My First Night in Nairobi

I think it was much more pleasant than we all expected. There are about 50 of us in the training group and the night before we left Philadelphia, we were told that we needed to repack our bags because only our carry-on would be coming with us to the Hostel in Nairobi. A little frustrated, we all re-packed so that instead of having all of our toiletries and clothes in one bag each we had a little disbursement. Well, what we were told during orientation wasn’t true. We got all of our bags. We didn’t need to repack. The Hostel in Nairobi has running water…though I haven’t quite discovered if it is at all possible for the water to EVER be hot. The faucets do have the red and blue indicating hot and cold but all I seem to get is cold. But, I can’t really complain…it’s much more than we expected.

I guess I’m still taking it all in. I’m in Kenya, but nothing really feels very different to me. I’m sure that will all change once we get to Kitui. I got here in one piece and all of my luggage seems to be in tact. Though; the airports didn’t weigh any of my luggage at any point so I could have brought pretty much all of the stuff that I left behind. AND!! I forgot my granola. I thought I brought at lease one small bag but nooooo. I spent the better part of my time in Philly searching for it but realized it wasn’t there when I repacked. Oh well.

Simple things I’ve noticed about Nairobi so far. Everything is in English. All the advertisements and building signs for businesses. Everything! I thought that was very strange. Gas here is between 67.95 and 79.99 shillings a liter. Which is about 75 cents to $1.02 in U.S. currency.

That’s all for now. I must brush my teeth and head down for breakfast at 7:15. And then we will start our initial crash course in language training. I’ll write more soon.