Start of Term 1: 2014

Hey Hey Hey J

         It’s the middle of January and it’s as warm as a beautiful spring-almost summer day in Pennsylvania. A little odd perhaps but I’ve acclimated well and it is perfect weather in my book. School has begun and we are now halfway through week 3 already-I can’t believe it!

         I am teaching the same subjects that I taught last year but moving up with them to the next grade level. So that makes my classes as follows:

·      KSL: Class 4/5

·      Science: Class 4/5

·      English: Class 6

·      Maths: Class 7

·      PE: Class 8

I’m glad we decided to do it that way because I am happy with the classes I have. Also, I say ‘Class 4/5’ because we don’t have enough classrooms to have all of our classes individualized and so we combined Class 4 & 5 this year. We also had a committee decide which kids moved up to the next grade level and which had to repeat a year. Now the classes are pretty evened out and I think for the most part, students are in the classes they should be, give or take. We now have most of the students as around 6-7 arrived within the past few days. We had begun teaching after 5 days of school opening but we were only at about 60% with students. Then as of last week (week 2) we had all but about 10 students (keep in mind that we only have about 65-70 students each term) and now today we only have 3-4 left to come I think. We also gained 3 new little ones who are about 5-6 years old and one girl in Class 4.

Sadly, we also had a quite unfortunate occurrence happen to one of our students who passed away over the holiday break. She was only in Class 5 and a really bright, sweet girl. It was hard and the students asked a lot of questions but we made it through the week and now things are settling back to normal. Please keep our students and her family in your prayers and thoughts J

         In other news, I ran a race 2 weekends ago and it was something else. I had only heard about less than 24 hours before it began from my fellow teachers. The day before I only knew a few things: it was to start at 9, anyone could join, it would happen directly next door and it would cost 100Ksh. I was nervous but knew I couldn’t pass up such a great opportunity. I mean, the race was at the primary school next to ours with whom we share a fence, it cost about 85 cents and I had absolutely nothing else planned for the day-perfect conditions. So I went and brought one of my Class 7 girls to run who is very athletic (along with most of the kids who were at school-about 30-so they could watch). I ate my breakfast at 7am with a stomach already full of butterflies and headed over to the school with Evelyn at about 8:30. I assumed it would start a bit late and Evelyn was still eating her porridge at 8:20 but we left around 8:30 and when we showed up we were a bit surprised when we saw a total of 4 other runners. Oh goodness gracious. There were 2 men carrying up the registration table at about 8:50 with 6 of us there to register-at the exact time the race was supposed to start. So we moseyed on over, signed up, received our cotton bib numbers and went to sit and wait under a nearby tree. I kept hoping other runners would show up soon because we looked like absolute misfits compared to these professional type runners. We found out they had come from Nyahururu (1.5hrs away) for the race and they dressed the part (as well as ran the part we later watched). The girls had on the same kind of uniform I wore in my XC races back in the day with warm-ups on over top under right before the race started…even though we were sweating in our short sleeves and Capri spandex/shorts. At about 9:30 they started to do a warm up lap so Evelyn and I decided, what the heck, we wanna look legit too, so we ran for maybe 10 min before sitting back under the tree. We waited some more. Finally around 10:15ish, other runners started ambling their way across the course to the registration table. By the time the races began there were 50 runners competing. We were split into 4 categories: 1. Womens junior race (6km) 2. Womens senior race (8km) 3. Mens junior race (8km) 4. Mens senior race (12km). They decided to run the women’s junior race (12^th grade and under) at 11am. Evelyn was in this race and she was the only primary age girl there. We found out listening to the race start up speech that it was basically a try out race. They were trying out for the top 6 positions/category in the XC race for all of Laikipia. We are in Laikipia West county but there is also a north and east Laikipia and that race takes place in a week or so and it continues to build up to Nationals. There was no money or prizes to win at this race-only a chance to further your racing chances. So we knew going into it, neither Evelyn or I could advance at all but we both had fun.

The race began with Evelyn, 14 HS aged girls and the one HS aged girl from Nyahururu. That girl was so far ahead of everyone else she was in her own league. Now picture this: a group of ladies all dressed in solid color t-shirts (it’s the HS gym uniform), decently tall, hair pulled back, most of them had shoes on-all running kinda fast-at least the first lap. Then in that group picture little Evelyn with her play clothes on of a pink patterned dress, purple biker spandex beneath, and a different patterned pajama long sleeved shirt on under her dress, shaved head and bare feet. It was great to watch. She even ended up surprisingly the official there. 8 of the 16 girls dropped out before 3km was even over but Evelyn persevered. She made it 4.5-almost 5km-before falling down with a cut on her foot-but she was in 4^th place when she fell! The official talked to me at the end of the race saying she had a lot of potential and he might sponsor her for a pair of sneakers! It was very exciting news!! (And no worries, the cut was small and we cleaned her up and she was good as new soon after). The next 3 categories were combined so that it wouldn’t take all day. That meant it was junior and senior men with us senior women. I ended up finishing the race in second place and was very pleased. My only goal was to finish since so many other girls couldn’t and I did! Oh, let me describe this very cross-country course to you. It was a one kilometer loop that zigzagged back and forth maybe 4 times and then once at the bottom, you ran up to the top to start it all over again-in other words-not really cross country except for the long grass and rocky ground and not a very fun course either. And for any of you interested in times, I attempted to clock the top runners in the race I ran (basically I got all but the 6k girl). Remember, this was at elevation and a hot day. The top 8k junior man ran a 25:30 (5:08min/mi), the top 8k girl ran a 28:45 (5:47min/mi) and the top 12k guy ran a 38:25 (5:09min/mi). Pretty impressive I say!

That’s about all that I can think of at the moment. I’m halfway through my first ever James Bond movie and I’m intrigued to see what will happen next. Hope you are all enjoying the snowy weather I’ve heard so much about back in the States and you’re drinking lots of hot chocolate for me! J And a Happy belated Birthday to my favorite brother and a happy early birthday to my favorite oldest of the younger three, BekBekBekBek!!

Lots of Kisses from Kenya!!

Lizbeth

The Holidays (Part 1: Zambia)

Hello Hello Hello Friends and Family!

I know it’s been for-ev-er since I’ve written but so much has been going on and I haven’t stopped to write to you all. Since the last time I’ve update my blog I have traveled to Zambia, America and then back here to Kenya with my boyfriend so I’m going to break this up into 3 sections.

Zambia: I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit Zambia where my cousin Clarissa was a teacher (and will be again next year I just found out) at the Village of Hope. I love that my family loves to travel and we have become a bit international. I originally thought Clarissa would only be there for one year and so I wanted to make sure I visited her before the year was up since we are in almost neighboring countries. She visited me in August when my sister Sarah was here and now it was my turn. I left a week after my school ended and flew down to be with her for about 4 days. She lives in the Western province in a town called Mongu. I caught a ride with one of the missionaries who happened to be in the capital and we made it to Mongu around 9pm (I left my hotel for the airport at about 5am that day). We had about an 8 hour car ride together, lots of bonding haha and we ended up seeing a large pack of wild dogs! I had no idea that they were so rare to see-especially in bigger packs-but there they were-not even that skittish-sooo cool! I went to school with Clarissa the next day, Friday, and met all of the kids. They were practicing for the Christmas play and listening to their lines and songs was adorable! Their school is still in the building process, they add another grade every year and currently they have up to the 5^th grade. It’s a wonderful school. In the afternoon we visited an agricultural place that hosted a field day that morning. When we arrived they decided to give us our own personal field day tour! It was great. We walked around and checked out cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes and lots of other vegetables along with variety demonstrations they planted to show different ways to increase quality and quantity of things. The tour ended with a ride on a New Holland tractor to check out the rice fields. I didn’t see that one coming! It was crazy to be on a tractor that was made so close to my home in PA! Over the weekend we relaxed, walked around town, checked out the market and went to church. It was very interesting and awesome to go to a church where I recognized one of the songs and the whole thing was in English. Mind blown. My last full day on Monday I went to school again and sat in on Clarissas class and then went back to bake and do laundry before leaving while she had some errands to run. It was a short trip but a good one for sure! It was soo cool to see her school and listen to her experiences. For sure there are differences between Kenya and Zambia but there are more similarities than Kenya and the US. It was nice to be able to talk to each other about cultural differences and understand what the other was talking about pretty completely. It also proved a good transition for me to America. She has an oven, a hot shower, a stove top and microwave, it was crazy! Her two roommates and her kept chuckling, as I would notice something else that I didn’t have in my house or hadn’t seen in a while and was surprised. It was a lot of fun. She lives in a beautiful place where the view is endless and the kids are endlessly cute.

The Holidays (Part 2: America)

America: So after a good bit of traveling I finally made it the good ol’ US of A! Nate picked me up at the airport with about 5 layers to bundle myself with and a milkshake to go-talk about a good way to be picked up J I got home on Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving and was very warmly greeted by my awesome family! It was soooo good to see them! Thanksgiving morning came early and we headed out with the sun to make it to the York Turkey Trot for a Linde tradition of running with all of cousins before we eat. It was a solid-and very cold-race with maybe 20+ runners who were Lindes or came with a Linde! We ate the day away after that and it was D to the E to the LICIOUS! Of course, football was played as well and a game of tug-o-war of Lindes vs non-Lindes. Hahaha I couldn’t tell you who won either one but I watched with about 5 layers on from the sidelines. I came out with one jacket on but within 20 min as relatives kept looking at me shivering, they would bring me another winter jacket to put on, guess I was more acclimated to Kenyan weather than I thought. The rest of the familys Thanksgiving break was filled with family and food-a most excellent combination! I also got to see BekBek hand over her Miss Solanco crown and perform one last time, which was pretty awesome since I missed last year when she was crowned. I spend the next few days seeing a few friends, running and just hanging out with the family. From Thursday to Sunday I went on a college tour with Sarah. We started off seeing BekBekBek at Messiah and went to a cool church singing thing, Power House, after eating at the cafeteria and we ran in the morning when she was at class. It’s a solid college and seems like the perfect fit for little Beks even if it still a bit weird to think that she’s now starting her 2^nd semester already! I was really happy I got to see her there and meet a few of her friends. We left in the morning, the 3 of us, for PSU to see Stephen. He lives in a house with a few other Navigator guys who all see pretty darn cool. We hung out in his house and cooked lunch and dinner together while also playing a few board games. I also got to witness some of their talents as the practiced for the talent show that evening. Beks and Stephen did a ring toss type thing, Sarah played her violin and Stephen along with 2 of his roomies saying a trio mashup including Davey Jones and Amazing Gace. It was hilarious!! Nate came to pick me up that night to travel back to JC so I could be there for Madrigal the next day. I was able to run with 3 JCXC girls in the morning and then go on a date with Nate for the first time in over 14 months! We ate some super delish Standing Stone sandwiches and then headed out in the cold to explore town. We walked to my old church and saw the nativity scene walk around display and then afterwards we found something else awesome in town. We wandered around ready to head back to watch a Christmas movie before getting ready for the evening when we realized that Huntingdon was having a Christmas parade! Say what?! We had no idea that existed but it lasted between 20 and 30 min and we saw 2 HS bands, some police cars, floats with various Christmas themes and someone dressed as a moose with no explanation. It was pretty random and pretty great. Our day ended with Madrigal as we ate with 3 other couples and a JCXC freshman at Mimis, the classiest place in Huntingdon before hanging out at the dance and the off campus where Nate lives with 2 other guys. It was fun night to dress up and be fashionable in a way I hadn’t been in a looong time! I had gotten a dress made in Kenya with a tie made from the bottom of my dress so we matched perfectly-I loved it. The college tour ended with us driving back to PSU with our friend Kate to see Beka and a JCXC guy, Park, run a half marathon. It was a lot of fun because we ended up having 5 people to cheer for (Bek, her 2 friends, Park and Lugg (both JCXC). We drove back to good ol’ Solanco after the race and it was good we left right away because it ended up snowing a good bit-so much that Solanco had a snow day the next day! My last few days in America was great since my family had a snow day and delay so I got more time to spend with them.

Overall, I ate lots of delish food, saw lots of family and friends and although I was in shock at times with parts overwhelming-it was a grrrreat trip! The most shocking part for me was being in Walmart. There is one store here called ‘Nakumatt’ which is bigger and has a fair amount of stuff in it-but it is not really comparable to Walmart. The grocery store was also a bit overwhelming so I only went once with a list in my hand. The differences in food color, freshness, size and price is crazy! The other thing that blew me away was how I’d forgotten how many different varieties of one food type there are. For example, in Walmart I saw 10 different types of Oreos-how and why?! Or how can there be an entire looong aisle of cereal? I cant even buy cereal in Sipili. I have to travel 1.5 hours to my banking town and then I have 3 options-all expensive though so I never buy it. Another thing I noticed was transportation. I was surprised at how many cars travel with one or two people in them and how much I appreciate the public transportation available in Kenya. Some days I don’t but most I do. The matatus (14-16 passenger vans) wait to fill up before they leave so that they are always traveling with the maximum capacity (even if that means when I travel to Sipili-25+ people in the van). It’s also nice that I can get public transportation to anywhere in the country-even small towns like mine have it available. Lastly, it was crazy how many things had changed in the past 14 months. My family redid the floors, added a walk-in freezer and my sisters grew a foot each it seemed. I saw new buildings when we traveled places and there seemed to be new technology everywhere. It made me think about when I come back to America for good and how many things I’ll have to readjust to. I try not to think about all of the things that are going to be on my ‘to-do list’ for moving back but in a few months I suppose I will have to start. Oy. 

The Holidays (Part 3: Kenya with Nate)

I left America on the 11^th and it would’ve been a lot harder but I lucked out because I was traveling back with my wonderful boyfriend and we had lots of exciting plans ahead of us. It was tough leaving my family all over again but I keep thinking about how I will be home by next Christmas to see them all once more! Nate & I left Dullas and had a 12 hour layover in Amsterdam and were able to walk around, ride the train for a few hours (we couldn’t figure the system out), eat lots of sample cheese, see the flower market & a punch bug and check out the public library for a free view of the city. It was the best layover. We arrived early on the 13^th in Nairobi and traveled pretty easily back to Sipili. We hung out and caught up on sleep before we had to leave for Naivasha 2 days later for my Peace Corps training. I had mandatory training with my group for 3 full days. We basically talked about what we learned from our last year, what we wanted to work on and getting excited for the upcoming year. This was the first time PC had this training for volunteers but I think he decided to because after year one is when volunteers are more likely to early terminate (the other times are right when you arrive at site and 6 months into service). It was alright though I wasn’t a fan of being in sessions from 8-5 every day when Nate was so close and I still couldn’t see him. He ran, read, napped and watched a few movies and got to see some cool animals! We were at the Kenya Wildlife Training Service Training Institute so there were animals everywhere. We saw warthogs out the window, zebras, impalas and gazelle and Nate got to see 3 giraffes one morning. It was really good to see the other volunteers in my group too! It had been a long time and hanging out with them afterwards was lots of fun. After Naivasha we went back to Sipili to relax before my school field trip 2 days after training. Nate got to experience a day in the life at my school with the field trip. The morning started off like most during the year where I had no idea what was going on or what to expect and no one I was asking seemed to know either. We were supposed to be ready at 8 to leave at 9…we left at 11:30ish and headed with 30 kids to Land of Hope, a Laikipia Conservancy. We were supposed to arrive early enough to see some animals but we missed that being as we run on Kenyan time and the Dutch don’t hahaha. Our kids were fitted-or rather inventory was taken-for hearing aids that the group from Holland had brought. They handed out balloons and bubbles afterwards, that were a huge hit!! It was hilarious to watch the little ones try and pick up the balloons or throw them in the air-they loved it. That was pretty much the field trip though only lasted about 1.5 hours. We hopped back on the lorry (basically a truck) and headed the 2 hours back to Sipili on a very dusty and bumpy road-sitting on mattresses in the back of this truck. The kids who lived in Nyahururu left right after getting back to Sipili and so it was very long day for them with little food. The day was an adventure for sure! The next day Nate & I left for Fishermans Camp, Naivasha. We arrived and got a little tent set up for us and we waited. Nothing. An hour and a half of waiting later, we decided to eat our picnic dinner and that’s when it happened. We looked across the fence and we saw our first hippopotamus! And it was HUGE!! On Christmas Eve we left Camp and biked to Hells Gate-a beautiful park filled with lots of wildlife. We biked for about 7 hours and saw the obsidian caves as well as giraffes, zebras, gazelles, impalas, warthogs, antelope and African buffalo. The African buffalo were the scariest because they were in a humongous herd with the biggest ones in the front staring at us. There was a car that we’d passed maybe 15 min before and so we decided to wait for them to pass the buffalo and scare them away. The car arrived and they stopped to ask what we were doing and they laughed but told us it was a good idea because they can be really dangerous animals. Oh snap. We were on bikes and after the car scared them a little bit, we rode past as fast as we could and the people in the car were nice enough to wait a little way ahead to see if we made it okay. We got back to the camp and after a warm shower (the only one Nate was lucky enough to have) we decided to splurge and eat at the one restaurant on the grounds. It was sooo good and it ended with the best treat-we saw 6 hippos that night! That was one Christmas Eve experience I’ve never had before. On Christmas Day we left for Nakuru and walked around, ate some Nyama Choma (fried meat) with ugali and then finished off the night skyping Nate’s family in Pittsburgh. The next morning Nate went running and ended up running 25 min with 3 fast Kenyans out on their morning run-he was so happy! The rest of the morning, we hiked up to Menengai Crater. It’s the 2^nd largest caldera in the world I believe. It took us 2.5 hours to hike up and 2 to hike down-we definitely got our workout in for the day. We relaxed and ate lots of good fruit the rest of the day and ended that night by skyping my family! It was soo good to hear their voices and catch up! We left Nakuru for Sipili the next morning to hang out there for a few days before our New Years adventure. We left for Iten on the 30^th and it was a long travel day. It took us 4 matatus and 8 hours to get there but that was faster than we’d anticipated. When we arrived we weren’t sure where the key would be since we were staying at my friends house but she was in America. We got to the school and ended up going to the graduation party that was held at the school that evening (for people not from the deaf school) and getting a free meal and chai while the principal searched for the spare key. It was eventually found and we were able to sleep at Mackenzies house like we’d planned. Her neighbor at the school we found out is an athlete training there and he offered to take Nate with him on the easy run the next morning-jack pot! At 5:30 the next day Nate & Robert left to meet up with maybe 50 other Kenyans. Nate said they started out at a slower (its all relative) pace but by the end of it some of them were going pretty fast. He estimated they ran around 12ish miles that morning. Robert was impressed Nate stayed with them the whole time. He said he checked his watch at 30 min then 40 then 50 min and was happy to see Nate still holding on. Nate was ecstatic when he got back. Robert invited us over for chai and bread and we chatted a little while we watched some New Years celebrations on TV. Robert ran a 64, I wanna say, half marathon but aspires to run a marathon some day. The rest of the day we spent by relaxing, eating mandazi & more chai, walking around in search of the Olympic Stadium (we found out in mid-afternoon that the stadium is actually in Eldoret-45 min away) and then searching for the one track in Iten though we never found that either. It’s a little town filled to the brim with runners and it was really neat to be there again. The following day before we left Nate went running one more time. This time was a workout. They left around 8:30 and ran a one-hour workout of one min fast then one min easy. Nate kept the top group in eyesight for the first 56 min before he said he fell back a little bit and although when he got back he was tired, he still looked on top of the world. All of the Kenyans kept telling him he only needed to be there for 1-3 months and he’d be so much faster. Maybe one day we’ll go back so we can both train J We got home late that night and then had 2 days of relaxing in Sipili before Nate would fly out. He helped paint the map of Africa. I hate the ladder and so he climbed up and did the 2^nd coat on the word ‘Africa’ and repainted the blue around it and now it looks much better up top and is officially done done done!! We also visited MCs house and he gave us the full tour. He was so excited to hear that Nate is an environmental major and told him a lot of cool stuff about his farm and the plants in it. We left for Naivasha on the 5^th so that on the 6^th Nate could leave in a taxi for the airport at 3:30 am. And just like that, 3 weeks were over, time sure flies when you’re having fun!

Overall the time with Nate here was amazing!!! We had so much fun exploring and seeing new things together. I’m so happy he got to see Sipili, meet my kids briefly and just see beautiful Kenya. Sadly he is arriving back in America today-on the coldest day I hear-but school starts soon for both of us and then time will continue to fly.

Speaking of school tomorrow is the official opening day for Sipili School for the Deaf! I can’t believe my second school year is about to begin! I have no idea when we’ll have our staff meeting and we’ll pick classes or when classes will begin but so it goes. I wish all of you the best with work and school and hope you all survive the cold winter! I can’t believe it’s possible to now say that I will see you all this year since I will be home before next Christmas but I wish you all the happiest 2014 and hope it goes well for us all!

Wishing you all the best and lots of kisses from Kenya,

Love Zabet