Note: I did not take this picture. Picture of Nairobi Bus Station.
We’re arrived safe and sound in NAIROBI, sometimes known as “Nairobbery” but the volunteer organizer, Jamie-lee, this peppy blond New Zealander, said it is all media hype (though I’m still wary). After a long haul flight to Addis Ababa via Rome (where nobody got on or off except some loud Italian cleaning crews who came on board to take our trash) and then onto Nairobi, we met up with some other people volunteering with us, and all piled into an old-school van with some serious shock-absorbers as we bounced down the pothole-filled dirt road to our temporary homestays until our volunteering starts on Monday. So far Nairobi’s outskirts strike me as a mix of the Caribbean, of India, of Beijing, of Thailand, and of Costa Rica. I haven’t shot any pictures yet because I don’t want to be SO touristy to be taking pictures of their fruit and traffic and the sign-maker because I wouldn’t do that at home, either. I guess the point is I’m not at home right now. We’re going to check out this giant Target-like shop after we log off the Internet. Check back!
Finally! my summer is starting. Working in a windowless office can really steal away your seasons. It’s about the same temperature inside year-round, and the minor difference is on my commute home I might wear a coat or not. (Well, it’s really a major difference whether I should put on 10 layers or remove 3, depending on if it’s summer or winter. Irregardless, I’m finally getting a well-deserved vacation).
Several years ago I purchased a nifty universal power adaptor. It came with various shapes and sizes of plugs in an all-inclusive little box. It allowed me to plug in anything I owned, such as a camera battery charger, and then plug into the round plugs of Europe or Asia or wherever I ventured. During my India trip, my dad let me borrow his portable hot-water boiler, which is a metal coil you stick into a cup of water and lets you boil water for tea or brushing your teeth in a questionable environment. It boiled the water within thirty seconds, which I thought was incredible.
USA Today
My travel health advisor (the one who injected me with yellow fever so I won’t get it abroad) mentioned a Cool Tool: the State Department registry. You register yourself and any upcoming trips with as much information as you’d like to give. In return, you can sign up for email alerts about travel warnings, and they’ll have your information on record if you need to be evacuated, notified, reached, or whatnot.
Oh no! It’s summertime and you have to pile the kids into the car for a roadtrip to Grandma’s. And your car doesn’t have a newfangled DVD player anchored to the ceiling! What are you going to do!
“Customer Service” is a term that truly, really, only exists in the United States and perhaps in parts of Canada. Even in sections of the U.S., it’s a loose term. In other countries, the customer is not always right. I’ve been told this in many languages, and if I didn’t understand them in that language, they’ll switch to English (their only customer service) to tell me I’m wrong. You can’t even argue, and you can’t get overly upset trying.
In preparation for our trip to Kenya and Tanzania, Jon and I went to get vaccinnated against anything our weak little American bodies can’t handle. There’s nothing like watching people in my office use toilet paper to open door handles because they’re so afraid of catching a parasite or something from their diseased colleague and then reading the CDC’s travel web site about all the wonderful worlds of bacterias and viruses we’d be exposed to while abroad.
