Pineapple woman friend or foe?

Whoa, two updates in one week! Unbelievable, I know.

So several weeks ago when I moved here I could only find one woman in town that sold pineapples and she was hell bent on over charging me. I refused to pay 120 shillings for a pineapple but I continued to go back and eventually got her down to the same price she charges the cook in the main house, 90 shillings. Since then I have started buying all my vegetables from her. I see her almost everyday. I don’t get the feeling that she loves me to pieces (but she will eventually… give it time) but I also don’t get the feeling that she hates me, so it’s a good situation so I’d say we went from foe to friend.

I finally feel like I’m starting to fall into a schedule which is nice. I’ve started going back to the school after lunch to tutor one of the teachers in Kenyan Sign Language. I am really glad that he has the interest in it, but I’m kind of a crappy tutor because I’m still not sure of what his main objective is, but I’m working on it. Tomorrow he is coming to my class in the morning to present the alphabet which will hopefully be really exciting. Every morning I have each of my students go the front of the room and recite the alphabet and also count as high as they can and then I write their name next to the number so they can see how they improve. They can all sign the alphabet, but only one of them can sign it without having it right in front of them which is frustrating since we do this EVERYDAY. I’m hoping though that they will be encouraged by another teacher coming to sign the alphabet.

I also found out there is a chance there will be another PCV coming to Sega. I talked to his supervisor today and it sounds like they’re having a hard time having housing. If they find it though, we will be 4 mzungus in Sega. It’ll be interesting. Balances out the Germany to America balance but throws the male to female ratio even more out of balance. On the bright side, the Germans and I have really started to get along. I went running with one of them today for the first time. I’ve never been one for running with other people because I always feel like I’m holding them up, but since I’ve never run here I didn’t want to go alone. He was super patient with me and pretty encouraging which was nice.  We seriously ran to what felt like the end of the earth. It was nice to finally get to run though. They’re talking about going again tomorrow. As long as they’re willing to deal with my slow pace I’m in.

I think the biggest challenge about being here is food. My cooking skills were somewhat limited in America but here, whoo. Yea. Every week or so I’m able to add one more dish to my menu… I’m at about 5 different things. I like them all but I know I’ll get sick of them eventually. I also eat a wider variety here than I did in America for the most part. Since being here I’ve started eating pineapples, tomatoes, oatmeal, bananas and I’m sure a variety of other things. Interesting how the body and brain just adapt. It’s like a switch flipped when I got here.

That’s all for the updates. Tomorrow should be jam packed. I’m supposed to visit a fellow teacher’s house and hopefully make it back in time for the girl’s soccer game and then possibly another run with the Germans.

As always, thanks for reading!

p.s.- Kenyans have no concept of heat so today I burnt not only my tongue but i'm pretty sure my esophagus and several other internal organs thanks to boiling hot tea.