Too much STUFF

Basically I have done a lot in the last few weeks; my Dad came out and it was really lovely to see him :)

Main events were:

-- Hyperactive Children - Dad came to the school and orphanage to see what on earth I'm actually doing out here in the African sun and watched my English lesson (observing that the kids here are more obedient than in England; I partially agree but they are also very good at finding sneaky ways to hide the fact they haven't done their homework) and P.E. lesson (i.e. lots of kids running screaming at each other under the guise of 'the hokey-cokey'). I had much fun watching his reaction as he walked into my classroom and was greeted by a screaming-excitable-chorus of "GOOD MORNING TEACHER!" by sixty children. They do this every morning but it's a little overwhelming the first time. The orphanage was nice and relaxed, Dad played football with the older boys whilst I did some more parading round the building with small girls on my back. I think he did realise though how much more could be done with some more money; the 'football' was actually a ball of rubbish cleverly bundled together and the classes of sixty - eighty are an insane number, an excuse that the Kenyan teachers use to hit and generally abuse (there are some seriously horrible cases here) the children, under the idea that it's the only way they're controllable.

-- Cycling Uphill Through a Desert - although good practice for my insane 70km bike ride, this was rather painful. Basically we went to Hell's Gate, a big national park with lots of zebras and giraffes and warthogs wandering freely around in the wild, and cycled 9km down to this fantastic gorge with boiling hot spring waterfalls in it :) The landscape was amazing, it was like going back to some prehistoric time with all these enormous raw faces of rock. It was so good, but the journey of 9km back to the main gate, uphill, through sand and with bikes that had minds of their own was less enjoyable.

-- Masai Mara - we spent 3 days here, seeing more lions, cheetahs, elephants (fifty in one group!), hippos, crocodiles, buffaloes and just about everything OTHER than a leopard. We told our driver that we particularly wanted to see one, and this may have been a mistake as we spent rather a long time playing an enormous game of 'Where's Wally', only over 2500 sq km of the Masai Mara, peering into every tree looking for an extremely elusive animal. However, the landscape there is beautiful so it was lovely just being there again.

-- The Discovery that I am Allergic to the Masai Mara - I spent a rather unenjoyable day travelling for 7 hours in a safari van from the Masai Mara to Nairobi feeling extremely ill, finally resulting in a nice visit to Nairobi Hospital to get another injection and lots and lots of tablets. Kenya is really not the place to be ill; the roads are bumpy and and bounce you up and down all the time and there are an awful lot of extremely nasty smells around. BUT, there was a highlight to this as I got to watch House and Scrubs for the first time in 2.5 months whilst waiting for test results in the hospital. Woo!

-- Cheetahs and FOOD - Yesterday Dad and I went to a safari walk, which was basically a rather animal-less zoo, but was awesome as they had a tame cheetah, which we went in and cuddled and stroked :) And the FOOD note is simply because I had SO much food, everywhere, and REAL food like cake and pizza and actual protein.

I'm now back in Nakuru, having been into school this morning to see where my class had got to in English (my class screamed and cheered when they saw I was back, it was so sweet), catching up on lots of rather eventful gossip from my friends from the last week and trying to plan this mad sponsored bike ride we've got ourselves into.