The amount of attention you get as a white person in Kenya triples if you take a giraffe on a motorbike

SCHOOL:
I greeted the kids entirely in kiswahili last Thursday, which they found hilarious. When you walk into the classroom for the first time each day they all stand up and chant 'good morning teacher'. Just to show off my kiswahili, here is how the conversation went:
--Kids: Gooooood Morning Teacher
--Me: Good morning class. Habari za asubuhi? (how is the morning?)
-- Kids: Nzuri sana mwalimu, natena karibu. Shikamoo mwalimu? (Very fine teacher, welcome again. 'Shikamoo' is a respectful greeting for people older than you)
--Me: Marahaba wanafunzi. Keti chini. (response to 'Shikamoo', sit down)
--Kids: Asante sana mwalimu (Thank you teacher)
And so they all sat down, grinned and clapped for me :)

I've also picked up a lot more random lessons; I'm now teaching 3 different maths classes, 1 English, millions of P.E. and 1 science. I've been asked to take a lesson on animals 'removing waste', in which I have to draw pictures of various different animals pooing on the blackboard and ask a group of 9-10 year olds to draw them. It's gonna be hilarious.NIGHT OUT:
We all went out on Saturday night for my birthday, dressed in lots of different coloured clothing items. The idea was to all swap clothes until we were each just one colour by the end of the evening, but everyone had drunk a little too much to remember such a complicated theme so it didn't really work! We started at Taidys, spoke to some random Kenyans as usual, everyone marvelled at Amy and I's self-decorated white hats, and then went to Summit by motorbike. Got attacked by Nick (very drunk already) when I arrived, DANCED for a few hours without really stopping, then suddenly someone reminded me that we'd said we would jump in the swimming pool at Summit on my birthday! Now the swimming pool is technically closed at 2am, and you have to have done some extra exploring of the back-alleys of Summit to know where it is, but thankfully we have done our share of exploring Summit, and so ran through and leapt into the pool :D It was AMAZING. But suddenly the entire group of Summit's security guards appeared and told us sternly to get out of the pool, despite us having asked two of them if it was okay for us to swim before jumping in. They locked us in the pool area and a huge long argument ensued, ending in them threatening to call the police and charge us a fortune, until a Kenyan friend of ours paid them something and we stormed out,
screaming that we would never be coming to Summit again!

So overall an extremely eventful evening!

BIRTHDAY:
I had a really lovely day :) I woke up to open some extremely exciting post from Louise and my family, then I went to school, happily taking photos of anything and everything on the way there (NEW CAMERA!), and taught English and took Standard 3 for P.E. (fun, did skipping with them). My class remembered it was my birthday and all sang happy birthday to me as I walked into the classroom; it was so sweet. I had lovely phonecalls from the guys in Hawaii and from Rebecca :) Annie and I left school at lunchtime and went to the most expensive cafe in Nakuru (still cheaper than Starbucks) for the cheesy chips and mocha fudge cake that I finally had an excuse to buy. I stopped off at the souvenir market to say hey to my market friends and bumped into Nick, who presented me with an enormous wooden giraffe as a present from him and Rebecca. LOVE IT.

Amy, Annie and I went to the orphanage in the afternoon, which was equally lovely as they all sang to me and Amy gave me a lush book of lots of photos from Kenya and drawings by all the children at the orphanage for me. I'd discovered that my favourite girl, Becky, didn't know when her birthday was (she estimates her age at between 9 and 10) and so I told her she could share my birthday, which she loved. I gave her a photo of the two of us as a present :) The kids loved my giraffe and carted it around, taking photos of it everywhere in the orphanage, until I got it back at the end and it had a broken ear! Poor Mr Twiglet (as he's now named).We went straight from the orphanage to Taidys, where I met all my friends and we had a big meal together :) Annie gave me a beautiful present: a hanging string of photos from the last 4 months, with birthday messages from all my friends on the back. We all chatted and laughed and had loads of fun :)

I finally finished the day by taking my giraffe on a motorbike home. This was hilarious; I attracted so many funny looks from passing matatus and had quite a few "give me that giraffe"s. No! It's mine! I put all my lovely cards on the wall, hung up my photo thingy, talked to my family and propped Mr Twiglet up at the end of my bed before curling up in my Masai blanket and sleeping :)