good-bye :(

I can't believe six months is over! It was a good last weekend in Kenya. I got to hang out with some friends and even had one last adventure. On Sunday another volunteer from the house, Flo, and I went to Lake Naivasha which is a little over an hour west of Nairobi. We did pretty well navigating around with no plans, I must say. We took a boat ride on the lake as it is known for having many hippos. Well not only did we see toons of hippos but we also got to see flamingos, pelicans, and on the shore- zebras, giraffes, impalas, baboons, and waterbucks. It was pretty fantastic!

Monday was my last day at Happy Life, sadly. It was a mixed emotions day even without me leaving. Baby Wisdom who was in the hospital passed away over the weekend. Chris was being discharged from the hospital as they never confirmed TB and he is improving. Jesse, Tina, and Lemmy all have malaria and the later two were being taken to the hospital. On a happy note though- Mark and Nancy both got adopted today and went home with their new families! Nancy is too little know whats going on but Mark is between 3 and 4 and I think he was just very confused. He had a lack of emotions but the whole thing takes some adjustment so I am sure he will be just fine!

I bought some cake and soda for the moms and had a nice goodbye with them as well as some cookies for the older kids and supplies for the orphanage. It was sad to say bye to the kids of course so I made sure to distract the older kids with toys so it wouldn't be a big send off with them. The teacher did have them all say good bye to me and asked a few of them if they wanted to say something. Now remember these kids are 3-5 years old with limited English and it was kinda comical and oh so cute!

As I was walking from work this past week I did have two more mental pictures to share with you. I saw another child who constructed a car out of a juice box and bottle caps and was pulling it along on a string. Also there is a mound of dirt (right across from the town trash pile) that was probably 6 or 7 feet from top to bottom sloop and twice now I have seen kids 'sledding' on it. They take a piece of cardboard and slide down the hill on the their butts. Who needs snow to enjoy sledding?!

I guess now it is time to say good-bye. I made it home safely and had no problems with my flights. I am working on uploading all my pictures to a web-album or something so anyone that is interested can check them out. Once I get that completed I will post it on here so check back in a week or two for those. Thank you so much to everyone who helped to sponsor my trip and to everyone that continued to pray for me while I was gone. This whole thing would not have been possible without ya'll!! I am so glad that I had this experience as I got to meet amazing people and amazing children, experience all new things, and learn so much about myself. If anyone ever wants to visit Kenya and work with an awesome children's home or make a donation to them- let me know and I'll give you the contacts!