Tuesday, August 29. Nairobi
I must say it is quite nice being back. At the same time I miss living in
Lenkijape. I really hope I get to go back there again sometime.
I arrived at BCEA yesterday afternoon, and one of the first things I did was
taking a shower. For the past 5 weeks I had been washing myself with cold
water in buckets or basins, and most of the time I ended up rinsing myself
in the same water I used to wash which is soapy and slightly brown. So I
couldn't get all that clean, but it still worked and I got quite used to it.
What was nice about taking a shower yesterday was that I was the dirtiest
thing in the bathroom (except for maybe the toilet bowl). That meant if I
cleaned myself, I would stay clean for awhile. On the other hand, in places
like Lenkijape, it's hard to stay clean because everything around you is
dirty. Anyhow, I got to wash myself really well.
Also, I finally shaved. The last time I shaved was 44 days ago. When I got
back, Mrs. Kim told me that they don't allow facial hair at school (or maybe
she meant uncontrolled facial hair). So I shaved them all off. I looked at
myself in the mirror and felt like I was 5 years younger than before. I also
noticed I look more attractive when I have my glasses off, but I figured
that's because I look blurry in the mirror without my glasses (so all the
little blemishes seem to disappear).
Last night, since I had just come back from a long trip, Mrs. Kim invited me
over for dinner. She heard that I was coming back, so she got some pork and
cooked Korean food for me. I knew she's quite busy, so I didn't want her to
trouble herself so much, but I was really grateful.
It was so nice to eat some Korean food. Even if it wasn't Korean food, I
would have been so happy to eat more variety of food, especially vegetables.
In Masai Land, you would eat potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages most of the
time. Some times you would have beans, sukumawiki (kales), and maize. The
staple food here is ugali, which is like rice cake made of maize flour.
Today I got to do some cooking for myself, which was quite nice. I made some
spaghetti for the first time. I used garlic, onion, ginger, and eggplant.
The tomato sauce was a bit dark and sour, but overall it turned out really
nice. I accidentally cut my finger a little bit while cooking, but I guess
you can't learn how to cook without cutting yourself at least once.
Now that I have electricity, I should really be working on my med school
application. But at the same time, I'm so distracted because now I can do
things that I couldn't before, such as looking at and organizing pictures,
responding to e-mails, reading RSS feeds, etc.
I also found out today that I'm going to be teaching English this upcoming
term, which starts next week. I need to be making a syllabus for it. The
students don't even have textbooks, so I don't even know what to do. But I
suppose I'll find out. It seems like such a big task for me to teach a
3-month long course with a few hours every week. I'm also going to be
working on building the library catalogue, so that's going to take up a lot
of my time. So this week I should really focus on finishing up my
application.
I got a haircut today. I didn't get it all shaved though. I went to Safari
Park Hotel where there's an Ethiopian lady who knows how to cut Asian hair.
She was really slow though. I think it took about 30 minutes. A Korean
barber back home would have taken less than 15 minutes to do the same job,
probably even a bit better. The haircut itself wasn't too bad though. I
guess I'm glad I didn't have to shave my head.
There are so many things I want to write about on top of all the things I
have handwritten in my journal. And yet it seems like there's not enough
time for everything. Am I starting to get stressed out? I hope not. I had
enough for stressing out while I was in college. Oh wait, I'm still in
college, except now I'll be teaching instead of studying, and doing other
stuff at the same time. What's even worse, I'm teaching English, which is
not my forte. I suppose I know better English than most of the teachers
here, but I'm still not very confident if I can teach well. I wish the Bible
College had courses in math. I would be so glad to teach math. Couldn't math
be useful in church ministry? Even one of the books in the Bible is called
Numbers... Therefore math must be important for evangelism... Jk.
Anyhow I should get some sleep now. Speaking of sleep, it felt so good to
sleep in a cushioned bed last night. And it's big enough so that I can
stretch my arms and legs out. Although, sleeping in a sleeping bag on a very
thin mattress bed isn't too bad when you get used to it.
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