Weekend Fun

Man the time is flying by.  I’ve been busy both in and out of the classroom.

a few weekends ago I went to Tom’s site for pizza.  Tom has a brick bread oven that he made a few months ago and this was the second time that we made pizza.  Tom teaches at a secondary school and that particular Saturday was Parent’s day so most of the teachers were around and Tom wanted to make enough pizza for all of them. When I say we made bread, I mean that Tom mostly did all of the work and I just stirred the sauce.  Tom eventually asked if I was “good with fires” and offered to give me the duty of making a “big fire” to which I gladly accepted.  To those of you that are not familiar with brick ovens, the concept is pretty simple.

You light a fire in the oven and the fire heats up the bricks.  Just when you think the bricks are hot enough you quickly remove the fire and the remaining ashes and immediately put the bread, pizza or whatever you are baking, inside.  We made enough pizza for all of the teachers and even a few loaves of bread.  Tom had to run into a meeting so I was left with the responsibility of watching the remaining pizzas in the oven while I answered dozens of questions from his students like “Are you from the same place as Tom?  What is your mother tongue?  Why don’t you speak Kiswahili as well as Tom?”  To which I responded that I am from America but it is a big place and that Tom is from Oregon and I am from Wisconsin.  Which brought a barrage of more questions like what state?

Wis-con-sin.

Yeah, but what state? WIS-CON-SIN!

The next weekend I went to Alyssa’s site where we went to the Lewa Conservancy to watch the Safaricom Marathon.  This marathon is through a national park, the Lewa Conservancy, and is hugely popular.  If I’m not mistaken I believe Runner’s World says it is one of the “top ten marathons that you have to do.”

We woke up at 3 am on Saturday to head to the park because the race started at 7.  We managed to get a ride with a team from a nearby university through a friend that was running the race.  The bus ride brought back memories of all of the bus rides I’ve been on to go to a race, meet or game and then I realized that I was on a bus to a marathon with some of the best long distance runners in the world.  We arrived just before dusk and it was a sight to see the sunrise over the trees.  We were one of the first to arrive but soon many people were piling in.

About an hour before the race a few helicopters and small airplanes started to fly real low over the park, to scare away the animals from the course.  The runners actually have to sign a waiver that says they will not hold the organizers liable for any injuries, you know like if they got mauled by a lion.  Some other PCVs were there that actually ran in the race and it was cool to see them.  One of our Kenyan friends, Joshua, was hoping to win the race but he took 8th with a time of 2:27.  Yeah, that is ridiculous.

Then on the 4th of July weekend I made the long trip into Nairobi.  The Thursday before I was to go to a town called Nyeri to meet with the medical staff to get a flu shot (yes swine flu has made it to Kenya.)  After that I headed to Nakuru to meet up with a fellow cheesehead who was nice enough to bring some things to me from my parents.  A DVD player and a season of 24!  Then I headed into Nairobi to meet up with some volunteer friends.  It was great to see a lot of people because we never see each other.

The term ends in a few weeks so I am planning on spending the rest of my weekends here at school before I say good bye to these kids until September.