shopping and napping

Even in Africa, when I say I would take a quick nap, it usually turns out to be a 5+ hour rest. i woke up around 12a.m., haven't eaten dinner or anything else since our PB&J lunch break. see, reason i was so tired wasn't because was lazy or didn't want to work. truth was, last night was probably one of the most horrible night of sleep i've ever had. probably not even good enough to call it 'sleep'.

here's the thing...mosquitoes. yup...i spent two straight hours last night battling with all the buzzez and bizzes that the mosquitoes were making. they were so annoying...more annoying than people. no matter how many times i kept slapping my face, they kept coming back. i couldn't take it anymore, and went over to the other room to sleep. i have bites the size of fat pimples...one on more harm, a few on my hands. i would post some pics...but you might not come back after seeing them.

good news...i got a mosquito net!


our maid...( yup, that's right...we have a maid. and while( i have maid()){
System.out.println("Julian doesn't have to clean"!);
} Haha, j/k. my mom would slap me if she knew i still can't clean up after myself after all these years.

anyhow, today we went shopping. but before that, we had a breakfast at the apartment resturant, which was okay. i ordered some toast, eggs, and a sausage. it tasted okay, but the sausage i must say was pretty interesting. it was dark red, more like pork, and sort of wrinkled up. but it tasted pretty good...wish i had taken a picture. i love african sausages!!!

the cook/waitress was so nice. i managed to remember how to say thank you in Swahili, Asante, and she was smiling at me. looks like language and lingustics is the way to go.

as we walked over to the grocery store, it felt more like a battle/heroundeous journey. the cars in the streets were driving like crazy. we have drivers driving on both lanes, same/opposite directions. the whole time i was trying to be careful of not getting hit by cars. i guess it sort of like new york, except every car was emitting its pollution crap that i must have inhaled nothing but car crap the entire time.

it was okay though. made it fine, bought a ton of food/toiletries. i got some coconut/yogurt flavor body wash, which was pretty awesome. anyhow, we spent over a total of 11,000 dollars in groceries. oops, i lied, 11,000 kenyan shillings (ksh) haha, dont' worry, i'm still chinese.

oh, and one more thing. apparently grocery stores in nairobi have different sizes of shopping carts:



we got a taxi to drive us back to our apartment. michael actually bargained with the taxi driver before we got in. looks like i have to learn some bargaining langugae in swahili. unpacked all our stuff, ate some food, then started working. me and zach were responsible for creating the lab for our introduction to Eclipse ( java IDE ), and i looked at some online material for sample code that we could use as an example. I created a rough draft powerpoint for our lesson, and zach did some code with errors to show how Eclipse is useful in catching java syntax errors.

i need to get my ass working. i asked michael if were going to go over threads and he said yes. i didn't read up on threads during my stay at Anton's so i have to do that. plus review some old stuff like interfaces and what not to make sure i know it really well as if i had to teach it....( well i am aren't i? )

so yeah, that's pretty much it. after that, you know the rest. took a nap, which knocked me out, and woke up to everyone sleeping. i did some java reading myself, and then took my shower, and ready to sleep. zach told me earlier that in the morning we will go the university with Michael's professor friend John and check things out. lots of preparation to do, so sleeping time will slowly start to decrease.

Asante!

note: i forgot to mention how beautiful today's weather was. the whole time during breakfast, we were all saying how this feels so much like a vacation....haha, we can't get too comfortable now. but seriously, it's 'winter' right now for kenya, and boy, i wish boston's winter was sexy like this. cool breezes, with sunny skies. not too hot, not too cold, between 70-80 degree fahrenheit year round. hey..sounds familiar huh? Hawaii!!!! decided to take a picture of the nice view and nice me ;)