So, tomorrow night will be one week since we arrived in Nairobi.
It’s been great, difficult, exhausting, exciting, overwhelming. . . but here are some first impressions.
Everything has less sugar in it. Except tea, which usually has plenty. Everything takes us longer as we learn how to do daily tasks differently; washing dishes, shopping, preparing food, cleaning, showering, etc. Kenyans have very deliberate greetings and seem very polite and hospitable.
Right now, our day looks like:
-Up at 7:30 for our morning routines. Leave the apartment at 8:15 to walk to language school. Start language school at 9a, and keep stuffing Swahili into our brains (and realizing maybe I don’t even understand English very well?!) until 2pm. Walk home.
-Make/eat lunch, clean up after the walk home, and take a break. Our brains hurt. We read our Bibles, clean dishes, wrestle with trying to access U.S. bank accounts from another country (this has been a week-long project for Ryan), etc.
-Make/eat dinner, clean up, some R&R time/emails/miscellaneous tasks before bed. Rinse, repeat.
We are getting the hang of it, but are definitely still adjusting and will be for awhile. We are so grateful to everyone on the U.S. side who helped us get here, everyone on the Kenya side who helped us get settled in the apartment and the Kenyan Christians who have already been so kind to us.
Baadaye.
Team Ryley 