Fires, motorcycles, giraffes...Oh my!

This week has been very eventful! It started on Sunday. We went to church with a guy named Lukas who is a part of the singing group Afrizo from Daystar. They are a group that tours around singing and promoting Daystar. They have some US tours too. They've been to Bethel a few times. Anyway, we went to a near by town called Athi River. The bus that goes to Nairobi dropped us off there. This town is on the smaller side, but still too big to walk everywhere. We had to take another form of transportation...motorcycle. They have a cool name here, but I can't remember it. This was the first time I ever rode a motorcycle and i was sitting behind a guy that I had never met and in front of one that I had only met a few minutes ago driving through gravel roads with huge pot holes. But surprisingly, it was fun. We never got above probably 20 mph, so it was just a nice drive. There was a lot of dust blowing that I could have done without, but all in all, it was an enjoyable ride.
The group Afrizo is amazing. They are all Daystar students, and I think they have a director, but she wasn't there with them on Sunday. Before the service, the church gave us tea, a very common practice everywhere here. While we were taking tea, the group started to warm up. They just said, ok lets sing this song ready, go...instant, beautiful harmony! I could have just sat there forever and listened to them. And I think most of the time they just make up parts and add them in and they always sound amazing. I love African singing.
On Monday, Hillary and I cooked an "American" dinner for some of the girls here who have cooked African meals for us. We made spaghetti, potatoes with pumpkin (what we would call squash), garlic bread, and fruit salad. It all turned out very good. I didn't think the sauce was as good as back home, but the rest was excellent. We don't have an oven here, so it's hard to think of truly American things that you can make with out an oven. I would love to bake something, but I can't :(
Then on Tuesday Bethel President Jay Barnes and his wife came to visit Daystar. He was here to officially sign exchange agreement between the 2 universities. Then we had lunch with him. It was kind of weird because I had never met him at Bethel, but then here in Africa i have lunch with him.
Later that day, there was a fire! Some background to this is that it is common to see fires around campus because they burn the garbage. On this particular day, we were in class and I could smell smoke. This was not that strange. I didn't think much of it. Then the smell started to get stronger. Finally, out teacher let us out a few minutes early because it was getting petty bad because the wind was blowing it it. We left the building to find men probably about 50 -20 feet way from the building trying to beat out a garbage fire that I'm assuming the wind caught and started the very dry grass arund it on fire too. Then there were students running with fire extinguishers to help out. But no one else seemed to care. They just looked and kept walking. They didn't even evacuate the building or anything. It's probably not the first time that something like that has happened. It is very common weather to be dry and windy here. It's just not how they would have handled it in the US. The fire trucks would have been on their way and the alarms would have been sounding and everyone would have to be at least 100 yards away.
One morning while Hillary and I were running, we looked up to see about 9 giraffes crossing the road about 50 feet in front of us. It was great. I will never get tired of seeing the wild life here on campus.

This is a matatu. I don't actually know how to spell that. This one is from Daystar, but the public ones are always super full and have yellow stripes on the sides.

Here are some of the girls I play soccer with :)

This is from when we went to Thika with the girl on the left and stayed with the woman on the right. That is one of her little boys behind me. I'm shaving coconut to make the Pilau.

I took this from a bus window