Exciting travel plans announcement: Sarah and I are off to Maasai Mara tomorrow morning! After that, Arusha, Tanzania. I'll be back around here in about a week.
This week so far has been decent. The SPEA Abroad course was around on Monday and Tuesday so Shannon was visiting and Bryson was still with us. On Monday I putzed around here, but on Tuesday I joined the course for part of their day. We visited UNEP's headquarters, which was pretty interesting to see. I also had salt and pepper tofu for lunch, which was pretty awesome. In fact, the day before I had my first tofu here - Sarah found some for me and we made it for dinner Monday night. Anyway, after seeing UNEP I was dropped downtown and then went to meet Rox, who was helping me get my dress made. We went to the tailor, showed him what I wanted, gave him the fabric, and he took my measurements. The fabric and the tailor's charge added up to about $15, so getting dresses here is pretty cheap! Hopefully it turns out well. After that I made my way back to KEFRI.
Yesterday we said our goodbyes to Bryson and Shannon in the morning as they were leaving Nairobi with the course. Then Sarah and I ventured into Westlands after working a bit. We had lunch at an Indian restaurant (yum) before going off to get some souvenirs. I specifically wanted to get some bracelets and necklaces. A word of advice: if you're white and don't know how much souvenirs should cost, don't go shopping until you do. I bought three necklaces from a lady who said she would sell them for 4500 shillings (about $50!). I ended up buying them for 800 shillings (about $9).
After getting our souvenirs we went back to the cafe we had been to on Sunday. American prices, but super delicious. I got an iced latte light (so tasty! real coffee!) and Sarah and I split a tiramisu. No dinner after our huge lunch and that, haha. We sat there and read for awhile until it got dark. Dr. W. was going to come meet us but the traffic was so bad we had to postpone. Once it started getting dark Sarah and I caught a matatu back to Zambezi and from there a piki piki (motorbike) to KEFRI. Catching the matatu was a little trickier than normal because the police were moving people away from the usual stage and weren't allowing matatus to stop there. It was also my first time riding a piki here. I had been apprehensive because the road to KEFRI is truly one big pothole (they just started fixing it after promising to for quite some time) but it was fine.
So, for today: paper writing, hopefully a meeting, and packing. I'm excited to start traveling again. I'm also looking forward to school in a way, dare I say it - reading in the cafe yesterday was really nice and I wouldn't mind studying in one of the Bloomington coffee shops again right now. And drinking real coffee.
But for now, exciting adventures! The Mara and Tanzania this coming week, and Rwanda and more Tanzania starting in August!
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