Maasai Madness

So this weekend is midterm break - it's half of Friday through Tuesday, so it's a nice long weekend. It's Sunday morning right now, and I already have about a billion pages to blog about, so I'm going to try to do it in installments, beginning with day one right now, and hopefully finish off day two sometime today... but we'll see :) So, to begin... (and this is the least exciting one, so bear with me for the next few)

10/9/09
We had just a half day of school, so after the flag lowering ceremony (we do this each week - lower the Kenyan flag and sing the Kenyan national anthem) at 11:30, I headed home to finish packing up. I'm spending the weekend with Cassie and a couple she knows who are missionaries in Nairobi, so we catch a ride with another couple from RVA going in to town. Jenny decided to come with us for a day, so she hopped in beside us and off we went! When we got into town, we went to the Maasai Market to do a little shopping. The Maasai Market is quite an adventure in itself. There are hundreds of Kenyan vendors - some being Maasai women dressed in their Maasai blanket robes and colorful beads - who set up their "goods" and try to rip off tourists. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll end up paying at least 90-1000% more than you're supposed to. You may laugh, but it's true. They start out by giving you a price, and if you don't know what you're doing, you buy it for that price, thinking "that seems a little expensive, but it's real African, so it must be great!" You're wrong. Bargain. Bargain like you've never bargained before. My Daddy would be in heaven here, as he's a salesman and is better than anyone else in the world at bargaining. Anyways, I used my great bargaining skills and got a few Christmas and birthday presents, and found a lot of things that I'd love to buy eventually before I go home. The best thing is I get them for dirt cheap - a beautiful Maasai painting for under $10, necklaces and bracelets for about 10 cents each, purse and baby dolls for under $3... incredible, homemade real African goods for wonderful non-touristy prices :)

Anyways, after the Maasai market, Cassie's "family" - the missionary couple - came and picked us up and took us to their lovely home. They live in the nicer part of Nariobi, with guards and whatnot, and a beautiful house, with - get this - FAST wireless internet!!! We could hardly believe it as we watched webpages load in less than a second - much as they did in the U.S.!!! Wow... talk about shocking! :)

We decided on dinner at Diamond Plaza - yet another crazy experience. It's a little strip center of food places - sort of like the center court of a mall but outside - and you walk up, sit down at a table, and prepared to be overwhelmed. A representative from each food place runs up to you and shoves their menu in your face, and you just pick what you want and that person runs off and gets your food - a little too quickly for comfort! I asked for a salad, found out it wasn't the wisest decision since it's unwashed, and was lucky when they came back to tell me they were out of lettuce. However, they wanted me to still have the veggies that would've gone on it... strange? yes. So I stole someone else's food and ate that instead - pretty good.

We came back home, watched a movie, and went to bed, hardly able to sleep for excitement of the next day....

*Like I said, not too eventful, but stay tuned, because yesterday was quite possibly one of the most amazing days here as I hung out with slum kids all day...*