A Day in the Life of Chelsey

Day 131 : Well currently off to a football game.. I'll update today later on! And i'll have an extra  blog on the drought here.---- Update : WELL, we started off our day FOR ALL THOSE READERS: I know I said I would update on the game and drought.. but the power went out, we have been away, and I have something wrong with my body it seems. I will try my very best to update soon.. We'll see what happens.. I apologize for not being up to date daily, but it gets very busy here and difficult to do so. Most of the time I am late it seems, but i'll try my best . I am so out of date.. I am trying to update my blog, but I need to remember what I have done in the past few weeks...

Day 130: Another walk day! Yay!  We were with Ali for the morning, and cleaning up a bit, then mom and I decided we would walk! Dad wasn't feeling well, so he stayed back. Ben was going to show us another path to walk on. We walked down to the normal area we walk, but once we got there took a different route. We walked through the trees, and past some people.. into a field. Where there my shirt zipper in the back broke and paused the walk for a bit so that I wouldn't lose my shirt.. awkwardddd! Anywho, we kept on going and met some people, past some huts, and stopped at one lady's house AGAIN? Ben got water randomly and we kept on! Then my zipper to my shirt broke again.. and we paused again to fix it.We walked and walked and then got to a bridge.. that was falling apart but if you fell it seemed far! My mom has an injury in her neck, so I did not trust that if she even had a sudden movement she could be in bed for over 2 weeks. Sure I could cross it, and maybe she could

Day 126: Today is another new church! We love going around and experiencing each! We got ready in the morning and we walked down to the new built church. I would be teaching the kids, while my dad would be with the adults.  I taught them and played with them for some time, had them laughing at the Mzungu! I brought them back with the adults and we all just sang songs with their built drum and voices! So beautiful!  We were there until around noon, meeting new people and hanging out, then decided we would go for lunch with some of the people there. We walked down to the food place they call "Sweet Waters" and got some beans and chapatis, and chatted. After we finished up there we all said our goodbyes and we walked back to the orphanage and played with the kids for the rest of the evening. Day 125 : I woke up this morning  and we had a bunch of things to fix inside the house My tap has been broken, no curtains on the so called "shower" and windows, some lig

Day 123: Hahah, the number of the day makes me giggle. Well,well. Busy day! I woke up early this morning to get ready to walk down to meet up with my parents new friend James. James and a bunch of others are now starting up a new village a few kilometers from where we are now. They are trying to get it to look like a typical African life style, with the huts, the dance, a stand for hand made things, and someone cooking there. This place will hopefully be a stop where tourists can pay to get in (Not high prices) and they  see how an African lives, the African dances, and buy some souvenirs to bring back to their countries. It will also be rest stop for buses and such, so they wanted our opinion and help there. This village they are starting will boost the economy there and hopefully help  out the local area so that instead of having the tourists drive by, they will have something to stop for. You see the village nearby has a lot of gifted people, but they don't bother making thin

So here is a few of my views/tips on African living:     Living without a shower that is hot and has pressure is not too bad I guess. Keep a stash of baby wipes. I'm usually dirty anyways, and once I get one nice shower it's like paradise under a tap. I feel clean of course, and it makes me so thankful and happy. Living with bugs all over the place, not  a big deal really.... unless they are disgusting cockroaches.Then you'd better get bugspray and nets over your bed. Snakes... just burn a tire, but never touch them because that'd be stupid. They're poisonous. Living not even 30 feet from an Orphanage/Highschool.. Okay not so bright idea . You get people over all the time, and you cannot trust easily. You have to hide things when you go away. And make sure if you do so to get some ear plugs, and locks on everything.EVERYTHING. If you feed stray cats, expect them to be around 24/7 ;) ... If the people next door know where your window to your bedroom is.. oh wel

        Time after time, we are begged from .We are taken advantage of , SOME think  white people are lazy ,rich, and not so smart. We are not. We are working for them. And they know we are different and not on vacation like most who pass by. We want to help them. My dad sacrificed 6 months of pay to be here, and my mom is not working. I'm glad that we can change their minds about it :) . We are normal people who have dreams and hopes for Africa. For a change in this world. Anyone who can camp out, can do it. hahahah! You can't come here not knowing what to expect.  My parents and I do have days when we feel "I just wanna go home, this is horrible." But we obviously don't wanna go home, this place is just right for us. My mom has a dream to start her own orphanage with CANADIAN standards, so this is a start.       It bothers me to walk by someone and they beg from me.  I feel sad for them, but you'd have to experience it to know.There is always this

Day 122: Today.... is work. Schoolwork that is. Once again! I have been inside all day, doing schoolwork. YUCK. I cut some mangos up and mom made some Mango crisp, and  have been doing all the blogs that I have missed. EXCITING DAY. It's around 6 30 pm, so we'll see if I have time to see the kids or not today :) Day 121: Today I woke up to do more school work. We had to have an assembly, so for their breaktime I headed over and had to speak to the entire school, along with my parents and the teachers. There was one boy who we had kicked out of the school for stealing things, and wanted back in the school.. but he wouldn't take the consequences. So we spoke to the school about that kind of stuff and how they should not be stealing from us, because we are just trying to help them.. so they are basically stealing from themselves.. etc etc. After the big speeches, we split and I just headed over to play with little Ali  .  I stayed with him for some time, and talked with s

Day 118: We woke up early in the morning, packed and got a drive . We decided we would go to this Giraffe park where you can go and feed the giraffe and stuff! :D We took about an hour to get there and payed a little to get in. Once we got in we went over and got some food and you could just feed the giraffes! They would walk over gracefully and maybe bump you, then your whole hand would be in their mouth. We looked around a bit then spent more time with the giraffes. We would feed them one by one, and if you stopped feeding them , they would hit you with their necks?!?! It was fun ! We spent part of the day there, went to a little shop then drove back.  We arrived at my dad's cousins house, and it turned out they had just left. Their guard was there so we dropped our bags in their garage and walked over to the OTHER shopping centre  . We just walked around for awhile, then decided since they ACTUALLY HAD ICE CREAM.. we would get some :) We sat in, and there we met Jason and Jenni

Day 117: So today.. I got to sleep in a little bit!? Ben left early in the morning to catch a bus back, so we slept ina  bit and relaxed for part of the morning. We then walked down to the shopping centre (a different one)  and spent the morning there, then walked back :) It's nice to have a tiny bit of home.Once we got back we had actually met the father of a wedding planner/decorator guy! So his son was coming to bring us downtown to look at things for my sister. We got in a car and went down there, going through shop after shop and getting little things along the way. (It sucks not being there in person to help her plan, so this is the least we can do!) We stayed there most of the day, got some more material to decorate with this time, and carried on. We chatted with the guy for some time while mom was having a joyful time looking through nearly every store.. ;) Soon enough we left before dark , and went back to the flatts. Mom and dad went for a walk, so I decided to stay back

Day 116: Today is Visa day for Ben! We had to get up early and had out in time to go get his visa forms sent in.We made sure all of Ben's papers were filled out and got a ride there. We headed inside the big building  and we headed to the Canadian Visa spot. We showed the papers to the worker there, and we were told that it needed to be printed out and not hand written, oh joy! We went back outside to the car we were driven in and told the driver we needed to find an Internet Café so that we could re-type it all and print it out, then we had to go to the bank because the money that was sent from Canada from the organization supporting Ben had sent it to the wrong place. First stop was the Internet Café, where they got me to type all of Ben's forms up because I type the fastest. After we finished up there, we drove quickly over to the bank, where there was some shops as well. Dad went to the bank while Mom and I were brought to some material shops to look for more material whi

Day 115: Today is Nairobbery time! (Nairobi)  Some people apparently call it that in Nairobi. We got up early, got ready, and headed out with our bags.We had to go out our gate, and walked down to meet Dickson along with Ben. We waited for our drive, got our bags inside and headed out! The ride is always the same, BUMPITY BUMP BUMP. If we are lucky we get away without one child saying "SWEEETTSSS"  or "MZUNGU MZUNGU"along the way.. IF we are lucky..IF. We arrived in Voi and were dropped at the Bus and Matatu pick up/drop off spot. We would take turns watching the bags and either Dad and ben would go run errands , or mom and I would go for a walk . We were actually in a zone where the beggars were not allowed?! But yet we had one guy still. And surprisingly I did not get a bottle thrown at me this time !! (I'll explain this in a different post) We waited for the bus to come, and when it did we made sure we packed our bags on it and had them tagged. The bus ride