Friday

Today (Friday March 9) I didn’t get to post so I am going to write this in word, save it, and hopefully post it sometime soon. Now that I just said March 9th, I realize that all day I have signed papers and talked with other people about how it was March 10th. I even said, “It’s my one month birthday!” Wow.
Anyway, today we met Olungah at 9am at his office for orientation. This man has the kindest face and smile. He is adorable, and so are his sons, which are enlarged in a picture hanging in his office (over the Bryn Mawr pennant flag). He was extremely helpful, he showed us all around campus and introduced us to a person every few steps who he made promise to help us and accommodate us if we had any trouble. We got our student ID cards. My skin is still extremely pale and there was a flash against a blue background, so I unfortunately look like Casper in the picture, but hopefully I won’t have to show it to too many people. We also looked at possible classes, but didn’t register officially yet, because although classes start Monday, most departments have not put out a list of the classes they are offering yet. Africa time baby : )
Then we went and met Lilian Owiti who is in charge of our home stays. She told us about our families. Mine is a single mother with a son who is older than me. The other two (Whitney and Jenna) got large families with lots of kids, which is what I requested, but oh well. I will have to save the bubbles and chocolate I brought for the little brothers and sisters I hoped for, for someone else. Whitney’s mother and my mother are sisters though, which makes Whitney and I cousins. So maybe we will do big family things together. I hope so.
We hung out in Olungah’s office for a while after that, talking to a few students who go to the University. One woman who was in her second year was extremely helpful and friendly. She is from Mombassa. I want to go there. We left the university around 2:30 pm, after eating lunch in the cafeteria. I was actually the only one who ate out of the three of us. I had some chicken with feathers still on it : ) And rice. And a coke. All for 200 shillings, which is a little less than $3.
We then went back to our guest house, rested for about an hour, in which I used up all my phone minutes calling people in the U.S. (which only took about 10 minutes)…but it was worth it : ) We then took a cab to Wairimu’s house which is on the compound where all the St. Lawrence kids are staying. They just got back from their home stays tonight and made pizza and had drinks and were playing all sorts of crazy games, including life-sized jenga, which we stayed for. They are a really cool group of people and I had some great conversations. ALSO…they have some weird inside joke/tradition at their school having to do with mustaches, so everyone that night had a mustache. The guys had to shave their beards off and just keep a mustache and the girls had to draw one on with eyeliner. IT was fun but I'm glad we were visitors and not there every day. I have pictures of this, which I will hopefully post sometime soon, as soon as I can figure out how to do that.
So we just got back from that exciting adventure. I am still a little tipsy and need to go to sleep because we are meeting our home stay families at 9:30am!!