so wow, the flight and lay overs were brutal. we were so tired, excited and everything in between. we had like probably 5 hours of sleep (well me) during those 2 days. so yea, it's amazing here. the weather is so different. i would say it's a little more humid than hawaii but boy is it beautiful. people here are friendly and i am learning swahili surely but slowly. so my volunteer placement is at mutamaimi child care where kids are orphaned from parents who died of AIDS, broken homes, and all of the above. kids from the neighborhood come by just to play. it was my first day volunteering and what i did was teach them basic english stuff. i taught them how to spell easy to mediocre words. then we played soccer and their version of duck duck goose. it was a lot of fun and a lot of the kids just hung on to me for dear life. i am the only one there at the moment. ayla is joining me next week. we can go visit other placements and i was thinking the womens center, saint joseph's hospital and the center for the disabled. the kids here are amazing so full of hope and joy. i am paranoid as poop because of AIDS, Malaria, mango flies and other bugs. wow... i dunno. the first thing i did here was rinse with tap water after they told us not to. apparently diarrhea happens to tourists here. it made me realize that we really do take simple things like clean water for granted. so we don't have clean water but we have bottled water up the wazzoo. Doug said i should be fine and i know for some of you that is not reassurance enough. i must say the funniest thing happened to me this morning. i went to use the bathroom cuz my bladder was going to explode and when i flushed the toilet a lizard totally freaked out while it was hurled into the air by the water and dissapeared into the abyss that is the hole/sewage. it startled me like non other but it was funny as heck. we have been here for almost 2 hole days and it feels like we have been here for a week or two. the days go by really really slow here. you can do a lot but it's just so hot it's hard to just go out into the sun but we do it anyways. out with a bottle of water so we don't die. so yea the flight was long, it's hard to sleep on plane with babies crying and i dunno. it will be a little better when we get back. but yea... we don't have internet and i think we can't get incoming calls either. so im sitting here at an internet caffee and my time is almost up. i am thinking about getting stuff for people... i will be writting again in a couple of days. bye! ps- i think i am going to gain more weight than lose! it's so gorgeous here and the food is amazing! | 
