Lightning storms, language lessons and jet lag

I'm now writing from the comfort of the Mayfield Inn, a missionary housing establishment for the country of Kenya. There are probably 20 other missionaries besides us staying here currently, from all over the world. We are staying in bunk beds, in what I can most compare to a dorm environment, we are comfortable.

We arrived at the Nairobi airport late last night (11pm) local time. I feel like I entirely lost Thursday as we left NYC Wednesday evening and after 2 long flights and a time change crawled into our beds almost immediately when we got here. Our first flight was from NYC to London which was around 7 1/2 hours. 3 of us from the Mediquest team sat together and the flight went fairly quickly. The next leg from London straight to Nairobi was an 8 hour flight and I ended up sitting next to one of the other girls and also a native Kenyan man named Steven. Steven grew up in Kenya but traveled to the United States where he attended undergrad and grad school at Boston College, he graduated with degree in computer science and came back to Kenya to live and work, he told us his family owns a coffee farm just outside the city!  One of the perks of sitting next to Steven was that he was very excited to tell us about Kenya, he was sure we would aboslutely love it here, and after hearing from him, I am too! He looked over our itinerary and commented on each clinic we will go to, and says we MUST do a safari, although I'm not sure we will have the time in our schedule or enough personal finances. Steven also gave us a Swahili lesson. We learned several words:

Jambo: Hi
Wapi Choo: Where is the bathroom?  (ALWAYS an important one!)
Habari gani?: How are you?
Nzuri: Fine
karibou: Welcome
twende: let us go
Asante sani: Thank you very much
Samahani: excuse me

...A good basic starting point I think, we learned several other things, most of which I have a hard time remembring now! Another perk about the flight from London to Kenya is that we flew over some beautiful areas.. including the Sahara dessert which is just an unbelievable expanse of sand cut through by nothing except for the Nile River, flowing north towards the sea. We also flew over an incredible lightning storm over Sudan/Ethiopia area, that was really cool to look out at from the airplane window as it lit up the sky below us.

It feels very natural to be where we are in Nairobi. I am confronted again with the familiar scent of Africa that I remember from Uganda several years ago... a mixture of dust, gasoline, burning trash and extra particulars you cant quite put your finger on. We met Kate at breakfast this morning, Kate is a nurse and she has worked in Africa for almost 30 years, her husband will meet us at the beginning of July and will continue traveling with us then. Today is our rest day, so we have been taking it easy around the compound. We also took a walk into Nairobi to exchange money and get a sense of where we were at. Most of us are quite jet lagged and will enjoy having the evening to recooperate and go to bed early in preparation for the days to come.

Excitement for tomorrow: Giraffe park and Elephant Orphanage!!