December 22

Today was fantastic, and I think everyone I came across could tell because so many people struck up friendly conversations with me today. Plus, I met some people from Williamston on the street today! I was wearing my Kalamazoo shirt and this girl who passed me goes, “hey are you from Michigan?”
Me: Yeah! Why?
Her: So are we? Where are you from?
Me: Just outside Lansing, Mason.
Her: Hey, I’m from Ann Arbor and he’s from Williamston!
Me: Holy crap!
So anyway, they were only in Nairobi a few days, they’ve been backpacking their way up from Cape Town, South Africa since October! Eeps! Everytime I talk to backpackers or travelers I get so excited and catch such a travel bug!! Besides that, today I was emailing a bunch of stuff about this grant to do international peace projects abroad. I have an idea for what I want to do and want to make it into my SIP whether I get this grant or not! Now this kind of stuff makes me really excited as well.
Plus I got a lot of Christmas shopping done today, got the rest of my mountain stuff and found a bunch of dirt cheap hawker clothes that fit really well.

I’ve been seeing so many more wazungus around the city this past week, maybe visiting for Christmas. Lots of “professional tourists” as we’ve nicknamed them. You know, the ones with their backpacks on the front, their socks with their safari sandals, their khaki shorts and safari hats and occasionally a really painful looking sunburn and mosquito bitten legs. Others are better at blending in, despite the noticeable skin color difference. I like to think I’m one of those at this point.

I love some of the intimate family moments we have at our house. At the beginning I was disappointed that we don’t really have family dinners together. But we do, in our own way. We usually do eat together, or at least eat at the same time as each other in the living room while chatting or watching TV at the same time. Lots of evenings all of us girls end up in my hostmom’s room sitting on her bed in our pajamas chatting about our days and picking out her outfit for work the next day. She’ll critique the outfit and tell Rhoda which parts of it to make sure to iron really well. Then we’ll usually move over to the other bedroom and Rhoda will iron whatever outfit she picked out for my mom and hang it up for her. I love her, she’s kind of demanding sometimes, but also really warm and easy-going. That’s the relationship kids have with their parents here, they’re expected to serve them and treat them with ultimate respect. We have sort of a formal relationship at times, but I also feel like I could tell her about absolutely anything, her real daughters certainly do. Yesterday Moni’s friend was over and was asking her how many sisters she had. “5” she said-I was included! I love feeling so included in their family, my hostmom always introduces me as her daughter. Once a long time ago, maybe 2 months now, we were talking about Michelle’s eventual wedding and she was saying how she didn’t want more than 10 people there-just immediate family “And Alexandra, because she’s blood” Yay!