I went on safari for my birthday, it was the most memorable birthday ever! We went to a place called Ambeseli which is a park near the Tanzanian border. I even got a text that said “Welcome to Tanzania, we hope you enjoy your stay” but I actually never went there! The group that went was my two roommates, Kim and Wendy, and then two other teachers from the school, Chris and Paul. I got up at 3 AM on the morning of my birthday so we could leave by 4:00. It took about 4 hours to get there and most of it on an extremely bumpy road. Kim and Wendy paid for my safari, which was an amazing birthday present! When we arrived in the park it looked very barren and desolate. But once we drove further into the park all of a sudden, I felt like I was on The Lion King! I could almost hear the music playing! We took a safari van, where the top lifts up which was awesome for taking pictures and made me feel like I was in a movie anyway. We saw tons of zebra, wilderbeast, warthogs, ostriches and even hyenas. We also saw lots of elephants and they posed for a picture for us! We figured they must have had lots of generations of elephants who were used to the camera and were told what to do for us. They would all follow each other in a line, and there were even little baby ones.

We then went to our bonda which was in the park. It was actually really nice with three bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom and living room. However it was full of ants and mosquitoes and the ants ate my birthday cake!! (it was ok though because we had birthday brownies instead) So we went to the bonda and unpacked and then ate lunch. We also took a little afternoon nap since we had gotten up so early and it was super hot. When it cooled down, we went on another game drive. This time we saw a lion and lioness sleeping. Later in the evening, we saw a ton of vans in the distance and knew there had to be something really cool to see there. When we got there, there was a cheetah who had just killed a gazelle. I found out that when cheetahs catch their prey, they are temporarily paralyzed because of the effort it took to run and catch it. So it was just laying there for like half an hour. It finally got up and dug into it’s dinner! It was such a cool sight. In the background were hippos playing in the water, a rainbow, the sunset and Mount Kilimanjaro. It was amazing, we just soaked it all in. Mount Kilimanjaro is the biggest mountain in all of Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain in the world. It was so beautiful always on the horizon with the animals in front of it. We went back at dark and had kabobs and potatoes and birthday brownies. A few of us played Rook until the power went off and we went to sleep under our mosquito nets.

In the morning we got up at 6 and packed up. We went on a final game drive. We saw lions again as well as hyenas and hundreds of other animals! On the way back home, the van overheated in the middle of nowhere and we had to stop for about an hour. We prayed and God answered, because we made it back without any other trouble. After a much needed shower and nap we went to Indian food for dinner.

An amazing birthday full of God’s wonderful creation. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I also came home and had tons of e-mails and notes from family and friends from home wishing me a happy birthday. A perfect ending to a perfect weekend!

Field Trip!

Yesterday was my first field trip! It was an awesome experience! The students had been making pottery and learning about it in Science. So we visited a place where pottery is made that is connected to a Kenyan school. We left a little after 8:30 and headed to Eastleigh. We drove much of the way through the ghetto and the place itself was in a very poor area. There were tons of potholes as well! (like most places in Kenya) When the busses stopped all the poeple on the streets stopped and stared at us. We quickly took the children inside the gates where we felt safe. Both first grade classes went. One class went to see the pottery being made first and the other went to read to preschool children and then we switched. My class went to pottery first. A man took us through all the steps of making a piece of pottery from the draining and wedging of the clay all the way to the glazing and firing. It was amazing to see him shape the pottery on the wheel. Some of the kids said, "it's a miracle!" It reminds me of how Jesus is the potter who shapes and molds us into the vessel He wants us to be. We also went saw how they make filters there for clean drinking water. One filter is only 1000 shillings which is like 13 dollars and it will last 2 years!

We then walked over to the preschool. We passed by children playing on dirt and cracked sidewalks. The younger children were playing with tires on their recess. We went in the preschool room that smelled of urine. The walls had materials hangings with the ABC's and names of animals and objects sewn on them. The preschoolers looked like they ranged in age from maybe 3 to 8. It seemed many of them knew no English and some just a little. They stared at us. Our funny skin color and accents perhaps were too much at first! My students brought picture books to read to them. Many had probably never seen a picture book in their lives! They just stared in amazement either at the pictures or the student who was reading to them. We then went outside and they sang songs to us and then we sang to them. I got a really cool video of that! It was such a cool experience and neat for the kids (and for me) to see how most Kenyan children go to school. I think it really helped my students realize how fortunate they are to go to Rosslyn and how unfair life can be. It really reiterated the lesson that we had learned in chapel the day before about the Prodical Son. "Life's not fair, but God is good."

Mount Longanot

What a fun day! It was neat to see life outside of Nairobi! Wendy, Kim, Chris, Rebekka and I spent the day at Lake Naivasha and Mount Longanot. We left in the morning and drove a little over an hour. The view was beautiful, overlooking the Rift Valley. This first picture is overlooking the Rift Valley with Longanot in the background.


It was so interesting to see the villages and the people as we drove through. There are so many people trying to sell things alongside the road to make a living. There are also so many people who look like they have nothing to do, so they just watch cars pass by or sit in the middle of a field. Jobs are definately needed here for many Kenyans. It did make me think though, how as Americans we often make our lives so busy. We never take time just to sit and watch cars go by or sit in the middle of a field, thinking and praying. Often there would be cows or goats in the road in big herds and you had to stop and wait for them. Many times Massai men were with the herds.


We went to Lake Naivasha first. We saw hippos in the water as well as a ton of varieties of birds. We had a picnic at the lake, it was beautiful! We then drove to Mount Longanot. It was sunny at the lake but then the clouds started to come in and it rained the whole way up the volcano! It really wasn't too bad, since it would have been super hot without the rain!
This is a picture taken at Lake Naivasha of some of the surrounding mountains.
It took about an hour to get to the top. It was quite steep in most places and the ash was slippery in the rain, but it was a lot of fun!
Here's Rebekka at the top, overlooking the crater. It started pouring when we got to the top and it was SO cold! If you go all day, you can hike all the way around the rim of the crater. The highest point of that rim is what you see behind Rebekka but we didn't have that much time. The environment inside the crater is so lush and green, so different from the ash and dirt of the rest of the volcano. After a difficult journey down, (trying to keep ourselves from going too fast and falling down) we headed for home. We went to Java House for dinner since we were all too tired to cook dinner! What a fun day, admiring God's creation!