Blessing blessing fast hyena!

Okay, it's been exceedingly hard to get Internet access. Jennie was successful once when we arrived, but only got off half an email before drawing a crowd of leering school kids that sent her running from the terminal.

We've been training for several weeks now, and though it's only been a short time, for us eons have passed. We are like children again--everything is incredibly, tryingly, interesting. We can't communicate effectively, and days are exhaustingly long. Most days start at 6am with a cold bucket bath and some hot tea. We leave our house just after 7 and walk for an hour to our training site, wherever that happens to be. It truly doesn't matter where it is, it's always an hours walk from where we are. In fact, whoever designed this place put everything seemingly equi-distant from everywhere else. So like I said, it takes an hour. We have a class, we walk an hour for some lunch, we walk some more... you get the picture. And when you have errands to run, you try your damnedest to string them together to save time. Paradoxically, services being as sporadic as they are, you can never set out on said errand with any reasonable expectation of ever completing it.

Apart from daily life, things here are amazing. We eat very well as vegetarians with fresh fruit and veggies every night. The farm we live on always has fresh mangoes, avocados, papaya and bananas. And the main dishes are usually made up of rice or a thick slab of ugali (cornstarch and water) and a cooked pea and bean stew. Mamas here base their self worth on fattening their men, so I'm coming home a good 25 pounds heavier.

Learning Kiswahili has been challenging, but we are starting to turn a corner I think. I spoke in church this weekend (yes, I went to church) and the entire congregation stopped laughing after only about half a minute, so I'm clearly doing something right. Immersion is hard though, and can make for some pretty funny situations. A friend of ours tried to throw a popular Kenyan phrase into conversation about how being in a rush is not a blessing. He ended up blessing a really fast hyena to the hilarity of the people he was addressing... and we're still giving him a hard time as I write this.

Lastly, and it is of note, Jennie's extra sensory perception has led us to find several purveyors of diet coke. Apparently someone tipped off the folks at Coca-Cola that they should send a diet product to the far reaches of Africa where starving Americans will fall all over themselves to buy it. Who knew?

Well time is running short, but please keep commenting, they're great to read. And we will try our best to post with pictures very soon. Much Love - Nick and Jennie