boots and dust

yesterday we went to nanyuki to buy supplies for our hike. what an adventure that was! to begin with, i should mention that fact that clothes-buying here is basically like thrift-store buying, but cheaply. everything is in huge piles, and everything is about $1 may $2, and you bargain for everything. it takes some getting used to. sometimes they laugh at us for trying to pay less, because they know we aren't use to it. other times tho, they tell us a price that is way too high and when we refuse to pay it, they laugh becuase they know that what they asked for was rediculous, they know that it was too high, but they were just seeing how high we would go! its such a game!

anyways, after the market we went to look for hiking boots. within about 20 minutes of being in town every shoe seller knew that there were two white girls buying boots; which meant that every single seller ran around the whole town looking for boots in our sizes. then they would bring them to us and shove eachother aside so that we would buy their own shoe! in the end it meant that there were 7 or 8 guys all crowded around us, with one shoe on one foot and another shoe on the other foot! the funniest part was that even when we said, o these don't fit, they would respond, "yes! yes! these fit! it is cold up on the mountain, you will wear 3 pairs of socks!" it was great. we ended up getting two great pairs of hiking boots for something like $15 each, with the help of suzanne who bargains magnificently!

this morning lauren and i got in eston's old (circa 1979) range rover with Nancy, a friend of eston and louisa (who we stayed with on that first night in nairobi) and drove out to this park a few miles away. of course a few miles takes about 30 minutes to get to because the roads are so bad, but we made it. nancy turns out to be a great bargainer as well. she convinced the gaurd that we were residents of kenya (which she is) but that lauren and i had forgotten our cards, so that we didn't have to pay the rediculously high entrance fee to the park! it was a great time in the park. we saw zebras, gazelles, some differnt birds, some kind of monkey, and some other larger deer-like animals. o and a hippo! we did NOT however see the "freindly rhino" that we were promised by our friend the gaurd at the entrance, nor did we see any elephant or lions! sad. o well. the best part of the whole trip was sitting in the back of eston's old car, it is set up with seats facing eachother. but since it was so hot we opened the back door. i sat with the door propped open and my feet dangling the whole way. it was great! only problem is that with the door open, all the dust from the road billows up and spills into the car and all over us! so much so that i had dust everywhere. like up my noise, down my throat, oo best was in my contacts! but nothing a quick dip in the neighbor's pool won't fix!

this is really the life!

tonight we are having a little party here with eston and us, suzanne and randy, louisa and hamish (her boyfriend, who is coincidentally eston's roommate...can you say awkward for eston?!), and tony and nancy. it will be great fun!

o i almost forgot, just to rub it in some more. i got an hour long massage the other day for $7! and she's coming back next week! hmmmm

hope everyone is doing well.
much love
xoxoxo
sb