When in Africa I Recommend the Chinese Spicy Chicken Pizza

So the title might seem kinda weird, but it will all make sense in a few minutes. On Saturday morning, after my long trip was put behind me and I slept for about ten hours, the other person from GW arrived. Her name is Jessica and will be doing the same project as I am for these next four months. I just sat around for the morning watching her put away her clothes - since she got her bags - with envy. I had grabbed some food from the kitchen - peanut butter and jelly - which I think I will be living on for the majority of my mornings here, and went back to my room. Jessica and I decided we should explore around town for a bit, to try to get acclimated to the area.

After about a twenty minute walk down, stop in a grocery store, and what felt like a little longer back, we were exhausted. Who knew that coming from a place that had a 300 foot elevation to one at 7000 feet would have an effect? Breathing wasn’t exactly fun, but we trudged through knowing we needed to get used to it. We were glad we just made a short trip though because we were nowhere close to being able to breathe well in this environment yet. On the way, I had bought minutes for the phone I am renting here so I could call the baggage claim at the Nairobi Airport. In Kenya, what most people do is buy a phone then get what they call Top Up cards. You scratch off a code then program it into the phone and that gives you additional minutes to use so you can call anywhere. So I loaded my minutes onto my phone and began the process of getting my bags back. Because no one wants to read about the lengthy process and miscommunication between the Nairobi Airport and myself (millions of calls, never an answer, and lying about when they would be on a plane here), let me just tell you that I did finally get my bags on Sunday and I feel sooooo much better now. Being able to put away your stuff has got to be one of the best feelings ever. I didn’t actually feel like I was settled in at all until they came. Changing into clean clothes has to be up there too. J

Oh so for the pizza, Jessica and I went to a restaurant down the road called Mama Mia’s for dinner on Saturday night. Normal name for a Kenyan restaurant don’t you think? So we each got pizzas and they were great. Mine was obviously the Chinese spicy chicken pizza, which had a great sauce, chicken and onions on a thin crust. Mmm Mmm Good. We could have gotten other Italian dishes or Indian dishes which were also on the menu. I’ll just have to wait for next time.

Every Sunday afternoon some of the people here, along with many Kenyans, go play soccer at 3 pm on a field nearby. So I don’t upset many of you I will now go ahead and call it football, as it should be called. I decided to watch the game this time around, since I haven’t played since high school and I was still getting used to the altitude. It was also kind of intimidating since there was just one girl from the IU House playing and because many of the Kenyan guys are much bigger than the rest of us. I will potentially try next week… or the week after. Check out the pics of them playing in my gallery in the link on the upper right. I’m going to try to get some video of the game next time I go, too. It’ll definitely be a fun thing to go to each week and a great way to meet a lot of the people in town.

The week is about to begin, so here’s to hoping that I find out what I will be doing the next four months here soon.