Karibu Kenya

This is Africa. Day One. I arrived without any glitches in Nairobi last night with about 12 other students who are also on my program. Our SIT coordinators, Mama Mary, Mzee Oloch, Jamaal, and Milton picked us up at the airport and drove us on a windy path through the dark to an unspecified location. Sounds really sketchy but we ended up at some sort of Catholic retreat run by nuns and we're staying here until Thursday for our orientation.

After a nice 7:00am breakfast we had a group intro meeting and our coordinators told us we were getting on the bus without telling us where we were going next.

Here's where we ended up and how I spent my morning:

Kissing a giraffe at the Giraffe Center!

 That's right, we went to the giraffe center and got to be total tourists for a morning. We fed and learned all about giraffes. The kind of twiga (giraffe) they have at the center are Rothschild Giraffes and there are very few of their subspecies left in Africa. It was an incredible way to start the trip.

After the giraffe's we went to what Mama Mary calls the "Mzungu Shopping Center" because it's where the white people go, so we could get Kenyan cell-phone plans.

Otherwise we had more orientation meetings and finally got a calendar and overview of the whole program so now we all have an actual idea of what we're doing! Tomorrow we're getting dropped off in groups at various locations in town and have to interview people to find out about our location so wish me luck!

Until then, nililala fofofo. (Best Swahili phrase of the day, look it up)