there were only a couple of us left here. Fortunately we have other, more homebody friends that, being African, don't feel the need to be tourists every weekend :). The one really sad ( Read more... )

This last weekend the group took a trip to Amboseli National Park, which is on the Kenya/Tanzania border and is, of course, a game park! You'd think that we would be tired of going on safari by now, and in fact, before we left, we were all a little concerned about the reduncency, but we shouldn't have been. Amboseli was definitely the best safari ( Read more... )

This weekend my friends Kathleen, Bailey, and I made the long journey to Jinja, Uganda, to do a 2-day whitewater rafting trip in the Nile, yes the Nile!! We booked the trip with a student travel agency, and our agent did a really great job. The only downer is that bus trip. We were on a cheap bus also, so it took longer than necessary (took ( Read more... )

Yesterday I found an excellent activity, and it is swimming. There is an athletic center about a 15 minute walk away from school, and it happens to have an Olympic size swimming pool (great for really long laps) as well as a diving pool with two 1-meter diving board (extra bouncy, wow), one 3.5 meter diving board (painful but awesome cannon balls ( Read more... )

I would just like to take a moment to say "kudos!" to my Russian Swahili professor, for a) being one of the only worthwhile professors here and b) for being the best foreign language instructor I've ever had. He doesn't use a book - he makes his own book based on his experience teaching foreign language that he gives to us in installments as ( Read more... )

The weekend after mid-terms we decided to travel to Zanzibar to spend a little time relaxing on the beach. It started off with a 13 hour bus ride, leaving at 6:30am from Nairobi and arriving in Dar es Salaam (in Tanzania) at about 9pm. Now, if it were just 13 hours, that would be icky enough, but instead it was also hot. Not just a little hot. ( Read more... )

Also the past week... sorry for all the space in between postings, but getting on the internet is becoming more and more of a burden! The week pretty much flew by, but my friends and I did have some fun on Valentines/Singles Awareness day. Let me tell you, if you think it's a ridiculously big deal in the US, the US is not alone! Here, there are ( Read more... )