Hey guys,

So here goes my first blog entry...I'm in Mombasa! Woop!

I've been here for a week now and am having an amazing time. The kids at the orphanage are really great and I'm enjoying getting to spend a lot of time with them and getting to know them all.

I go to school for around 9 unless I'm taking the class when I have to be there at 8. School is really long at New Hope, some of them start at 6.30 and don't finish till 5.30pm! How crazy is that?! And they have to walk half an hour or so to school in the morning, back to the orphanage for lunch and then back again for the second half of the day. But they're happy and well looked after which is great to see. They don't have much and about 10 or so sleep in each of the three rooms with only 3 or 4 beds but they look after each other really well and each of them has great character. At the school, other kids from the community go as well so altogether there are about 320 pupils. Its a really big school with 11 classes and there are a lot of kids to meet. Their faces light up when they see one of the volunteers and they all want to shake your hand and talk to you. It makes you feel very welcome compared to being stared at everywhere else in the city. There are hardly any white people at all - they call them Muzungu's so everywhere I walk I can hear people saying 'Muzungu Muzungu Muzungu' all the time. And if you go to the poorer areas, all the tiny little children that are with their parents shout at you as you pass by saying the only English they know... 'How are you? How are you? How are you?' lol.

So, the house I'm staying at is nice, its an apartment on the Island and there are two people that live there, Andrew and Mary but people come and go all the time. At the moment I have a room to myself with a huge wardrobe and a double bed! I feel very blessed and they look after me very well. I get a good breakfast in the morning before I go to school and then dinner when I get home. Mary is the maid there and is about my age and studying IT. We get on really well and have chatted loads since I've been here. She does all the house work so I've been helping her cook when I get home in time to be able to. The food is ok, we have beef most days with either rice or mash (with banana's??) or ugali or chipati. Mary says she and Andrew will teach me how to make chipati one of the days and she taught me how to eat ugali properly with my hands and rolling it to pick up the beef and greens :)

I get a matatu every day to the school, I have to walk to the route that they go and then I just wait till one drives passed thats going to Mishomoroni where the school is. Driving here is absolute madness, they hardly have any traffic lights, they never stop for pedestrians and they're constantly honking their horns all the time. The matutu's have a driver and a conductor who spends most of his time hanging out of the side of the mini bus shouting at passers by to get people to get on. But everyone is friendly here, especially to Muzungu's so its not that bad once you've worked out where to get on and off, lol.

I'm trying to learn as much swahili as I can while I'm out here. Mary is teaching me quite a lot including the important words like Nyamazi - quiet, Kaa kwa kiti - sit on your seat, and other things that are helpful when teaching the kids. The kids are teaching me loads as well, especially the little ones that just talk and talk at you until you understand (or don't) coz they don't know very much English at all. I'm already starting to sound like them too, they have such cute Kenyan accents, I love the way they roll their r's and even the way they recite the alphabet sounds cute. And everytime a student does something like reciting the other kids all sing to them 'Well done, well done, try again another day a very good girl!' While the child being sung to swings their hips and looks very proud of themselves at the front - very cute! I've been teaching the little ones this week, some of them are as young as 3! so they mostly say their abc's, 123's and sing lots and lots of songs in both Swahili and English. Next week I think we'll spend more time with the older kids where I hope I can help out a bit more and maybe do some 1-2-1 sessions to help some of the kids that are struggling.

The school site is quite an eye opener. You have to walk through mud roads to get to the school and then the school itself is built on mud ground with some mud huts and some rooms that are made of brick and cement. The roofs are made of bamboo or tin and when it rains it turns into one big mud pit! The rain comes pouring down and gets everywhere. The slope that goes from the office to the classes at the other end of the land turns into one big slide that is practically impossible to get down without falling but somehow the kids manage it and hardly ever slip. I've managed not to so far but the other volunteer at New Hope, Hannah, slipped the other day and got really muddy. I'm sure I'll get my turn soon enough! One of the classes doesn't even have a building so they have to be taught under a tree in the school yard! But its always hot here, even when its chucking it down which it has done a few times, I can hear the rain outside at the moment actually. I should really buy a brolly!

Anyway, I've written a small novel so I'm going to leave it there for now, more soon. Well done if you've got this far, I thought I'd make up for not writing till now.

Chagit.x.

• Mombasa
• new hope
• teaching