First days in Nairobi

We are here!! We arrived on Friday evening and life has been a bit crazy since. As I type this, thankfully, I am the only one still suffering from jet lag. My babies are fast asleep...okay, I just heard Nathan but hopefully he will go back to sleep.

We have been blessed in so many ways! We got a huge surprise for our commissioning service in Richmond last week. We knew that our friends the Peevy's were coming up for the service but we were completely shocked to see the Maier clan walking up to our quad before the service!! The funny thing is, apparently their trip was announced in church Sunday morning so I now understand all the inquiries about whether or not we watched the service online. It was such a fun day of visiting, very emotional but extremely rewarding also. The Lord has blessed us with such sweet friends.

We were also blessed with amazingly smooth travel, although we were a bit concerned about our first flight out of Richmond. We were delayed a bit because of weight limits...when you see the picture of all of our luggage, you understand why we were concerned and thought we were the cause of the problem, as it was a very small plane. Anyway, once we took off, there were no further delays and the children did fantastic.

Here is our first picture at the Nairobi airport...

Another blessing, as we were getting all of our luggage, we realized there was no way we could get all of the luggage out of customs/baggage claim without help...we already had 3 carts filled + the stroller and there was more luggage. So I went and asked the customs officer if I could give some of the things to our friends who were meeting us there. He was so kind and allowed Jeff to come up and take a cart from us! Jeff told us he had never seen that before...thank you Lord for your mercies!!!

All of our luggage arrived safely, the only glitch was that we forgot one of our bags and Tim had to return the next day to get it.

Our apartment is very spacious and the grounds are beautiful. We have a shared backyard area and a separate playground area that is part of the guest house. The kids are enjoying the outdoor areas!  On Saturday, we went grocery shopping at the Nakumatt...

  I felt a sense of accomplishment at successfully fixing our first dinner - spaghetti...

We are now unpacked and getting acclimated. We got to go to the office today for orientation, the kids asked one of the gardeners to help them find geckos and chameleons. Apparently, he does not like critters but he was a good sport in helping them search. We had tea with the staff and had delicious banana bread and mandazis (kinda like a beignet). I saw my first avocado tree on the office grounds...it is huge and I will have to take a picture soon.

The next task is learning to drive. Who would think Tim and I need driving lessons after 25+ years of driving (no comments please!). However, there are many obstacles to my driving: they drive on the left side (not the "wrong" side), the car is manual (haven't driven one of these since high school), there are very few traffic signals & street signs, lots and lots of cars and many pedestrians. I will also get a good picture to post soon.

The team here has been very kind and generous with their time. We appreciate all of the time they are taking with us to help us acclimate.