Hey look! Pictures!

ahoy friends and various loved ones! Happy Thanksgiving! i didn't realize it was the drunkest of all holidays until my mom told me that you all had Monday off, lucky! i'm sitting at work, bored and updating my blog, but trust me, i'd much rather be fighting off an Oktoberfest hangover. Sigh! Such is life! Enjoy some extra turkey for me!

First off, i've been getting copious complaints that i haven't been taking enough photos, but i promise to get better! i keep thinking that i have enough time and i'll take photos later, but time is FLYING! It's already been a month, so it's about time i get my butt in gear! Heres a couple a few to whet your appetite, i'll give a little description at the end so y'all know what you're looking at. 

So let's get right into the weekend. Chronologically? i think so!

Friday: i came home from work and felt particularly ambitious in the culinary department. Most of you should know how hilariously little cooking skills i have (they're pretty much limited to boiling pasta and frying eggs...) but i thought "NO! i will be a renaissance woman and learn!" So. i had bought some pasta the week before and proceeded to go to the store to buy some ingredients because in my ambition, i thought it would be a good idea to try and make my own sauce (!!) So i start boiling the pasta and start noticing little black dots floating at the top of the water. I think "hm. odd." and begin an investigation. i fish out the floating dots and inspect them nice and closely, at which point i notice said floating dots have LEGS. Yep. They were BUGS. i looked back in the pasta bag and they were CRAWLING ALL OVER the left over pasta. Do i even need to tell you that i made pasta the week before from the same package? VOMIT!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, i threw the thing out (i checked the shelf where the bag was sitting but i didn't see any bugs crawling around, so they must've already been in the package when i bought it. The pasta's imported from Italy so the little suckers probably came on board sometime during the shipping process? Anyways, that's what i tell myself to keep from crying...) So that was Friday. i ended up getting a wicked headache (probably stress-related...THERE WERE BUGS IN MY FOOD!!!) Ugh. The amount of bug-related experiences i'm having here is just phenomenal. Gross!

So. Let's move, i'm getting queasy just thinking about everything that's creepy and crawly here...Saturday: A work colleague of mine, Joel, had invited me to spend the day with him on Saturday. We went to the Maasai market in the city centre but it was packed and hot and huge, so i didn't buy anything and we left fairly quickly because it was getting a touch claustrophobic...Joel lives with his sister and he had invited me to her house for lunch. Joel's sister is a teacher (not the most financially secure job in Kenya) and her husband had passed in the 1990s. Since then, she's raised 6 kids of her own and put them all through high school and college (after primary school, you gotta pay for further schooling and it don't come cheap). Anyways, they all still live with her (i'm not 100% about their ages but i would guess they're all between 18 and 32). She also has Joel living with her, as well as a whole bunch of nieces and nephews. AND a few of these guys have little kids of their own. Crazy much? Oh yeah. It was pretty interesting though to see how normal Nairobi citizens live and i had a very nice chat with Joel's sister (that's her in the photo with the kids on our laps). She lamented to me about having so many children, all of whom are university-educated and all of whom cannot find employment. That's unfortunately the sad reality in Kenya, due to nepotism and corruption, it's very hard to find a job, even if you have the most perfect qualifications. Shitty. 

So after this lovely evening, Joel and i headed to the CD release party of a local artist, Lady Moureen (she's in one of the performance photos, as well as in the one with me). What a crazy time! There was a bunch of traditional african music groups and it was wicked to go to something like this that wasn't aimed at tourists (and trust me. it wasn't aimed at tourists. i was the only white person out of hundreds, but more on that later). At first every one was sitting and it was a little low-key, but once the all-inclusive alcohol started rolling in, dear LORD did people unwind! Everyone was on the dance floor, dancing their little hearts out. There was also a bunch of traditional dancers there and let me tell you folks. In no way, shape or form could white people ever dance like that. EVER. Even the guys were shaking their butts in ways that i never thought a man could shake a butt in. It was insane! Needless to say, there was no way my dancing queen heart was going to sit this out, but there was also no way i was going to embarrass the dancing skills of my entire race, so i did the only logical thing that could be done at the time: DRANK. Oh Lordy did i drink. It was also a bit odd being the only white person. The MCs of the event kept pointing me out and saying "Mzungu this, Mzungu that" It was funny and cute the first couple times but after the 20th time, i had the urge to stand up and yell "OKAY! EVERYONE HERE GETS IT! I'M WHITE! LET'S MOVE ON!" i even got dragged on stage at one point and was tomato red the entire time. It was all in good fun though, and it didn't really become a problem until waaaay late in the evening when people were super hammered and started getting grabby with the mzungu. Not cool, but i kept my shit together and went home around 3-4am. Overall, a super fun evening! i got drunk, danced my booty off (while trying to explain to a new friend that i had made that was trying to show me how to shake my booty the africa way that it's not a problem of lack of knowledge, it's more that my hips and booty muscles are not disjointed enough for me to move like that. The perils of being a white girl!) and i had an authentic african music experience. Couldn't ask for more!

And lastly, Sunday! Joanna came over to my house and spent some time having coffee. We wandered over to the Maasai market by my house (i included the only photo i have of it, and i know it's pretty crappy but its the only one i could take because if you try to take photos inside, you get hounded and people make you buy stuff...) So anyways, i again spent way more money than i intended on (i bought a bunch of bracelets, a Maasai blanket, a carving of a Maasai family and other little trinkets. i have nooo idea how i'm gonna get this all back and stay within the 23 kilo suitcase limit...) We dropped into the mall (i wanted to check out bathing suits as i forgot mine at home, but i didn't have enough money left to buy the one i liked. Sigh, this means that i'll have to go shopping again this week. How tragic!) We then went to this cute little restaurant by my house called Sipper's, and then we bought a bottle of wine and set off on our pineapple adventure. i'd never attempted to slice a pineapple and i thought it would be quite tough, but it actually wasn't so bad! Good thing too, cuz pineapples are everywhere here and they're super tasty. And did you all know that pineapples grow in the ground??! Yep, Joanna was laughing at how everyone in Canada thought that they grew on trees and i was like "uugh, they don't??" Yep, apparently if you twist the crown off the pineapple and stick it in the ground, a pineapple will grow out of it. i'll have to try this back home in my parent's backyard....

Anyways, what a lovely weekend it was indeed! Wonderful people, wonderful experiences, couldn't ask for more! 

So. Another mammoth entry! i gotta learn to keep the verbosity in check, my bad! i don't have too many plans for the week, i'm at the office again this week. Tomorrow night (Tuesday) i'm heading to Carnivore with Joanna and a few other interns from AUCC. Carnivore is the most famous restaurant in Kenya, famous because they once used to serve game meat like zebra, crocodile, camel, etc. i say "used to" because i looked up online reviews and apparently they're not allowed to serve most game meat anymore and most of the reviews i read said that you can sometimes get ostrich meat, but that's about it. This is pretty shitty as i was waaay looking forward to eating me some zebra, but ah well! i'm sure it's still going to be a great time as the restaurant in and of itself sounds pretty crazy (waiters serving meat off of traditional Maasai swords, etc). i'll make sure to take photos and let you all know!

Oh, speaking of photos, i promised to tell you what was in all the photos. 

• Saturday night at the show. i got pulled on stage and i had no idea what was going on as they were talking in Swahili and people kept laughing (hopefully not at me!) Note how red my face is...
• Joanna attempting to slice the pineapple. In hindsight, the wine was an awesome idea.
• These are out of order as the photo below should come first. Note how hard i'm trying to twist off the crown! And now note the look of pure satisfaction that i've succeeded. Pineapple's are my bitch!
• Joanna and myself, walking through mah 'hood to the market
• One of the performers on Saturday night. Check out the head gear!
• Fish. Lots and lots of fish.
• Lady Moureen performing
• Joel's sister, myself, and a couple of the kiddies
• ME! 
• The building where the CCBI offices are located. The downstairs is a security company, the upstairs is CCBI
• Road to work. On the left you can see a sign for "Spur Security," that's the gate to the building
• i snapped a few shots of Nairobi city center. It's not too interesting, but these are a few of the nicer bits
• City center again
• ME! Hard at work...note my workstation: coffee, macbook, and a report on post-election violence. And that's about all i need to be satisfied!
• Maasai Market
• ME! And the Lady!

And i'm out! Love love love you all!