Kenya!

Well we headed to the neighboring country of Kenya a couple weeks ago and because I have LOADS of photos I decided to do this post as a "Travel through photos"!  This is our first photo on the road in the taxi from Malaba, Kenya to Kijabe, Kenya! Only 7 hours to go!! It was a very bumpy, and dusty ride! Sarah had a totally different skin color when we arrived....almost like a fake tanner from all the orange dirt!!

Photo of one of the many beautiful views along the way! Kenya was beautiful, they still haven't received rain yet so a bit dry but much greener than Uganda at the moment!

Ready for church! We arrived at Riff Valley Academy (RVA) it is the Africa Inland Mission (AIM) boarding school and were overwhelmed by the amazing campus and welcome we received! We are heading to church on campus!

This is where we stayed! I kept calling RVA a little drop of heaven! It is very westernized and overlooks the Riff Valley of Kenya...BEAUTIFUL! We were amazed at our hostess, Lauri Seymore! She is the RVA kindergarten teacher and has been there for 7 years! She did nothing but treat us like Queens! We ate like Queens and had a wonderful time at her home! Thank you Lauri!

Here we are heading to church, with our amazing hostess! LtoR: Me, Sarah, Holly, and Lauri!

This is the view just above the soccer field! Imagine playing there, awesome! It is a beautiful campus!

Evening sunset over the Riff Valley! Love how God paints this picture!

Taking a stroll on the guards trail at RVA...Holly had a mishap and broke her shoes so she proceeded the rest of the walk "Smile African Style" no shoes.

After RVA, we headed to Nairobi, Kenya! It is so great to be apart of AIM because they are all over Africa and we were able to stay at the guesthouse there! Our first full day in Nairobi we went to an elephant orphanage! This photo is of half of the elephants they take care of. They come down to this feeding/bathing area for 1 hour a day!

'Hey Elephant!'- these elephants (I believe) between the ages of 3 months and 3 years old! They are found by different people or animal protection organizations. Most of them become orphaned because of poaching:( They told us about how they care for them and because elephants develop much like humans they cannot live without family, they die from anxiety and stress. There are "Keepers", staff that are with the elephants 24/7, they rotate in shifts of course. 

This little guy I think is about 3 months old and he is teething. Like us, he wasn't feeling well so the "keepers" were bathing him. Poor guy he was SO CUTE!!

This one was having loads of fun! She seems to be the one that causes most of the mischief! She has just bathed in the mud water!

This one of the stalls the elephants sleep in and the bed you see is where the Keeper sleeps! Amazing! Love the way they take care of these elephants! I had no idea they developed so much like us!

We then headed to the Rothschild Giraffe Conservatory! They have a hut like building about the history of the conservatory and it is built so that you are face to face with the Giraffe, as you can tell! It was so funny to feed them! There tongues are long and slimy!

See how long that tongue is, gets right up in his own nose! Yuck! Loved being so close to them!

"I got an itch"! haha, I didn't realize until after I took this photo that they were both doing the same thing, haha!

"Out of Africa"- Saturday Holly, I, and our new friend Asun traveled to the Karen Blixen museum! If you have not seen the film "Out of Africa" I highly recommend it! Sarah is not with us because she got sick while in Nairobi :( We showed her our photos :)

Front of her house from 1914! It was really fun to see this home and the way they processed their coffee...she managed a 700 worker coffee farm in Kenya before Kenya was even a country. She was amazing, hunted for lions, etc. ya know...no big deal! haha

As we traveled back on taxi, or in Kenya they call them "Mutatus" I happened to see a herd of ZEBRAS out my window! It is really fun to see more than deer as I travel around Africa!

Crossed the Equator....TWICE! On the way and on the way back! I managed to capture this sign on our way home! So cool to have crossed the equator! The sign says "Jambo Kenya, Hakuna Matata, Equator Crossing" These are Swahili words meaning "Hello/Welcome to Kenya, Have no worries"

When we finally got back to Malaba Kenya we had to go through immigration to get stamped out of Kenya and back in to Uganda and then our amazing boda guys came to pick us up! This was the view we rode home in! These hills in the back are very close to our house! Amazing right?!