home.

after a few very long days, i am finally settled in kenya. the journey began on monday evening, with a flight to amsterdam arriving at noon on tuesday. luckily, we had a twenty hour layover in amsterdam and were able to stay in nice place for one last night. after arriving and deciding we should try and stay awake the rest of the afternoon, we went to a restaurant for lunch and quickly realized that this plan was absolutely not going to happen. new plan: go back to the hotel, set an alarm, sleep for an hour. new plan: we forget to set alarms, and sleep for six hours. oops. so after waking up around nine pm, we went out to have dinner followed by a few beers at an outdoor cafe.

the next morning we got up at six thirty in order to catch our ten twenty-five plane. after waiting in the longest security line of all time, we finally boarded the biggest plane i have ever laid eyes on. fortunately, our coach seats had little tv's in the backs of the seats in front of us. being that one guy who can't sleep on planes, i found myself in between two sleeping adults, somewhere over africa, bawling while watching 'the blind side'. lets get real here, this would happen to me. the flight went smoothly for the most part and i was blessed to get to sit next to a woman named esther, who was a native of kenya, and thanked me for the work i would soon be doing. after arriving and waiting at the airport, we were taken to a place called the shalom house for the night. the next day we had orientation and were taken to our host homes that night.

after arriving at our home, we met our host anena, who came to kenya with ivhq in 2008 and has never left. we live with two other volunteers, charlie and cheryl, and a little kenyan family consisting of salema, our cook, and two kenyan highschool students named beautiful and ben.

after waking up this morning and sitting in the common room of the house with a cup of chai tea that salema made, i could think of only two things. one, that i absolutely want to extend my stay. and two, this place that i have decided to throw myself into, is home.