Kenya

Good afternoon from Nairobi. I am 8 hours ahead (EST) and 11 hours ahead (PST). Philly was hit with an ice storm on Saturday, so Ping and I woke up early to scrape the ice off the car and she dropped me off at the 30th Street Station in Philly to start my journey. After 1.5 hour ride into NYC, I then caught the LIRR to Jamaica Queens and transferred to the AirTran. This was a new adventure that I was unsure about, but it proved easy. After a brief period walking around JFK, we boarded the plane for the 13 hour flight to Nairobi. While long, the flight was nice. I watched Netflix, talked to my seat mate, and read some. The airlines served 3 meals and served delicious tea. I arrived in Nairobi around 11am EAT (East African Time) and Ruthie picked me up and drove me through the city pointing out important landmarks. As part of Kenyan culture, one arrives with dry goods to be received by the mother, so our first item of business was to secure the goods. We stopped by Two Rivers Mall which had a Carrefour (grocery store we also had in Italy!) where we picked up several items Mama Chiru liked. We also stopped at Java House to have a croissant and beverage before driving home to be received by Mama Chiru. After that Ruthie gave me a tour of the house, I met several members of the family and had dinner (spaghetti, cabbage, and chicken). Before bed, everyone gathers round Father Chiru as we sing hymns and read a bible verse. 

Friday, Happy Valentine's Day! Today we went to the Village Market. It's a tourist market and very typical mall that we're used to. We went today because they had the Maasai Market (changes location based on the day) to buy Kenyan sourveniers. Originally, we assumed we'd get the tourist prices, but I think we did well for ourselves. We did still ask for someone to purchase one item on our behalf since that was quoted at a bigger price than we expected. After visiting the market, Ruthie took my to her forest, Ngong Road Forest. She joined the organization back in 2019 and has been raising funds to plant and maintain the forest ever since. It was awesome getting a chance to see the forest and meet her friends. (They will start fund raising again for an April planting so I can update this with a link to donate if you'd like to help or text me if interested)
To avoid Nairobi traffic, we stopped at The Junction and walked around (another shopping center) and grabbed some pizza from Pizza Inn. I had asked to try some Kenyan fast food and she recommended Galito's, but each location is attached to another fast food type place similar to Pizza Inn. 

Saturday, Day 6: This morning we drove to Ruthie's church for her choir practice and I sat in the shade and read my novel. After practice, we drove to an organic market in Karen where they had fresh fruit and a dozen stalls with people selling jams, coffee, lotion, etc. There was also a section with BBQ, ramen, and other food for sale. It reminded me of a farmers market. After walking around and not buying anything, we decided to head back towards The Waterfront and walk around there before grabbing lunch at CJ's. While at lunch, we offered to take photos for the table next to us who were celebrating their friends birthday and they shared their cake with us! It was veery kind of them.  We are now back home relaxing after getting home after dark the past few days. 

We fed giraffes!! On Monday, we went to the Giraffe Center and fed two of the giraffes, both of which  were pregnant. We were informed that a giraffes gestation period is about 15 months.  After digging on the giraffe center website, I believe Daisy IV and Kelly were the giraffes we were feeding, and as evidence from the photo below, Daisy has excellent selfie skills. 

The giraffe center has a path way built that allows you to be at the perfect giraffe snacking height. From our vantage point, we could see 7 giraffes in total. 

As always, I've taken more photos the necessary. Online album here. 

I flew home the evening on the 19th. Ruthie and I had a very chill day mostly consisting of packing and tv. We grabbed some food at Java House (I had a pepper jerk burger) before heading to the airport. A completely new experience to me was the security check when you arrive at the airport. The driver stays in the car and drives through the main gate, while the passengers get out of the car and walk through a security check point. After he checkpoint, you reunite with the driver on the other side. Very thankful to our driver Alex as I would have been dumbfounded had Ruthie told me this and not been able to walk with me.
After a qucik 15.5 hour flight, i arrived at JFK where I took a couple trains to walk around NYC for roughly an hour before deciding it was too cold and I hung out at Penn Station waiting to get to Philly to be reunited with the furry one.