Clearing the Jet Lag Fog

Hello from Nairobi, Kenya!  Thank you to each of you who have texted, called, or prayed for us in the last week.  We so appreciate your care for us during our adjustment to this new place!  We've been asked great questions, so I thought a blog post with an overview of our first few days in Nairobi would be fitting.  Our days have been full and the first few were lived in a fog of jet lag, but the fog is clearing and we are soaking in the sights (and sounds!) of the capital of Kenya!

A brief synopsis:
Wednesday-3:30 am- Denver airport- checking in 9, 50 lb luggage pieces (several were full of donations for the orphanages- thank you!!), and we also had to carry 6 computers and equipment for Kevin’s new Kenyan team members. 

Friday- 
1 am- arrive at our AirBnB apartment after layovers in New York and Amsterdam. 

Slept until 10 am and made our way to a restaurant for lunch and the grocery store, since all we had in the apartment was salt :)

You can't believe how tall the cactus grow in Kenya!

Saturday-
Still in a jet lagged fog and slept until 11:30 am!
Highlight of the day: a trip to the city’s arboretum

Sunday-
Went to church- a lovely church we can walk to where the Kenya director for Food for the Hungry attends

Karen Blixen's Home

Took an uber to Karen Blixen’s home (the author of the memoir that Out of Africa is based on)  We had lunch on part of the property that used to be her coffee plantation. 

Walked to Oloolua Nature Trail that had a waterfall, a few small caves, and a great vine for swinging!  Without sign posts we got very lost, but were thankful for a road nearby and an uber ride back to the apartment. 

Monday-
Kevin’s first day at the FH office and our first day of school.  
There was a family of monkeys we watched in the trees and apartment rooftops across the parking lot from our apartment balcony! 

Seth and Joel made friends with other children in the apartment complex-our little ambassadors :) They were playing a jumping game with a vine Seth pulled down from a tree.

Adjustments:
ALWAYS remember to look right first when crossing the road!  Since they were colonized by the British, they drive on the opposite side of the road. 

Our apartment has a few maintenance issues….today was the first day since we left the US that I’ve had a hot shower….well, at least that helps clear the jet lag fog!

Even though most people speak British English, they do so with a Swahili accent.  Swahili is definitely their heart language, so at times, language can be a barrier to understanding.

2 of the 3 kids have already had a stomach bug- bummer :(

Learning new processes:

A wonderful adjustment is to the price of flowers-

$2 for 18 fresh roses! 

Having to fumigate our bedrooms at night!  We didn’t realize the necessity of this and the first morning Joel and Kyle woke up with over 100 bug bites! 

I still don’t know what to do with our trash??? Plastic bags are banned in Kenya and I couldn’t find anything disposable to buy in the grocery store to hold our trash!

Mpesa- a system of transferring payment instead of using cash- great idea, no idea yet how to use it, or install it on my phone….a task for tomorrow :)