Hello everyone!! I am in Kenya now and just spent my first night with my host family. My mama is very welcoming and excited and so helpful! I have a little brother and sister as well. They are very cute and so much fun. Kelvin loves to help me with my Swahili which I'm sure will come in handy in the next few weeks. I hope I can learn quickly enough because if we have satisfactorily learned Swahili by the 5th week we can start to learn a local language for when we are at our sites. Lydia, my sisiter, is 5 and has unlimmited energy. She loves to come play with me and hold my hand and told her mama in Swahili this morning that even though she doesnt speak much english she loves talking to me. She also found out that I would be coming home from my school later than she was getting home and said she would drink my tea, and also that she was joking. My house has electricity and a TV even so we watched the Kenya vs Nigeria football game last night over dinner which I helped a little bit to make. This morning I took my first bucket bath which wasnt as bad as I was worried it would be... just a bit cold. I will be taking my mama up on the offer of warm bath water from now on. Last night was my first experience with the pit latrines. They are actually not as bad as you'd think: its quick, easy, and painless.
I am feeling pretty good about my Swhaili so far and get excited when I have a chance to use it, and when I can talk with my family at home. On the drive down to our training site we saw giraffes, zebras, donkeys, ostriches, and many cow and goat hearders. At the place we stayed on saturday night we saw monkeys. I really like all the people in my training class. They are fun and open and it feels like we've known eachother forever already. The last week feels like it has been more like a year. I have loved the food so far, and have encounted no associated illnesses yet. :) I'm trying to think of what else to say because there is so much... the town is really dusty, I almost died in a luggage avalanche on the bus to our training site because all the bags that didnt fit below the bus got stacked in the back and the roads are incredibly bumpy. It was during that trip that I first really felt like I was in Africa... although it still sometimes feels like a dream.
All I can say is that I have loved every minute so far (and I hope that this post actually makes it onto the internet because I am sitting in an internet cafe on lunch break that has a really slow connection). I love you all and will write more when I can!