Thursday Morning

So it's 6:00am here in Kenya. Virginia and I have been up since about 4:30. We're sleeping with our balcony door open b/c our air conditioner consists of an oscillating fan. Actually feels very nice out. I think we'd still be asleep if a loud car hadn't so rudely awakened us!

I don't have much to post yet in the way of experience, but I'm up so here I go. We arrived last night and went straight to our hotel to check in and eat.

I keep reminding myself that I'm in Africa. We were talking last night about the similarities among large cities. Downtown Nairobi looks much like any other large city...at least in the dark. I honestly never thought I would get the chance to go to Africa. Still a little surreal.

Today we will head to the Compassion International office here in Nairobi. Susan, our "tour guide" if you will, is coming to pick us up this morning. She will go with us to each location. She is a native Kenyan who works for Compassion International. Looking forward to getting to know her a bit more and hear her story.

At the Compassion office, we will be dropping off several bags full of backpacks for Kenyan children our friends and family sponsor. Since most of them live outside the city, they will make sure the bags get to the different projects.

From there, we will head out to the Kibera slum. It's said to be the largest slum in Africa. Read this little snippet on Wikipedia this morning. Almost one million people living in less than 1 square mile...wow. My mind can't comprehend right now. I think we are doing a couple of home visits as well, where we will go to homes of sponsored Compassion children to meet them and their families.

Tonight is dinner with some LDP students. Definitely looking forward to meeting these University graduates who grew up as sponsored kids, then were further sponsored through college.

Ready to get this day rolling. Feeling super blessed to be here. Not wanting to miss a moment.