yesterday morning i woke up ridiculously early..somewhere around 6:30 in the morning. it's so wierd...my sleeping patterns have been so erratic it's crazy. usually at school i wake up the latest possible..hear, it's like waking up....on time. haha. oh, did mention...instead of waking up to my alarm, i wake up to wild birds making strange noises, and monkeys on roofs chasing each other. man, don't you love africa or what?
i made some cereal and PB&J for breakfast, and ate with the rest of the team. we chatted a little bit, and I got to know Micahel a little better, asked him how he got started in Computer Science, and amazed at how much he knows and has done. pretty amazing how he studied at rutgers university and went to MIT for grad school. he shared with us how his professor at rutgers invited him to do research with him because he did really well in a compilers class i think, and that's how he got invovled with this area at MIT. i also like how he's so adventurous, and has travled to so many countries around the world.
after breakfast, we got ready to go to the university, but turned out that John, Michael's friend, was going to pick us up around 2 in the afternoon, instead of 9. so we had some time to kill. i decided to start reading up on threads, and get prepared for that. i think i'm going to have some trouble with that (anton i need you!) but hopefully i can ask michael for some help.
then michael wanted to talk to me about the forums, and what i needed to do in terms of setting everything up and showing the students how to register and do things with the forum. pretty amazing how phpbb is set up so easily for people to use and develop with.
i decided i wanted to give my parents a call, let them know everything was okay. my sister didnt' email me back yet to let me know she informed my parents i was safe, ( jerk! ) so i wanted to call. problem was my phone didn't work, and so i figured maybe i could use skype to call home. it said i could get my first call for free, up to 10 minutes, but i guess it expired, so i had to pay skype credit. pretty awesome actually. it was so cheap. best part...is when i connected with my mom on the phone, and i heard her voice through my laptop. that was the greatest feeling ever. to be able to hear my parents voice, while 7000 or who knows how many miles i'm away. i felt so close to them, as if they were right next to me. we spoke for about 20 mintues, which cost me a total of 50 cents. forget phone cards, skype is the way to go! i asked michael what area of computer science was responsible for technologies like skype, and he explained to me areas like distributed system, voice technology, and some algorithms. pretty good stuff...i might actually look into those areas for myself.
so after that great moment, we went out to get some lunch. boy was that hard. a 30 minute walk to downtown nairobi, i must have inhaled so much car emssions, my life may have been shorten by 10 years. but it was really nice. the weather was like hawaii, the trees were blooming all around, and the scenery was just gorgeous. we got to javahouse, which is like a westerized restaurant, and yup, i ordered the double bacon cheeseburger. reminded me of the time i was at the place with dave and everyone else. the burger was good, and really filled me. we took a taxi back home, and got ready to meet john.
he was a nice guy, drove us to strathmore university. the campus is pretty nice, and there were a lot of students present. we went to check out the lab we would be in, and installed the Eclipse IDE onto the computers. we also set up the tripod and camera to test it out. we'll be recording all of our lectures starting on monday. we also got these i.d.'s which said 'intern'. it was pretty hilarious. michael said he worked all these years, and finally became an intern. hehehe.
we sat around for awhile, talked a little bit. i was so tired, started to pass out. john finally finished his meeting, and wanted to go to the cafeteria to get some food. i got sprite, sat around, chatted, and finally headed home. it was a bumpy ride-so many potholes on the streets, it was ridiculous.
as soon as we got home, i took a nap, and yup, turned out to be the longest nap i've ever had-12 hours. hopefully my body finally adjusted to this place. i feel wide awake right now...hopefully my sleep schdule will be back to normal.
other than that, do more java programming, and might start to check out the android platform, see how that goes.
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