Last Post from Africa!

Hey all!
So this last weekend I traveled to Lake Victoria and the island of Mfangano with Janna and our friend James Orwa. We made a quick trip to his homestead on the island to meet his family, see the work he is doing T.I.P.S. (which a program for orphans and widows and includes a school that is trying to be started), and just to see another part of Kenya before coming home. It was a very loong trip (a 12 hour bus ride and two boat rides), so we were pretty tired and burned (the boat rides were not shaded and silly me forgot to put on sunscreen till it was to late!) by the time we arrived. We just hung around the homestead the first day. Then on Saturday we (Janna, James, Tyler, and I) went to another part of the island and went hiking in order to find some rock paintings. A few hours later we found the paintings (if you want to know the story behind them you should ask me=) ) and then after checking those out we went to James' Grandpa's homestead. We visited that part of his family for a little bit before heading back. Then the next day we went to visit the school one more time (and saw some of the students...they are very cute by the way) and then we made the equally long journey back to Daystar. Overall it was a long, but good weekend. It was nice to see another part of Kenya (it was very beautiful!).

The rest of this week has been super low-key and quite! Most people finished their finals last week and so left over the weekend...so this week there has been barely anyone on campus. So Janna and I have been spending a lot of time in our rooms just hanging out...ah and we have watched just a feeew movies/tv shows. Haha. Anyways...today is our LAST day in Kenya-which is so crazy to think about! It has been sad having to say good-bye to all of our new friends, but with technology these days it is nice to know that we will still be able to stay in contact and even 'see' one another via skype ;) But, I am very grateful to the Lord for all of the friends that I have made since being here and I hope that I will be able to keep up these relationships.

As of now though, I am ready and excited to get back home. I am looking forward to the snow (apparently MN has been getting massive amounts of it, so I am very excited about that) and too seeing my family and friends once again! This has been an amazing journey and I am SO thankful that I have been able to have this experience of a new culture and way of life. It is weird to think that it is all only a memory now, but I am praying it will be something I never forget. Thank you to all of you who have been keeping up with this blog and for all of you who have sent prayers my way...I really appreciate it all! And I can't wait to see you all in person and share more of my experience.

One last prayer request that I will ask is for safe travels home, with no flight delays, and for a smooth transition and readjustment back into my home life.
Thank you all again, and I pray God's blessings over you this holiday season!!
Merry Christmas
<3!

Sweaty~Hot~Mombasa

So this last weekend Janna and I and two of our friends (Sheila and Caangu) traveled to Mombasa for a quick two and a half day trip...
I'll make this short and simple:
~ Long bus ride there...meet some interesting people...Mr. 9 o'clock and 12o'clock (lol)
~ Stepping out of the bus at the end I immediately began to sweat and basically did not stop until our return on Tuesday!
~ The hotel we stayed at was nice, but defiantly not a 5 star...the water was salty (we just agreed that it was the ocean water, but in our sink, haha)
~ The beach was FABULOUS:) Too many people trying to sell things and give boat rides or give swimming lessons (haha), but good no the less:)
~ Went snorkeling = Totally fun!
~ Achieved a sunburn;)
~Went to an African zoo (basically that is what it was) = pretty cool
~Went to our friends house = fun to see where she lives and meet her parents:)
~Went to Fort Jesus, which was beautiful and interesting
~Took a few times for study breaks (finals started the day after we returned! haha, great study weekend right?!)
~Watched the sunrise the last morning and once again was reminded of how beautiful our creator is! He is an amazing artist!!


~ Another long bus ride home with the bonus of a motor bike ride at the end, which was fun because we ran into some giraffes along the road:)

So to sum it up, Mombasa was a hot and sticky weekend, but a great time with friends (Jakki, Cindy, and Mary-LOL)! And I throughly enjoyed all of our beach time and marveling at the beauty God enables us to enjoy here on this earth!

If you want more details you'll just have to ask me:)
~har~

School. Plain and Simple

WELCOME TO DAYSTAR

23 November 2010
Hmm…So I believe that I am on week 16—which is crazy to think about!
It is even crazier knowing that this is my LAST week of classes!! I am always glad when I realize I have made it through one more semester of classes—it is a great feeling knowing that you made it through, but I think it is just as great to know that it is over! ;) In saying that I realize that I have yet to describe my schooling experience so far here at Daystar—please forgive me!
There are a few differences in the structure of classes here compared to how classes are structured at Bethel. For instances, at Daystar each class is held once a week and you have it for two or three hours at a time (Bethel is two-three times a week and they are 50-60 mins long). This difference has been a hard one to get used to. Mainly because it is difficult for me (and most people I assume) to sit in one class for three hours with barely any break…I get distracted, bored, tired, hungry, anxious to move…almost everything but focused! So I will be thankful to go back to the 60 min classes we have at Bethel. Another differences is the teaching style. Here at Daystar most classes are primarily lecture based and you have many distracted notes. I was really worried about this aspect before coming (because I am a horrible note-taker usually!), but it really hasn’t been that bad. Most lecturers are pretty good at making sure everyone has written down what they’ve said. You only run into trouble when you start dosing off and miss a few key sentences from the lecturer…not to say that has happened to me or anything close to that…;)
Yeah, so those are the two main differences that I thought I would highlight (if you are dying to know more you’ll just have to ask!). Overall the class experience has been all right. Although I am learning that I do not learn very productively through purely lecture based education…I am a very hands on and “how can I relate that to my life” type of learner, so this semester has been a bit boring and at times unproductive for me educationally. But, still I am grateful for the experience and hopefully my grades won’t suffer from my lack of interest in the teaching style!:)

(This bunch of buildings is where I have half of my classes...)

Oh and I don’t know who is interested, but these are the classes that I have been taking this semester: Synoptic Gospels (if I had to choose, this would be my favorite one, because it is the most applicable to my life ;p ), Christianity and Islam in Africa, The Study of Theology in an African Context, Introduction to Social Work, History Systems and Schools of Psychology, and Philosophical Foundations of Early Childhood Development and Education (total of 16 credit hours). Yep, so basically that is school in a nutshell for me☺ And I am SO glad classes are ALMOST done!! Now only finals to tackle….

~har~
May you never forget Christ’s unending and gracious Love

Hmm…My take on Mt. Kenya (hard, painful, once in a lifetime, beautiful)

10/27/10

So I am sitting at my desk in my little room here at school and it is almost 10AM (for those of you in MN it is almost 2AM…in case you were wondering;p) I went to class this Wednesday morning at 8:45 like I always do, but after waiting for about 20mins we were informed that the lecturer was not coming in (because she had a mtg to attend in another area), so class was canceled. I thought, “great, now I can go back to my room and study for the CAT (continuous assessment test) we have in this class next week”—great intentions, I know. But, if you know me, you will not be surprised to read that now I am sitting and writing this blog entry that I will post later on in my day (because I do not have internet here in my room). Procrastinating…maybe, but I always have such good reasons to procrastinate! Here me out… I was sitting at my desk studying (so I did study a little) and listening to some worship songs (normal way I study). Then I started feeling the cool breeze blow in my window, mixed with the faint smell of flowers that are in front of my hostel and combined with the quite sounds of my music and the beautiful sunshine that is outside, I decided that my time would be better used writing…because I have not been good at keeping up with my blog lately! So, I gave in and feeling very confident in my decision to hold off on my studying until a later time in my day, I began writing… I think a very wise decision. ☺

Well, since I am taking the time to write, I’ll write about the main event since my last post…the promised Mt. Kenya adventure! Haha (if you don’t already know you will understand why I’m laughing later on…)
So, to start it of I’ll start with two words that explain this trip perfectly: Terribly beautiful (as expressed by Janna while we were in the midst of the trip). If you know me, you know I get wordy, so I will try my best to do a simple summary of my time on the mountain and if you want more details I can tell you in full when I get home☺
So we went over Daystars recess (break), which was Oct. 18-20. We left the afternoon of Friday (15th) and got to the base of the mountain by that evening. When we arrived to the camp site we started the process of setting up our tents (two for the 5 guys, one for Janna and I, and one for the porters on our climb). Little did we know that not all of the tents had there parts…so, the porters ended up sleeping without a tent, while the rest of the group used the three we did have. On Saturday we left close to noon and hiked until we reached our next camp site (at 10,000ft) at 4:30. The day held a lot of hills, an increasing altitude, and quite a bit of cold rain (which caused a bit of mud) and cold weather. We spent the rest of the day hanging our clothes up to dry them, setting up camp, getting into dry clothes, playing a card game, and eating dinner before heading to bed at 8pm. Sunday we began climbing around 9am. It was a looong day of hiking up even higher hills and into a higher altitude. We hiked along a road at the beginning, then as we got further up the mountain we found ourselves hiking up a ‘path’ that was basically a waterfall (when the rain came) and also through a bog (lots of wet grass where you never knew if you were stepping on solid ground or sinking ground!). We reached the next camp (at 14,200ft!) by 4-4:30pm. Thankfully we were able to sleep in the bunkhouse that was there (it would have been waaay to cold and wet to sleep in our little tents!).
Monday was the day we hiked to the peak. It had rained the majority of our hike the day before (I think I forgot to mention that), and since it was so cold out (probably 20-30 degrees F) they did not really dry over night like we hoped they would…so we layered on our wet clothes and started our hike at 7:30. We were told it would take about 3 hours to get up there and 30mins to get down…haha, it took about twice as long. We hiked up for about 4-5 hours and made it to the peak (which was about 15, 000ft!) around 11:30! It was an amazing feeling being able to make it up there and I am so thankful that our whole group (5 guys, 2 girls, + one porter) made it! We took time to take pictures of our achievement and rest before starting the climb back to camp. It would have been ideal if we could have made it down in 30mins…seeing as we were all exhausted and starting to feel sore from all of our climbing thus far. But, we went down a different way than we came up, so after about an hour of going down the mountain (which was relatively easy), we were told that we needed to go up once more… Hmm, may seem simple, but we were all soo tired by this point and we had run out of water and had not eaten since breakfast that morning at 6:30…so we were really not up for this ‘last’ climb up. It took about an hour to climb up. A few of the guys went ahead and got there first, while our leader Mr. Misigua, Janna, and I brought up the rear. We finally made it up and everyone was sooo tired! But, so happy to be done with the difficulties of going up the mountain. After resting and refilling our waters (thanks to our wonderful porter!) we finished the climb down to the camp site. Thankfully the rain held off that day until we were 5 mins from the bunkhouse, so we did not get super wet!
Our final day was Tuesday, this was meant to be our easiest day of hiking because we were going down the mountain. So I was looking forward to the simplicity of that. Unfortunately my feet had blisters from the day before and my ankles were sore from my boots, so this day was not as simple as I was hoping it to be. I was great the first leg of the hike, but then the rain started and we got back to the bog and ‘waterfall’. By this point the rain was really not my friend…It was making our way down the mountain colder and slower...although we finally made it back down to the gate by about 5pm.
The summary of this day: Sore feet, Tired, Cold, Wet, Great People!, Learning experience, Funny-Elephants, Stressful, Hard,...but in the end worth it!

Anyways…as I am good at doing, another long post.
I hope you enjoyed it though☺
So yeah, that is my story…in a rather large nutshell ;)

har

What is to come...

Okay, so I got back from my Mt. Kenya climb on Tuesday night, but seeing as I have a LOT of homework to get done in the next 3 days I will have to delay my post on that adventure. So it will be coming in a week or so!

Also, one of my roommates mentioned last night that we only have 5 more weeks of classes left until finals start! That is CRAZY! It is so hard to believe that I have only about 8 weeks left here in Kenya... I have been learning so much and this has been such a growing experience for me. I want to thank all of you for keeping up with me as I have been away!

I hope that all of you are doing well and if anyone has something I can be praying for let me know, I love keeping people in my prayers especially when I am so far away :)

~Love you all and you are each such a blessing in my life~
har

And...Pictures Too

So here are some pictures that relate to the previous post...

These are from Goodness's birthday:
Telling their life story...

Being washed :)


And here are some from my birthday:
This was after the trash can full of water. Raf, was not satisfied with my level of wetness so he needed to pour a water bottle on me as well...haha

Afterward...with the people who got me and the trash can that had the water in it...


Here is the Korean meal we ate (SO good!)


This is the lovely family that we stayed with for our weekend with Lucy


Me and Janna playing around with the boys, Kaleb and Christian (they were SO cute!)


Okay well this is it for now...I will be posting more on FB later this weekend probably, so if you want you can check those out too.
Later!

A Lot to Tell!

Entry #9 (10/6/10)

Ah it’s been so long since my last REAL post! I have so much to tell, so bare with me ;)!

So the first things to write about are my recent church experiences here in Kenya. In September Janna, Nick, and I went to church with Frank (who is working here at the Daystar offices in Kenya for the next year, but who usually is staff at the Daystar USA campus office). He took us to his home church, which on the east side of Nairobi (in Bura Bura), so we were able to meet his parents and one of his younger brothers (he has nine siblings!). They were very sweet and they seemed pleased that we took the time to visit their church and to meet them.

Once we arrived at the church we were greeted by some of his friends and then we sat in on the senior high worship service for a few minuets. After a few minuets we headed into the pastors office and chatted with him. Then we sat in on the children’s service for a few minuets and here we each introduced ourselves and then the kids sang us a song (they were so precious!). Leaving their service Frank gave us a small tour of the church grounds, then we went in for the actual church service. We were told the service would be all in Kiswahili, so we were prepared not to understand anything! Haha, a common occurrence since being here ;) Although instead of a sermon the pastor was feeling lead to pray for his congregation, so he took the service time (about 2 hours I believe) to pray for anyone who came up to the front. It was an experience I haven’t had before. As he (and the rest of the pastors of the church) was praying for individuals the worship songs continued. I enjoyed having the new experience of seeing how the Lord was leading the pastor to pray and how he responded to that leading.
Overall the experience at Frank’s church was a good one and I’m sure if I was invited again I would go.

The next Sunday the three of us went to the Korean church that is in Nairobi. This was the first time that the three of us had to take a matato on our own and I am happy to say that everything went well! We meet Troy, Daniel, and Sarah—the three Korean exchange students at Daystar. So although the whole service was in Korean (which in case you are unaware—I don’t speak Korean) it was still a very fun experience. Since one of the days prior to that Sunday was the Korean Thanksgiving, they had a large brunch of all different types of Korean food after church—so we happily joined! It was great food and I would highly recommend trying Korean food if you have had the opportunity.
After eating we hung out at church for a bit, then Sarah took Janna and I to one of her Korean friends apartments. Once there we just hung out and talked with some of the girls from the church until we had to catch the bus back to Athi-River campus.

Okay now the second main event(s) to write about: Birthdays.
Here in Kenya the have a tradition of ‘washing’ you on your birthday. Meaning your friends throw water on you when you are least expecting it. I was told that it symbolizes washing away the old year to bring in the new year.

So my first experience of this was with my friend Goodness’s birthday. Her and her twin brother had their birthday on the 25th of September. So that night a few of us got together in the PAC court (a part of campus) to enjoy cake (which was a surprise for them) and ice cream together. Little did they know we had a big surprise for them… As they were sitting and telling us their life story (a cleaver distraction technique that one of the group members made up), there happened to be two males quietly lugging a trash can full of water behind them. After making sure their electronics were out of their vicinity they were surprised with a very cold washing! They had no idea it was coming so it turned out perfect!

A few days late was my birthday (the 28th). I spent the whole day paranoid! I knew that my friends would not let me get away with a dry day, so I was anticipating my washing the whole day! I had a long day of paranoia because my washing did not come until that evening. It was after soccer practice, while Janna, Goodness, and I were walking back to the hostels (later than usual…). As we were walking towards the dinning hall I was very surprised when Nick and Rafael (a student here at Daystar) snuck up behind me and dumped a very large amount of water on me! The whole rest of the walk back to the hostel was very uncomfortable…seeing as I felt like I had just had a huge accident in my pants and my workout shorts kept sticking to my legs, haha. But, it was a fun experience!
The rest of the night consisted of a very needed shower, dinner made by my friend Raija, and an ice cream cone that we went off campus to purchase. It was a very good day!:)

The following Friday was Nick’s birthday…although sadly Janna and I were off campus so we were not a part of it. But I heard friends did manage to get him semi wet (he was ducking out on them every time they tried!), so I am glad he had the experience too ;) Then at the end of this month (the 23rd) is Janna’s birthday…so I’ll let you know how that goes!

Okay so I know this is getting looong, but I only have one more thing to write about!

This last weekend Janna and I spent with our friend Lucy. Lucy took us to her hometown of Thika (which is about an hour or so matato ride outside of Nairobi). Although on Friday we just spent the night in Nairobi at her sisters apartment. It was nice to see where they lived (they are not much older than me, one sister is 23 and the other 25). It was a nice place, simple with the amenities that one needs. That night we just hung out. Her sister made us dinner, and we chatted for a bit, then watched a movie and then headed to bed. On Saturday we headed into Thika. In Thika we stayed with Lucy’s friend Fusta and her husband and kids (which their kids are SOO adorable). They are living at a children’s home with her husband’s mom at the moment, so we saw a few of the kids and they are super cute! That day we went into Thika and saw Fusta’s shop (which she is just getting started, she’s only had it for about 4 months) and we bought a few things from her (here and her husband make all of their items). Afterward they took us into Thika and just showed us around. Later on we had lunch at a café type restaurant, where I had chips masala (which are French fries with a type of tomatoe sauce all over them)…it was pretty good, but I think I will be very tired of chips by the time I come home! (We have them quite often on campus for meals). After lunch Janna and I went with Fusta to the grocery store to buy dinner supplies. Then we went back to their place and Fusta taught Janna and I how to make Kachumbari (a type of vegetable salad) and Pilau Masala (a type of rice). We wrote down the recipe hoping to be able to make it when we return home! The dinner was VERY good!
The next day we went to church with Lucy and Fusta’s family and then we had a quick lunch before heading back into Nairobi and catching the 5 o’clock bus back to campus.
All in all it was a very good weekend. I met some great people, learned how to cook great food, and saw more of Kenya☺

Well, that is what I have been up to the past month! I hope it wasn’t too long to get through for those of you who made it through ;)

To come: a blog about my adventure climbing Mt. Kenya (that will be happening Oct. 15th-20th). Hopefully I make it through the experience to write about it ;)

Okay Love you all and thanks for keeping up with me!
har