We had a pretty good scare yesterday...After a full day of classes we were relaxing at home when i started hearing a "whoosh!" sound from outside. I think i said, "uho.... That sounds like a huuuge fire". mandy looked out the window and saw tall flames licking the trees behind our neighbors house about 50 ft. away. I went outside to find about 200 boys and teachers running around in chaos. The flames were moving along the hedge and getting dangerously close to our all wooden bus garage.We haven't had rain in weeks and it is quite dry. A few boys had fire extinguishers from our lab but they quickly finished and they didn't know how to really use them. Other boys were running to and from water tanks with water. At first i didn't know what to do, but finally set out emptying every tap in our house into pots, pans, and buckets. For a few minutes i thought we were losing, but all of the sudden it was out and we were all left breathing smoke.Much to our amazement, about 10 minutes later our local red cross showed up to take over and check for medical problems. They were very organized.After the smoke settled, it came out that one of the teachers' families on the compound lit some trash near the dry hedge and didn't watch it.Anways... Wish i took pictures, but i was a bit busy at the time. I'll post more about our trip to Egypt soon.

Before the rains come the Safari Ants. We had another attempted invasion yesterday and i got some nice photos and some low quality video.

The videos are self explanatory. The pictures are of a mango slice, a mango pit, and a before, during, and after shot of a dead mouse in only 24 hours.Enjoy!

Hello gentlefolk,Here is an interesting cultural tidbit about the naming custom in our area.--Disclaimer-- Appologies to any Kipsigis for any mistakes i might make in my recollection.Okay... First the basics. In america as well as most the western world our last names are passed down and our first names our... Well.. kinda rabdom. My last name is Van Regenmorter which of course means that my father and his father all the way back have a surname of Van Regenmorter. It kind of makes family trees easy to visualize.This however is not the case here. When a boy is born he receives two names. First he receives a surname which signifies when he was born or under what conditions. So if you're born at night you are Kiplangat (kip = boy born at, langat = night), if you're born in the a.m. You would be Kipmutai or if you're born around noon you'd be kibett.Then you get a Christian name like Emmanuel. I think this was basically the result of British missionionaries and their difficulty with the language and is also an indication of how widespread christianity has been adopted here. funny enough the Christian names they choose many times are one's you'd hardly recognize such as Boniface, Obadiah, Zephania, or Enock. So a typical name could be boniface kiplangat, but when the boy undergoes circumcision he looses his surname and inherits his fathers childhood name. It's confusing. So let's take an example. Assuming i'm born at night my name would be Jon kiplangat. When i get circumcised i would now take my father's childhood name (say... Kibett) and my new name would be Jon Bett. and finally my children would take my childhood name (langat) when they are circumcised. So... Basically your surname changes when you reach puberty and your name is only linked to your father. Therefore the only way to identify relatives and granparents would be a clan name which is rarely used and i don't believe is included officially.Okay... Now on to something very different.It's really important to have kids here. If you're a man and your wife can't deliver (no pun intended), you can get a second wife... Or third. (Polygamy is a fading but still practiced tradition). BUT if you're the infertile woman you have to get pretty creative. And i MEAN creative.Sometimes an infertile woman will adopt a fertile daughter and have her marry her immaginary son. Therefore any kids born from her adopted daughter are by custom her grandchildren. Ok... That's a bit different but you get it right? Desire for family, respect, chidlren. But now... How do you name those grandchidlren!? The father is immaginary (okay there is a father... Kinda has to be ;) but he's not included in this family unit that i know of) so where do you get the surname? Essentially all of the family members are female, so he's given the last surname Chepkwony. This is odd for two reasons. Sons always have the prefix Kip- (see earlier paragraph), and only daughters get the prefix Chep-, but if your grandchild is a boy he still is chepkowny. Which essentially means daughter of woman (kowny means woman).It's hard to follow i know... I had to consult the infinitely better memory of my better half to get all of this straight.Hope you enjoyed!

I have't posted in a while so I figured I'd blather a bit about what we're up to.Recently a volunteer near us got sick and kept passing out in Bomet and was flown to nairobi. It was pretty scary, but she's okay now. Anywho... we were planning on coming to Nairobi anyways to get our aching joints looked at (we are officially old now... 1/4 century). We took the opportunity and grabbed some clothes from the volunteers house and went to Nairobi early. We've been in Nairobi for about 6 days and it was soooo nice. They put us at a nice hotel near the physical therapist and gave us enough stipend to eat pizza every night! We mostly just ate, but i did get a little work done too. I'm working with whitney (another PCV teacher) to make a list of colleges and such for our students to use to look for affordable options and within their exam scores.So yea... It was pretty nice. We also watched movies on the labtop, played games, and hung out with other volunteers. Oh and we used the opportunity to find some affordable printers for the school.Okay... Here are a few pictures from the Matatu we're in waiting for it to fill.Jon

So our fish pond is finally done... here's a short video of it and a snapshot of mandy playing with Leia

A new puppy has arrived on our doorstep as of last night at 4am...We are doing our best to restrain and allow it to wander off with its momma, but Leia thinks she's found her new best friend.Leia is getting big!P.s. My mom and dad are doing well. They just made it back to Nairobi from visiting bomet for 3 nights. More later

1. A picture of our neighbor Michelle standing in our doorway. She's adorable... And demanding :)2. The great rift valley. In the distance you can see the hills which mark the boundary of the rift and some Masaii cattle kicking up distance in the cattle. The Masaii as some of you know are Kenya's best known tribe. They're tradionally pastoralists.3. A picture of the rift valley from the hills on the way to Nairobi. It's a common tourist stop for locals and yokels.4. A group of local school children getting their picture taken.5. The faithful Kabungut school bus, it's driver william, and a local electrical engineer Charles.6. Bonus picture! My parents just arrived in Nairobi. Here's a picture from last night of mandy and my mom relaxing in a missions house in Nairobi. Nice house :) They'll be here for a month doing some painting and construction for a deaf translation center as well as visiting and traveling with us.

I took a trip to Nairobi the other week to help the school buy a fish pond liner. It was a long, tiring journey which started at 3am and didn't end until past midnight.

I bummed a ride with the school bus taking a local elementary school on a field trrip. Here's some pics and some commentary, although the order that my phone decides to post the pictures is still somewhat a mystery to me.

We have had a pretty eventful past few weeks at school. Unfortunetly, not in the best kind of way.First - The Riot

About 2 weeks ago it was Mandy's turn to "be on duty". This meant she was in charge of monitoring students and discipline. As you can imagine, she was not thrilled. The first day was stressful with many students trying to fabricate reasons to go home. Then on the first night we both woke up in the night to the sound of yelling and screaming. We live on the teacher's compound, but it's part of the school so we knew the sound was coming from the students.

We got up and noticed that the generator was still on and the time was 2am... Something wasn't right. I decided to go out and investigate. A few houses down i found all the other teachers grouped together holding big sticks and talking in quiet voices. As i got closer they commanded me to turn off my flashlight.Over the sound of yelling and broken glass they explained to me that the students were rioting and running around in the football field. No one knew why. they told me that the principal had already gone out to calm them down, but he hadn't returned.I stayed with them for a while and then returned to inform Mandy and the peace corps security. The sound yelling continues until about 4am when the police finally arrived with big guns and restored peace.The next day rumors abounded, but the truth started to come out after multiple school assemblies and staff meetings.Apparently, the administration expelled a few kids for sneaking out of school and the kids and their friends were not happy. Some of the expelled students came back at night drunk and incitied their friends to riot. When they saw that they had little support, they started throwing stones at their own dorm windows in an attempt to rouse the others. This just made panic and several of the younger freshmen ran outside in their birthday suit. One scared boy tried to jump a thorny hedge to escape the madness and another is rumored to have run 1km to the nearest town... Naked.Anyways... that case is behind us now. The boys were caught and little damage was done. Still not fun.

Second - The Dognapper

So as you might know, we got a puppy this term. Trash pit had puppies over April break and in may one day we found a cute little female puppy following her to our doorstep. I was making French Toast so i gave the puppy a few bites. That night and ever since, she has been our puppy. We named her Leia and she is a great dog. It's been over two months and she has only peed inside 4 time, all in the first week. She asks to be let out and doesn't chew much else besides her bones. I gave her a rabies shot, a parvo shot, worm medicine, and even flea medicine. She is fat and very happy.Then... Last Wednesday she disapeared. She wasn't at the house for lunch and she even missed dinner. Her mother was gone too. About 7pm we heard scratching on our front door. We open it and she runs inside and we see her mother outside. On Leia's neck is a rope. We get the rope off, give her food, and try to calm her down.The next dsy we told a few people, but we didn't know what else to do. The day passed like normal. Then on Friday she disapears again! This time we assume the worst and start telling peiple she was taken. It's amazing how fast word travels in the village, but by 4pm we were following a group of school children to a house acorss the valley. Sure enough puppy was there. This time chained with wire and an improvised rubber collar. We took chai with the mother and after a brief attempt at kiswahili she let us take it back without protest.Then comes Saturday. We both had to attend a teacher's conference in a nearby town and didn't get back until 4pm. And... you guessed it, Leia was gone AGAIN. We were really hoping that after the whole village new our dog no one would take it, but apparently not. By this point we were very upset. This dog had stayed with us for 2 months! It was our dog.It didn't turn up that evening, so on Sunday we went out and started talking to villagers. No kidding... The First villager we saw said he new were it was, who took it, and why. There are secrets in the village. Apparently a young man around his 20's saw the dog looking very healthy and happy and decided he wanted it. This was also the same guy every time. When asked why he doesn't talk to us, we were told he is not educated and is afraid. But not afraid enough to take it...After talking, we went to another neighbor who we know from the school and took chai with him. Afterwards we explained out situation and agreed to help us talk with the guy. We started out, but after 5 minutes a girl ran up to tell us that she just talked to the guy down at the river and that he wants 1000 shillings.-to put that in perspective, we paid men 1200 shillings to do a weeks worth of solid hard labor and they were happy for the chance. 1000 is not trivial.-By the time we reached the river he was gone. We continued to his mothers house and had a long conversation in too many languages about how her son needs to communicate before taking our dog. She then informed us that about a year ago, her son kept trash pit, so he felt that he has a right to all her puppies, even if he doesn't care for the dog.This wasn't the best news, but she offered us the puppy anyways and we left. It's now been 5 days and no puppy snatching yet. We talked with many people and they all condemn his behavior as extortion and borderline stealing.

1. No one buys dogs, they are given and taken for free.

2. No one values the females (she was the only dog from the litter not taken in the first month).

3. The other dogs (males) were taken without payment.So why then come back 3 months later and demand a lot of money? Because he views us as tourists i suppose. He needs money... i'm not sure, but i'm not going to give in.Here's hoping.Jon and MaNDY

They slaughtered a cow in our back yard the other day. Our house smelled like dead cow for 2 days.Then our dog ran around and rolled in the blood and ate the pieces humans won't try to eat.Yesterday all the other cows found their way to the slaughtering site and... Well... Completely freaked out. If a group of cows can look like a swarm of angry bees, these ones did. They ran around sniffing the air and screaming at the top of their lungs. Our dog hid behind us and we all retreated.We also got a puppy! Pics to come.

Here's a cute pic of "trash pit" in our flower garden after i gave her some left overs. That white dot on her nose... Pasta. :)

Hey hey hey,A while back michelle sent us a bunch of questions she had about our school so while i was thinking of it i thought i'd answer a few.Q: What age is secondary school?

A: Thoeretically 14 to 18ish, but in reality it's as low as 12 and as high as mid-twenties. The older one's can make it akward sometimes for us... Being that they're the same age as us.Q: How much does it cost for them?

A: For a full boarding school it's around $300 for the whole year. Yea i know... Pretty cheap for americans. Yet, many can't afford it here. Families here can make anywhere from $500 a year up to around $5000/yr for government teachers. If the corruption was better the government would be able to subsidize even more. Instead millions of AID dollars from britain get pocketed away every year.Q: Is boarding school the norm?

A: For high school, yes. Almost all.Q: Is there a girls school nearby?

A: Not with our name exactly, but there are several in the nearby area. We have other PCV's at some of them even. Traditionally if the family is poor they will send the boys first and the girls later if at all. This is improving though.Q: Are teachers mostly male?

A: At our school it's about 7 females and 19 men. That's not unusual, but you also see almost all men in some places. A fellow volunteer we know is at an all girls school where she's the only female teacher besides the principal. Could you immagine... In a country where student-teacher affairs are common, but rarely prosecuted...Q: Will most of your 600 boys attend university.

A: every year we have about 125 graduates and we usually have about 4 to 6 which qualify for government loans for university. There are perhaps another 5 or 10 who's parents have the money. That is 3 to 5% is typically. There just aren't enough universities or loans available so the competition is fierce. It's like saying you need to be in the 96th percentile on your ACT's to have a shot.... that can be tough for many. They also have to wait a year due to back-log.Okay, thanks for the questions. I'll write more soon.

Thanks mom and dad! We got your package this weekend when we went to the post office weekend and found your package waiting for us! The art supplies will be great and my boys are excited about the basketball video.Some of the chocolate chips are already in my belly as i made some chocolate chip cookies last night :)A note to those in the future. when you "declare" the contents of the package try and label as much as possible "school supplies". This will greatly reduce the customs fee on our end. -- Thanks!

Price of colored pencils - $1.50

Price of a ream of paper - $3.00Watching 10 Kenyan adolescent boys pick flowers and draw them in pastels... Priceless.-Mandy

Hey peoples. I finally got around to sorting through our pictures from April vacation and i thought i'd post some of them on the blog. I'll also write a blurb about each in no real order.1. Mandy and me visiting with our friend Bournice and her family. Bournice is one of the school's secretaries.2. A monkey getting some food at the camp we stayed at in Uganda.3. Cute pic of trash pit wanting to be invited in our house soooo bad.4. We went to a teachers house for lunch and took a picture of her kids in the Tea fields.5. Mandy's lovely hand plucking tea. Two leaves and a bud is their motto.6. Two massive slugs decided to do some sort of courting ritual on the outside of our house. Aren't they cute?7. Picture of the nile from the resteraunt8. Another pic of the nile.9. Mandy sitting with Bournice and her family.10. Some of our PCV friends hanging out in the Adrift resteraunt/bar11. Mandy, me, Domonic, and Sonya in Kisumu before leaving for Uganda. Sonya lives just across the hill from us in Bomet.12. Me and Bournice.13. nice view of the bungee tower on the nile... What a rush!

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! We got your package at the beginning of May and we've been loving it!

For those of you who weren't involved in this massive care package, we recently got a big box of goodies from our friends in DASTECH (dow's agro group). Above are a few pictures of us, the contents, us enjoying the contents, and Mandy's Art Club enjoying the art supplies.in no particular order, here's some info about the pics:1. Mandy basking in the goodness of American food. "the doritos may be gone, but the memory lives on"2. Mandy glugging Charlie's Maple syrup and wearing her new tiger's sox3. Me sniffing Mukund's dark chocolate goodness4. Mandy enjoying some Chocolate pudding... Hmmm that was a nice idea5. The rest of the pictures are from Mandy's Art Club today. She brought the supplies and explained them to the class, but wasn't sure what to do with the pipe cleaners. Then they did a practice activity on the board making a bunny in order to prepare for a larger World Map project, but when Mandy turned around they had proceeded to make the the bunny out of pipe cleaners! Then they just went crazy and started all sorts of things. They started off with words, went to pictures, and when she told them how to make 3D stuff they made a Bus and a House. We want to emphasize that we don't know a lot about art or teaching art, but if you have any ideas like that please let us know. The kids had a blast and it's great to see them finally get some creative outlet.FYI - the package actually sat in the post office for 2 weeks because we were out of town, so in case your wondering, it got here in about a week! Oh, and completely intact!

Here is a short video I took over the weekend. Let me know if you can't watch it!

Today we decided to take a stroll around the school and nearby shambas and I grabbed a few pictures for ya'llPicture 1 - the remnants of a cared up goulosh we left soaking when we went to nairobi... it was a lot easier to clean!Picture 2 - Mandy relaxing on our front porch reading "three cups of tea"Picture 3 &4 - A chameleon I was carrying decided to climb up to for a better view

Video!! - our school is building a new latrine for our students because the boys filled up the old one and it is... Unpleasant to use. They will happy to find this when they get backI don't really know if the pictures will show up in that order, but here's hoping.

We just finished our last night in Nairobi and we are currently in a matatu on the way home. We were in nairobi as part of our IST training. The training was every day from 8 to 5pm and covered topics like classroom discipline, permaculture (sustainable agriculture), malaria, HIV, and other things. The most important part for me was a chance to catch up with the other volunteers and share our experiences and teaching strategies. oh.. And of course free wifi and hot showers.While in Nairobi we also did some shopping and even saw a movie. It is really nice to slip back into western conveniences, but it is not cheap on a peace corps budget!School doesn't start back for another week so we will be living pretty alone on the empty teachers compound trying to entertain ourselves. Unfortunately they won't turn on the generator or water pump until the boys arrive so we'll be a bit closer to camping. In technology news, we got a new phone! I am quite excited. In fact I am writing this blog from the phone! I also got a neat program which logs me into facebook, Sykpe, gmail, and any other chat program all at the same time. It is great! Therefore I may end up being "online" more now.also, here is a list of items that we would love in a care-package.-Chocolate chips (dark chocolate)

-Doritos

-Taco bell taco seasoning

-update about your lives

-Book

-misc. snacks like candy bars, cookies, sweets

-A pair of good pair of thin smart wool socks

low cut ankle size 10

-Gatorade mix, anything but red

-Potato peeler

-stickers for grades

-Cheap american candy that kids would get excited about

-Art supplies like paint, pencils, clay

-DVD of some some basketball games for my kids to watch

-A basketball ;)

-A good hackey-sackThose are some ideas, but the most important thing are your notes and updates! Miss you all

Hey hey hey,

Just wanted to give a quick update. I'm sitting in a nice tourist hostel in Kampala (Uganda's Capital) enjoying our vacation from school. The last two days we were in Jinja, Uganda. Jinja is on the mouth of the Victoria Nile river and is touted as the begining of the Nile river. We went rafting two days ago on some awesome rapids and went bungee jumping into the river this morning. We're now hanging out getting a flavor of Kampala, but I can tell it won't be enough. The city is huge and is supposed to be quite safe. Especially when compared to Nairobi.

Anyways, I'll write more later and most pictures.

Jon

We have a trash Pit near our house where... Oh everything ends up. Paper, plastic, and of course food.Some days i am just too lazy too walk over and dump stuff in so I will just practice my throwing arm. One day i was peeling potatoes out back and i ran into a few bad ones, so like usual i geared up and threw the rotting potatoe at the pit. The potatoe sailed through the air and landed with a thump followed closely by a "yip!" Very little goes to waste here, and indeed a dog was in our pit eating our trash. It jumped out and scampered away, but from then we have affectionately called it "trash pit". Over the last week we have slowly encouraged the "trash pit" to eat closer to our house and eventually from our hands. We learned that it is a "she" and that she is addorable! We also sometime call her Yoda cause she just looks kinda like Yoda.Mandy wants to let her in the house every time she see's its stuby little tail wagging, but there is no way. Trash Pit did not get her name by being a clean, well groomed dog.In other news, i am feeling a LOT better! I took some anti-biotics and it seems to have done the trick. It is especially good because we were starting to get worried about it affecting our vcation plans to Uganda.Hope you are all doing well!

Our life is a lot like the tite of this blog... Very busy.This term is the term for both science congress (science fair) and Basketball. In fact the district competitions were on the same day! okay... Let me rewind...We got back from Kisumu on Saturday when i was just getting over my sickness. By Wednesday I had recovered my voice and it was just in time. The science congress and Basketball tournaments were that weekend and i was doing a lot of talking. Come Thursday i was running around like a mad man between classes, science congress preparations, basketball, and getting our new computer lab wired and equipped. It was great timing for the computer lab to get running (students could write up their papers), but it was a lot to do.On friday i gave the reigns of my science fair responsibilities to Mandy and i went with the boys to the basketball tourny. The first day went well. My boys beat their long time opponents in a narrow game and crushed a neighboring school around 34 to 4. (short periods).Things were hectic on Mandy's end, but ended up well. One our students ended up making it to the next level of science fair and about 4 other groups from our school.Okay now here's the key... On Friday i yelled and talked a bunch. I also didn't get food until 7 PM. I didn't feel too bad at the end of the day, but on Saturday morning i felt it. I had another sore throat and i was exhausted. Unfortunetly we had to return for the second half of the tournament the next day. I went more prepared (brought food), but i felt poor the whole day. It didn't help that our boys lost and ended up taking 3rd. Not bad, but not what we wanted.It has been a full week since then and the sore throat and exhaustion still remain. it's really quite annoying. Every day seems filled with activities and i can't bring myself to cancel my obligations. I went to the hospital this weekend but they only tested for malaria and asked a few questions, so they were'nt able to figure anything out. I think i may get some antibiotics soon.anyways... Enough about that.In other news, we have begun a war with an Ant colony outside the house. Last sunday we had some guests over when i found a huge trail of ants streaming through our kitchen. Luckily we don't clean very well so the spiders were in high number and helped us fight them back. I thought i had won, until a few days later Mandy woke in the morning to find them covering the dirty dishes in the sink. Again i went to war and felled many ants. They have now retaliated by attempting to moving their colony directly under our back porch. This one worries me... I watched them carry the eggs/larvae to our stoop today while i peeled potatoes outside. hrmmm..Okay, enough for now. PLEASE let us know what you'd like to read or see on our blog. Our life rolls on and it's hard to know what will be interesting for you. Oh and in April we're going to Uganda to white water raft in the Nile. Sweet!Mom and Dad - thanks for help with the Taxes.Ryan and Kat - thought of you the other day when playing video games. Found a character called Zeeman! ;)

We had our first Vacation in Kenya this last weekend. Our school had its Mid-Term break and we went to Kisumu with another PCV friend, Stacy. It was really nice. We woke up at 7am on Thursday, got packed and we were in Kisumu by 2pm. Not bad...Kisumu is one of Kenya's bigger cities and it sits right on the Eastern edge of Lake Victoria. Kisumu is a major trade town. Most things come off the Ocean and travel by truck or rail to Kisumu. They are then loaded on boat for trade with Uganda and Tanzania. It is also home to boat tours, nice hotels, shopping malls, CHEESE, Barack Obama's grandma, and even a huge movie theater. We did a little of all of the above. We spent a good deal of our time just wandering around the malls going oooh.. ahhh... And buying things we didn't know we wanted or needed. We now have soy sauce, pancake syrup, twix, fresh garlic, and art supplies for Mandy's new club. The biggest store is called Nakumat and it was easily as big as a Walmart. In the same mall as the Nakumat was a really nice movie theatre. For about 350 shillings ($4) we saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie on the big screen in a massive theatre. It was awesome and bizzare. We felt temporarily transported back to America. I half expect to look to my right and see Ryan and Kat.On Friday morning we went to the local port and got a tour of the shipping port. Afterwards we got a boat 3 hour boat tour on lake victoria complete with a guide and up close encounters with hippos. Afterwards we walked to the fish market and had some fresh Talapia with Chapati and Ugali. It was delicious and not touristy. Despite the locale we were still bombarded by hawkers and street children the whole time we ate. The hawkers sold DVDs, watches, trinkets, and flashlights. The street kids walked around with plastic bags looking for money and food. We did not buy from the hawkers, but our leftovers did end up in the kids' bags.Thanks for the emails and notes of concern about my sickness. The sore throat is still hanging around with some mild exhaustion, so i think i must've picked something up when i was sick. :P My throat is starting to feel better today (Monday), but we resume classes tommorow, so that'll be the real test.oh... And lance... "Nacho Cheese" Doritos!! ;)

I got very sick on Saturday.

It started the day before. We made a hour long walk to our near by town for shopping, got lunch and then walked back with our supplies. It was very hot.

By the time i got back it was time to coach basketball, so stayed out for another 2 hours. After, we had a PCV friend, sonya, over for dinner. So i spent 2 hours standing in the kitchen preparing food. About mid-way through cooking i started feeling really bad.To may a long story short, i think i got food poisoning, because i got very sick for the next day. Luckily i seem to have recovered. I now just have a sore throat, which i am hoping will go away as well.The real down side to the sickness was the spectacle of it. All our neighbors got to see the mazungu go back and forth from the choo every 5 minutes and eventually just sit out there. argh... No one likes to be put on display when they are feeling their worst.

We finally received the package from Tina and Jess the other day. It's hard to describe how happy we were. I got to eat some greaat chocolate and Mandy gorged on Doritos! We also got a game of skip-Bo, chocolate chips, stickers, and socks. The timing on the socks and chocolate chips was great because i was just about to be out of both! =)So yea... Thanks! It took a long time, but that's only peace corps fault. The package apparently had been in Nairobi for a while. The good news is that any new mail sent to our new address at Kabungut should be quite fast. If you want to send anything here are a few ideas from us =)

1. Doritos

2. Dark Chocolate

3. Chocolate Chips

4. A letter telling us all about your life and family

5. Oregano, or italian spices

6. Garlic salt

7. A good science fiction book

Today we spent over 2 hours making handouts for an activity in Mandy's chemistry class. We designed and cut out almost 500 little ion papers. They are learning about ions and the basics of chemical bonding. It's hard to keep 50 kids engaged when many of them barely understand your english. =)

No that's not dirt. Mandy wears sandals every day. I have to wear nice black shoes and polish them every day!

For those of you dying to send us lots of neat stuff, here is our new address. Jon and Amanda Van Regenmorter

Kabungut Boys Secondary School

P.O. Box 8; Bomet 2400, KenyaOh, and it's never too early to begin planning a trip to see us. We have vacation during April, August, December of 2010 and 2011 and we are only 3 hours from the Nairobi airport on good roads!

Ryan and Kat!

Thanks for checking up on us and thanks for the comment. Kenyan schools are pretty crazy in most ways. The kids wake up around 5am. no... Let me rephrase. They are required be in class studying "preps" by 5am, so they must get up earlier. They have chai/tea at 6am to 6:40. After that are more preps until 8. Classes run from 8 to 4 every day with a few breaks thrown in. Then, from 4 to 5 they have exams. From 5 to 6 is games. 6 to 7 is dinner (ish) and then they return for more preps until 9 pm at night. Add on to all that, in kenya each class is assigned a permanent room. Meaning, they stay in the samerican chair/desk all day!We are talking about 12 hours a day in your seat! On the weekends it is less - about 8 hours a day. Just chew on that a bit. In a boarding school these kids live in their seats. it's amazing how well behaved they are considering all that.I try to make my lessons as interesting as possible and get them out of their seats. Even so, some kids are just zombified. Right now I'm teaching phyics for sophmores and math for Freshmen. So far i like it a lot. Okay, i could say a million things about the system, but I'll wait.In other random news, i am now the new basketball coach! Being... well... White, it was generally assumed by the students that i could play and coach basketball. At first i was hesitant about the whole thing, but then i went to observe a practice and i was amazed. These kids are great with their feet in soccer, but when it comes to hand-eye, all bets are off. They had talent and desire, but they needed help. Anyways, so i have been really busy with that. In my spare time I have been looking up how to coach, drills, and practice ideas. At this point it's exciting. The kids are so excited to learn and give me a lot of respect for what little knowledge i have.In yet other news, Mandy is thinking of starting an Art club. We keep running into kids with artistic ability coming out their ears, but no outlet. The details are yet to form, but she wants to basically give them some organized place to practice their art and get feedback.jees... I really could write so much more. Life is moving quickely.Hope you are all doing well. Just shoot me and email if you wanna chat via phone and we'll call you.

I am teaching math and physics, Mandy is teaching chemistry and physics. Right now we have about 17 lessons and between the two of us, we teach every single one of the 600 students. Crazy...Our biggest "difference" is with a class called "life skills". It is basically a health class, career guidance, and communications course rolled into one. The school has never had anything like it before so we're setting the standard. Originally Life Skills was only tought by PCV's, but just in the past couple years the Kenyan ministry of education has recognized the need for it and is asking schools to teach it. This worked great for us, because the school was really happy to have us meet this new requirement for them.Teaching has been so educational for me so far. The learning curve is steep for new teachers, but it is rewarding. The bad days are depressing, but the good days are great. I think having Mandy here has also been priceless. Being shy, she is growing a lot and we are also able to bounce ideas off eachother and "de-compress" after classes. It makes me really respect those PCVs who do it alone.anyways... Let me know what you want to hear about! we're getting in a routine here, so things don't seem as "blog-worthy".

This morning was Sunday so we went with our neighbor to the nearby pentecostal church. It was very interesting.Somethings are the same. The church has pews, a choir, even a keyboard player. A few things different... After offering a few people auction off household goods in the aisle such as potatoes, onions, milk, and calabash gourds. The procedes go to the church. Also, as a mazungu guest we were brought to the front and expected to introduce ourselves to the congregation. Then, afterwards we formed a greeting line and we shook everyones hand. In someways it's not that different from some American churches. Definetly the wierdest thing was the children who smelled their hands after shaking ours to see what wazungu smells like!

Okay! Time for a little more details on our site placement. First, we quite happy with the way things have been going so far. Location...

We live near the city of Bomet, which is only 3 hours West by car from Nairobi and the roads are good! Our school/house is another 30 minutes away by car, but it's relatively easy to get to. Bomet is a great size market town with almost everything you'd want (food, electronics, banking), but not so big that it has urban crime issues.Housing...

We are living on the school compound and it's working very well. Our house is a sturdy stone/cement building with 2 bedrooms, a bath, kitchen, and living room. We get electricity in the morning and evening and even have indoor plumbing (no toilet inside though). The school has provided us with a good bed and a sofa set to use along with a propane stove. It's very comfortable. we're excited that we'll be able to house guests who come to visit. Climate...

This region is located in the highlands "Tea Growing" country. In loitokitok the crops were almost exclusively corn, whereas here it's almost all tea leaves. The area gets a lot of rain throughout the year and the soil is very fertile. The temperature is warm during day, but at night it's been dropping pretty cool. The locals say it can even get down around 10 celcius in july!okay... i'll write lots about our work and the students later, but for now let me describe the pictures.1. Our living room set. In the background is our water filter and work table.2. Kitchen, complete with a sink and propane stove.3. Our bathroom. We have a shower head, but it's always cold. Most mornings we just heat water on the stove and use our 5 gallong portable solar shower. Works well.4. I smell a rat... Or rather i saw rat droppings and hear scurrying in the ceiling. I bought this beefy trap in Bomet and now the rat is decorating the trash hole behind our house. One win for me!5. i've been cooking like mad now that i have more freedom. This picture is of Brownies. I took one large dish and put in dirt in the bottom to insulate. Then i put the brownies in the inner dish. It worked great! A bit slow, because the water in the dirt kept the "oven" at around 212 F.One last note to Charlie's mom! he's doing well. He passed his language and is in great spirits. I've really enjoyed getting to know him. He will be living in a town near Mirogi in Nyanza pronvince.

Just wanted to give you all a brief note that we made it safe and sound to our new site! We arrived last Thursday, but unfortunately the school generator died that same day. Today we finally got the generator working so i was able to charge my phone.

We're hoping we'll have power now, so i'll try and give a good update soon. Lots to talk about ;)

We arrived in Nairobi on Sunday and got to sleep in a hotel in the western part of Nairobi. It was the same place we stayed when we arrived from the airport, so it was a little strange to come back. When we arrived we had jet lag and were nervous to fit in. Returning, we had become a very well adjusted training group with good friendships.So... On Monday were supposed to meet our "counterpart" from our school except that no one ever showed up for us. uhoh... The peace corps staff scrambled about making phone calls and in the end found that our principal had very recently been moved to a new school and that in the transfer we got lost in the shuffle. Due to the poor comunication and changes in school administration Peace Corps decided to change us to a different school. Our new school is near a large town called Bomet. It's very different. We'll now be teaching in a huge all boys school near a city thats only a 3 hour drive from Nairobi on all paved road. In contrast, our previous site would've taken 2 days to reach with a fair portion on poor roads. So... How do we feel about this change? Definetly mixed. In some ways it'll be more comfortable. Our house is pretty big with electricity and we'll be able to buy most anything we want nearby. The school is an old school so we'll have lots of resources and experienced teachers to work with. On the downside, larger towns are harder to integrate into and larger schools can be difficult to make changes to. As for teaching boys, it's exciting for me but a bit daunting for Mandy. They want us to teach a lot of life skills and PE yea... Overall i think everything will work out fine.In other news, our group is the first group EVER where everyone was sworn is as a volunteer. Go us!I put a few pictures of us before we swore in today at the top. The person with Mandy in the 2nd picture is Zahara (Arielle Miles). The last picture is from the trip to nairobi and shows what happens to dirt roads when they get flooded in Kenya.

This is my first attempt at posting a video from my phone. Please let me know how it turns out!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Hollidays!

I was was wrong when I said we'd kill a goat for Christmas... we killed two. We actually missed out on the actual slaughtering, but we arrived in time to watch the meat being cut and to eat some of the first meat coming off the grill.No meat was wasted. Personally I ate the liver, ribs, some leg, and even some intestine blood sausage. The liver and intestine sausage was surprisingly good. Later on they made soup from the blood, goat head, and added bark and roots. I was going to try it but we got a great phone-call from my parents. It was so good to hear word from home!Throughout the day the kids and moma's hung out in the kitchen and inside the house, while the men (mzee) sat outside roasting meat and drinking. Well.. It starts out mostly roasting, but by nightfall it's mostly drinking. They have this local wine called "muratina" that is brewed from honey and a kenyan beer called "tusker". I tried a little of both and sat out with the men for part of the evening. It was a lot of fun. We discussed a little politics, america, kenya, and even religion. Inside we played card games with the kids and even some hackey-sack. Oh! I haven't mentioned hackey sack. I started playing in the airport on the way to Kenya and i haven't stopped. By the time i return home i'll have another badge to put my hippie belt. ;-)After the party we returned home in a taxi that was meant to seat 7. We fit 13! It was pretty amazing. Oh and a baby... So 14. We got home around midnight and finished off the day with Mandy loosing her lunch/dinner in the bushes. I suppose that's what happens when you get used to a low meat diet and then eat half a goat. Overall a good christmas though!In other news... Flies decided to land on our laundry and form cacoons around themselves. See picture above. it's hard to see, but it's the size of a large house fly except it's covered in a white cacoon with the edge of its wings poking out. Our family had no idea what they were, but we found almost 7 hidden on the laundry line. eerie... Oh, and Wadudu means bugs and Wazimu means crazy.We had a secret santa exchange with the volunteers. The picture above is from the secret santa party a few days after christmas. I received a soccer ball! that'll be a hit with my students. Things are quickly wrapping up in our pre-service training. We leave loitokitok this Sunday for Nairobi to be sworn in officially and then it's off to lake victoria!Oh... And lance, i have no idea where to get mosquito nets in the u.s. Maybe online. The good nets here are all dipped in a mild insecticide to deter bugs from hanging out. I think it paralyzes them.

A few exciting things happened today. First, we had our second language exam today! We do our tests 1 on 1 with native speakers and they gauge our kiswahili language level. The levels are novice low, mid, high, then intermediate low, mid, high, etc.

I felt pretty good this time around. I understood everything, answered rapidly and creatively in what i thought was a good accent, but in the end i got ranked as a novice high. We need to get the next level (intermediate low) to "pass" kiswahili and swear in. I was a bit disapointed i didn't get it, but only 2 people out of the whole group got it. One woman who i heard has experience in africa and another who is... Drum role please... My wifums, the one, the only Mandy.She rocked on the exam. I hope to join her soon... hopefully.The other exciting thing is that i finally brought out my saxophone. I got a cheap loner from a friend in midland (thanks larry), but it works okay.

I played a bit for the house girl, Mandy, and the dogs. The dogs are either very big fans of saxophone or they want to kill me when i play. One dog just started howling whenever i played. Regardless i didn't play too long.Okay, here is a pic of us on our bed. Mandy studying kiswahili (no surprise) and me chillaxing and updating my blog.If you guys want to hear about something specific or see specific pictures let me know on the comments!

Today is turkey day! I'm so pumped. We're all getting together to celebrate, cook turkey, play games, and even do a crude re-enactment of the first thanksgiving for our Kenyan Teachers. I decided to attempt to make brownies for the occasion, but it's going to prove to be a challenge without either cocoa or vanilla. I experimented yesterday using Cadbury Hot Chocolate mix and it turned out pretty good! Now I just have to repeat on a large scale for about 30 people. J

We're also going to play ultimate Frisbee, soccer, and volleyball… in Jeans. We are excited to wear jeans.

Other updates: Mandy is still "rocking" the language scene. So much so that she's getting transferred to a faster paced language group next week. This means that in the mornings Mandy will need to walk to a different house to have morning Kiswahili lessons instead of staying at our house for lessons. I'm still staying at the house with my friend Bryan and our trainer Emily. Our group was pretty awesome, so we're sad to lose Mandy. For me the language is starting to slow down. We've learned most of the high frequency words like "to want, like, need, good, bad" etc so that our improvement isn't as dramatic as before.

I promise… pictures will come. J

Habari Zenu Y'all!?

Here are a few pictures from our thanksgiving day extravaganza. FYI - the brownies from hot chocolate worked out even better than expected. Hot chocolate has 2-1 sugar-cocoa and brownies only need 4-1 so the rest was pie.. Or brownies.. Or history. Picture 1 - the beautiful outward bound facilities Picture 2 - me and charlie in authentic pilgrim garb ( i also had a musket)Picture 3 - beau jonesPicture 4 - the native americansPicture 5 - Mandy, stacu, and Kristiann Picture 5 - Bryan from my language groupPicture 6 - walking homePicture 7 - our room is on the right, the left is the kitchen with the house girl harima in the doorHope you all had a great thanksgiving!

Good news today. This morning I finally figured out how to use my cell phone to get internet on my laptop. It involved a USB cable and much fiddling, but it's pretty awesome. The thought of updating the blog from a phone seemed pretty rough.

We got some more good news today. We found out our permanent sites today! Mandy and I will be spending 24 months on the eastern edge of Lake Victoria teaching at an all-girls school. We'll have our own house and nearby access to electricity! It's quite exciting. The school requested that I teach Math and Physics and Mandy to teach Chemistry and Physics, both at a freshman/sophomore level. We're very happy they're not asking us to teach biology. We would not have been the best choice for that.

There is supposed to be a market only 3 km away and several larger cities within a days travel by bus. Over-all we're quite happy. There's even a chance that they'll install electricity at our house during out stay. We're not getting our hopes up though. J

I suppose I should actually tell you about what we're doing for the next month and a half. Well… currently we're living in a mid-sized town near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro called Oloitokitok. We're here with all the new teaching volunteers getting training in Kiswahili Language, Kenyan Culture, and Teaching. They keep us very busy during the week with 2-4 hrs of language in the morning, 2 hrs of culture, and a few hours of education training every day. The language is intense, but we're learning very fast. Mandy is especially doing well. Our language group is only three people and we get tons of practice and one-on-one attention. It seems like Mandy's brain is like a steel trap for language. I'm doing okay, but my brain sometime acts like a sieve for memorizing things.

We're hoping to reach "proficiency" in Kiswahili within the next few weeks so that we can leave it behind and speak Luo. Our permanent site speaks Luo and we can't wait to get started learning about it. Oh – I should clarify. Learning basic Kiswahili is required as a PCV, but once you reach a minimum level, they'll allow you to start learning a local language. Most Kenya's speak English, Kiswahili, and their local language. I'm sure we could get by on English and Kiswahili, but In order to "fit in" more at our site I want to learn the local language (Luo).

Here as a few pictures from my phone. I'll post more in the next few weeks of our host family and the scenery.

The above picture is our bedroom during training. The beautiful lady is Mandy taking a nap under a mosquito net. The bucket and jugs are for water preparation (we treat our water). And yes, we have lighting J

This is me.

Okay that's all for today. If you want to contact us, email is the fastest. We can also talk on the weekends if we plan it out. Oh, and if you want to send us a Christmas present (hint hint, wink wink) the address is below.

Jon & Mandy Van Regenmorter

Peace Corps Kenya

P.O. Box 698-00621, Nairobi Kenya

Real quick update -- we're safe and sound in Kenya. Travel went well and we're beginning our training.

I'll write more later!

Staging Begins Tomorrow It’s Sunday night at 8pm. Tomorrow morning at 2am we have to wake up and drive to Grand Rapids to catch our flight to Philadelphia. We’ll probably only get a few hours or sleep, but I have grand hopes of sleeping on the plane. We’ll see how that goes… Okay, I should back up and update on our last preparation and mishaps. On Friday we ran several last minute errands before picking up the U-Haul in Bay City and meeting our friends for lunch. After lunch our friends proved their weight in gold by helping us move a 2 bedroom apartment down 2 flights of stairs into the U-haul. (Thank You!) It ended up taking longer than I hoped and rained the whole time. Apparently we own a lot more stuff than I thought we did. We filled the 14’ truck to the brim and had to end up tossing some stuff. After dinner with our friends we drove through the storm to Holland and slept the night at my Parents house. In the morning we backed the truck up and started moving everything into my brother’s old bedroom. Surprisingly, unpacking the truck and moving it into the bedroom seemed to go pretty quickly. (Thanks Family!) We ended the day by riding to Battle Creek with R.J. and Kim. It was a very production few days. Now for the mishap… a few hours ago I just checked my backpack for something and noticed that one of the nice cell phones was missing. We tore everything apart but had no luck. In fact, in the process I also noticed we are missing ALL the extra cell phone batteries, the USB sticks, and a phone/computer cable! It was extremely frustration and disappointing. I had a whole strategy on how we would have phones/internet in Kenya without electricity and now there is a big old dent in that plan. We still have one cell phone with a solar charger, but we’ll now have to be careful. Here’s a few random pictures from out Family Travels That’s Me, Mandy, Jenna (Niece), and my Uncle Tom’s pit-bull. Actually a very cute dog. Look at that cute mug… he’s so cute.. oh yea and there’s Jessie too J -- Mandy’s sister. There’s the other neice Ally and my beautiful wife Mandy. My hair is actually much shorter now.

Just doing a test to see if I can blog while offline.

Ok. I just sent out an email to my entire contact list directing them to this blog, so I figured I should put some more details about our trip here for the curious among us.

Here are the Frequently Asked Questions we've gotten so far.

1.) Where in Kenya will you be going?Short Answer: We don't know yet.Long Answer: For the first 3 months we'll be receieving training in Loitokitok, Kenya which is near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. At the end of training they'll pick a specific location for us based on the current needs and our skillset.2.) What do you do during training?Training will focus on language (Kiswahili), cultural, and education training all to make us more affective teachers at our final post. We'll live with a "host family" during this time to help immerse us in the language/culture.The town has electricity, water, and cell phone coverage so I'll be updating the blog and adding picture fairly regularly.3.) Will you have electricity & water?Our final post will most likely be without running and electricity. Some PCV's (Peace Corp Volunteers) do get modern amenities, but I believe the majority don't.We're preparing for this by packing solar chargers for cell phone, batteries, solar showers, etc.4.) How can we contact you in Kenya?Email is the best method. Around half of Kenya has cell phone coverage at 900 Mhz. We just bought a quad-band PDA phone that will work in Kenya. We also bought a solar charger that will work with the phone so there is a good chance that we'll be able to check email and "text" people using local SIM cards almost daily.5.) Is Kenya safe?As I understand it, Kenya is one of the more peaceful countries in the region. Peace Corps is also very thorough in picking safe locations for volunteers and ensuring their continued safety.6.) Can we come and visit you?Please do! We can have visitors after 6 months (after April, 2010). We'll also accumulate vacation days and may even have weeks off when the school kids are on vacation. We're planning on traveling around the area on our free time and we'd be happy to have you with us!7.) What will you be doing?Our primary job is to teach Math & Science. We don't have all the details yet, but typically we'll have fellow teachers (Kenyan) and a principal for guidance. The main goal is to prepare the students for the national exam. See link for details. We're also encouraged to have side projects within the community.Until next time.

Jon & Mandy

I've got to say, it isn't what I expected... leaving Dow that is. I'm not sure what I expected. A mixed response, more silence, maybe a few weird looks. I knew our friends would be positive, but I never expected the random emails, phone calls, and people dropping in to tell me how excited they are for us. It's almost like this is the first good news they've head in a year and we're benefiting from their pent up good nature. I honestly haven't heard a single negative thing.

So yes, tommorow is our last day. I've got a lot of stuff to do. Mandy has been slowly emptying her office over the last week whereas I have not moved a single paper. I'm determined to do usefull work until my last day and then throw everything in the trash/car like a mad-man and drive away.

In case you haven't had a chance to talk to us, we are leaving Dow on Oct. 2nd, flying to Chicago on Nov 2nd, and after a few shots flying to Kenya on Nov 4th. Between now and then will be a lot of moving and traveling to visit family & friends. If you'd like to be on that like list of friends/family we visit shoot me an email or call my cell and we'll try and get there.