Kenya Update 1/4/10 - "Happy New Year!" or "Wild Animals and Birthday Cheese"

I have been having a great time as 2009 departs and as I grow accustomed to 2010. From this point on, we will be able to say it is "two thousand and ten" or "twenty ten". This will not change for 90 years, we will always have 2 ways to describe the date. My friend Jessica made a comment about the relativity of time that still has me thinking. At this point in my life, 1 year represents 1/23 of my life. When I was young (say, 4 years old), 1 year represented 1/4 of my life. Thus, the years are getting shorter and shorter.

Anyway - I have seen some animals and spent some time with good people the last few days of 2009 and these first few days of 2010. On New Years Eve we got together with the Pitts family, Riao Yi and his wife, the Dibos and myself to go to the Giraffe Center in Karen. We were able to feed the giraffes, pet them and kiss them which looks much more gross than it is, don't worry! After the giraffe center we hustled over to the Nairobi National Park to see the baby elephants at the elephant orphanage. They were cute and dirty, and the sun was hot!

The rest of New Years Eve was very fun as well, we had dinner at the Pitts and lit off ghetto firecrackers and had a silly dance party in the driveway under a nearly full moon. It was super fun! Also, Charles spent the night in my flat, which is always a good time, though we went to be early (big plans for New Years Day...)

On New Years Day, we piled into the Pitts car at 5:30 am to go to Amboseli National Park down close to Tanzania and Mount Kilimanjaro. It was such a cool trip, we saw so many animals: buffalos, flamingos, hippos, monkeys, baboons, and of course elephants!!! I got some great pictures, and it was a LONG day. So long in fact, that we spent the night at the field office (we didn't get back till 10:30 pm)

The following day (Saturday) we went out for breakfast and spontaneously decided to go to the theater to see Avatar. I'm SO glad we did that, the movie was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. It satisfied me entirely, it had everything I like in movies and pushed all my buttons for awesomeness. After the movie I took it easy and prepped for the coming week. This week, new students are moving in, and returning students are moving in on Wednesday.

On Sunday the Crawfords took me out for lunch for my "birthday". It was great, they also gave me some cheese that has been passed around, which I am very excited about. I miss cheese.

These are links to pictures I posted on Picasa from the Giraffe Center, Elephant Orphanage, and our trip to Amboseli. Enjoy!

Giraffes and Baby Elephants!

Amboseli National Game Park