Hii ni nini?

I know everyone would rather see pictures than read text, but I'm very sorry, there is just no way for me to upload pictures right now. I'm using the internet at work and trying to be discreet about the fact that I am blogging during work hours.

So we had our first Kiswahili lesson last night. It is such a funny language. The phrase Hii ni nini means "what is this" and so far is my favorite thing to say. There is a lot of repetition in this language:

me-mimi
you-wewe
father-baba
slowly-pole pole
what-nini
brother-kaka (this is an unfortunate translation in French, although the spelling is different...)
sister-dada
he/she(they don't have gender)-yeye
we-sisi

We asked our Swahili teacher how to say you are not fine if someone asks you and you don't want to say "fine." She didn't know. They just don't say anything negative. It is really amazing.

Everyday, Chris and I are amazed at the way people live here, and I have wanted to write about it several times, but I have decided that I won't be doing that. For one thing, you really can't understand it until you see it for yourself, which is what I want everyone to do so they will come visit us:) For another thing, I never want to treat the plight of any people as a way of me having something really cool to talk about. I never want to enter a competition of who has seen the most impoverished people, you know? I want this blog to reflect the great respect and love I am developing for the people of Kenya. So when I talk to you in person I will share these things, but not here.

Tonight, we will be attending a worship time with some local missionaries. I'm so excited to have time to start making friends here and to worship the Lord with fellow Christians that speak English. Sometimes you need that!

We have started to miss home a little bit, but we are so happy to be here. We were talking this morning about how we are annoyed at some of the aspects of life over here, such as the shower having a switch on the head so you can choose either cold water or scalding hot (during my shower I just switch back and forth when it becomes either too cold or too hot to bare). Chris says that it's ok to be frustrated at times, but we need to be careful never to let our frustrations trump our thankfulness for everything we have. I have such a wise husband!