Cause This Is Africa

 If it is possible to marry an experience then I would. I would totally have this experience as my husband. I am loving every second of it. I cannot get enough of it. Everyone morning I get to wake up and be in Kenya. It is nuts!

If you didn’t know, ever since I was way little coming to Africa was the number one item on my bucket list. Here I am at 21 crossing things right off the top of that list.

Incredible.

I guess I get to summarize the first almost 4 weeks of being here in this blog. I know I such at blogging here. It is because I should have brought my laptop. I feel bad using Allynne’s laptop all the time.

Okay the flight:

I hated it. It was so long. I swear it takes about half of the time to go to New Zealand. I was so scared and nervous the whole time. I flew from San Fran to London. Once in London I had an 8 hour layover. What the heck do you do for 8 hours by yourself? I wondered around the airport and got some Starbucks. I found myself sitting across from this Indian family. They instantly took me in. All the sudden I had a new Indian mother. She was so protective of me. I love her so much. She also was the kindest person and gave me a pillow for the rest of the journey. After the longest layover of my life, I jumped on the plane to Nairobi. I was zonked out for 95% of this flight.

 I arrived at 9:30 on December 31^st in the morning in Kenya.

Getting through the airport was easy as pie. It was instantly freaking hot. Haha. I bought my visa, found my bags and got through customs without any problems. I swear my bags were the last ones to be put on the convenor belt.  That made me super nervous. I walk out of the customs area expecting to see a person out there holding my name on a little whiteboard or a sign.

To my dismay... there was no one. I had a quick mini heart attack and then asked the nearest person if I could use their cell phone who looked like they worked there. He was super kind. I rang the volunteer organization and sooner then I knew it I was in the back of that man’s car and he was taking me to my stay for the night. Life is crazy.

It was instant love with the volunteer house. There was a super kind woman from Ireland there with her daughter. She was my new volunteer mom. She made me feel so comfortable. She took me on a tour of the house. There were monkeys playing in the backyard.

 This was real life.

 I was in heaven.

Not a lot happened that first day. I was definitely jet lagged out of my mind. Haha. Two more volunteers arrived right at midnight to celebrate new years with us. They were these 2 really cute girls from Canada. The next day was orientation and then we were shipped to our program sights.

Words cannot explain the feeling I got the first time I drove into the Thika Children’s Rescue Centre.

Home is where your heart is. My heart was here.

The boys were so cute. They would come and shake our hands. I just wanted to squeeze out their guts. I loved them all so much. All 103 of them, ages from 5 to 18.

Now a few weeks have passed. I am still inlove. There are only about 56 boys left here. A bunch of them are sponsored to go to school and left. They will be back in April, right after I leave.

They have won my heart and all my band aids. Boys get hurt so easy. I think the child who bit through his tongue and the other one who seriously ripped open to the front of his leg have won for most nasty battle wounds so far.  Allynne and I make a great team because I handle the blood and she gets the supplies for wrapping them up.

Allynne and I teach a class every day except the weekends. It is just a simple recreation class where we teach games and fun actives. It is the highlight of their week.  I love it. I look forward to it.

That is basically my life these days. I could write so much more but I am taking a million years already to type this much. More will come later in the week.