Tags: 2015
Santiago and I woke up early to attend Catholic mass. Big Shock here: it was mostly the same as back home, but with a lot more singing and dancing. In the afternoon, we went to the large Kenyan mall in the area to scope out an area to work in outside of the Partners for Care (PFC) house. It was similar to a mall back in the US, but had a Nakumat (Kenya's WalMart) inside for grocery shopping.
We spent a day traveling around Monterrey to familiarize ourselves with the city and its (not so many) things to see. Our experience in brief:
THE CHALLENGE OF EATING OUT: The most important phrase we’ve learned so far is, “NO COMO CARNE!” (I don’t eat meat!). Four of our group members are vegetarian…apparently this is very uncommon in Mexico. Finding food that we can all eat is challenging, but has put Zac’s language skills to the test. He’s the only one who can speak a bit of Spanish, so we have to rely on him to communicate our dietary restrictions.
"Jambo" means hello in Swahili.
I report to you live from my bed in Nairobi, Kenya safely under mosquito nets, of course. Before we get to all the juicy exciting goodness you're about to see from us in the next three weeks, it's important you understand what it took to get here.
We applied to this amazing thing called GAP (Global Applied Projects), we were accepted and placed on teams. This happens to be my beautiful team:
Keith, Adityaa, Teryn and I arrived in Toronto late yesterday afternoon. We found our 4-BR townhouse after a $70 (Canadian) cab ride from the airport and dug in. We walked over to the Distillery Historic district in Toronto, where lots of the art caught Teryn's eye. We went to the Mill St. Brew Pub for dinner and loved the meal. Didn't love the tax rate (over 10%!). Got back to the townhouse and everybody had their own bedroom for the first night. Sweet Dreams.