Holidays - Kenya Style

My holidays were amazing. It started with a work holiday party, for which I created some fun holiday cards out of cardstock, tape, colored pencils and nail polish (you learn to be resourceful as a Peace Corps Volunteer). The party really only consisted of lunch and some of our staff had to leave early before eating because they wanted to get on the road and travel home since it was already the 23rd. Catherine, the VSO volunteer who came to our organization in November, and our colleague Rachael did superlatives and the whole staff voted. I’m really wondering how I come across to my colleagues because I was voted “Most Organized”, but also “Most likely to end up in jail.” Very interesting.

Christmas I spent in Kisumu with some of my new friends. It was a girl party at an AMAZING house in Kisumu. It felt like a holiday in a palace. We eat had our own room and the TV was longer than I am tall. We ate delicious food, baked (BAKED!!) Christmas cookies, listened to holiday music and watched at least one holiday movie, though our intention was to have a Christmas-day movie marathon. Good try. On Christmas day we ate mango pancakes and drank orange-passion screwdrivers on the veranda in the back yard. It was so relaxing and luxurious, but not really your traditional holiday. We then just baked and ate cookies all day until our Mexican food delivery came around 5pm (ordered the day before). Oh yeah, and there was a bottle of tequila in there somewhere. It was a really amazing weekend. So relaxing and exactly what I needed to save me from getting burned out at work. My new friend Steph somehow even got us all to agree to participate in hundredpushups.com. Deidra and I will be competing against Elise and Steph to see which team improves the most at the end of 6 weeks. The prize is fondue from the losing team and we are pretty serious. Unfortunately, I have also placed other bets on my actual ability to do 100 pushups (consecutive) by the end of 6 weeks… that might be harder.
Highlights:
• Getting to skype and talk with family and friends
• Watching the Seahawks game when they played at home vs San Francisco on my Christmas Day (at 12am, but hey, it counts and since I couldn’t stay awake past 2 I went asleep while they were still ahead. Bonus!)
• Christmas cookies!!!



Interlude. I spent two very relaxing and fun days with another PCV at her site between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. She taught me how to knit and I am proud to announce I am ¾ of the way through my first scarf. I also learned how to make granola in a pan on a gas stove and that it can be used to make a very tasty no-bake fruit crisp.

On to Naivasha. I spent 4, freezing cold nights at a camp on Lake Naivasha. Not camping, but staying in the dorms. I met up with Catherine and some of her VSO friends. I love seeing other parts of the country and even though I’ve been to Naivasha before, I learned about so many more things that I have to go back and do. There is a volcano to climb, a lake to hike around, and a million other cool places to go. Guess I’ll have to add it to my list of places to go (too bad I don’t have more time left in Kenya, or more time off work). On New Year’s Day, to signify that this year would be different than the rest, and marked a turning point in my life, I decided to do something totally out of the usual. I ate fish for dinner. My first dinner of the New Year was crayfish pasta and some bites of fish and chips. And I loved every delicious bite of it!!
Highlights:
• Finding a bagel crisp-like snack in the supermarket – it tastes exactly the same, but sadly it only comes in really tiny bags
• I stayed behind on the 31st while everyone else went hiking or biking and had enough luck to meet and have a conversation with two amazing women who worked with Jane Goodall in Tanzania tracking the chimpanzees – we shared a shandy and talked about everything from their experiences of Kenya when they lived here as young ladies, probably around my age or younger, to politics in England and the US (and how ridiculous politicians are)
• Going into Joy Adamson’s old house and learning about her amazing life (and eating LOTS of delicious cake!! Seriously, it’s free when you go to the house… as much as you want – which would have been more if I had not been hung-over from New Year’s Eve. Oops.)
• Getting my money back for some rotten cheese (it was brie and I was so excited to eat it, only to find the most rotten, disgusting cheese imaginable – see picture below) and getting the guy who tried to cheat us and everyone else in the matatu to give us a fair price and stop lying to everyone in the vehicle. Now, I may have started a fight, but since he was cheating everyone and we all subsequently learned the truth, I’ll claim my victory. It sure felt good.

I'll try to add some pictures later when I have a better connection (I tried now but after half an hour it was only at 16% uploaded... pass). For those of you on FB, you can see/have already seen them there.