Lily has written some notes on her life since the Xmas holidays...Thought I would share.   She just won a poetry and photography competition.   I will post her poem and photo later but here is a pic of Lily with her trophy!

Over the Christmas holidays, some Connor....... cousins came and visited us from the US! They are on my moms side, two kids. Both are grown up, one is in college and the older one is out of college and living in Kuwait running a basketball academy! They stayed with us in Nairobi for a few days, and we showed them around everywhere. We went to the malls, and also we went to the national park. In the beginning, the park trip was fairly uneventful, because the zebras and other animals had migrated to places with more water during the dry season. When it got to be evening, however, it became interesting! (well, more interesting than a national park in Kenya is normally!) We saw a mother rhino and her baby hanging out with a herd of buffalo! After it started to get dark, we saw a LION walking 3 feet away from our car! It is really rare to see the lions in the National Park, and we were lucky enough to see one at the time our cousins were with us! 

After they were with us in Nairobi for a couple days, We went out to the coast of Kenya. This was the North coast I believe, where we only been to the south coast. It was a town called Diani, andit was really REALLY nice! We stayed in this resort called Forest dream resort. It was so cool because there are these monkeys and baboons running around everywhere just hanging off trees and stuff. We got to stay in a big villa called the Sultan Villa and had a pool and just like at the coast normally it had a personal chef at our house. He would make us food for any time we want, breakfast lunch and dinner! We get to choose whatever food we want and we can make up the menu beforehand.

Also, one day we went on a nice boat excursion on a thing called a dhow. (pronounced without the “h”). You boat around for little while, then you go to the big coral reef and you’re really close to the border of Tanzania. You can actually see Tanzania from the boat! After you sit on the beach or snorkel for a while, they take you again on the boat to an island to a restaurant that they own. There, you get served traditional Swahili food. Swahili food is the name for the food that is traditional on and around the coast of Kenya. They also have a very nice saltwater pool right near the restaurant with some very nice lounging areas around it so Sam and I swam around and stuff while the grown-ups rested after a big meal. Since it was getting late, we went back on the boat to the dock. That was a really long day, and everyone got really sunburned. It was so much fun though!

Wait a second, I totally blanked on telling you about my school play! It was called Around the World in 8 Plays. It is based on a group of gypsies who make a living by telling stories on the street. The play is made up of different narrators telling these 8 stories, and the actors acting out the stories with the narrators. I had two roles. One was named Julia, the other Isabel. Isabel is the lead female role in the play, the wife of the head storyteller, Bernardo. Hector, (the boy playing Bernardo) and I narrate 2 stories, the first and the last. We also come on between almost every story, to add more comedy with our extremely dysfunctional relationship. Julia, however is a character in one of the stories, called The Story of the Yara. It is a love story, I am in love with a man named Alonzo. We are engaged, but there is a monster trying to take him through mind power. It all ends happily, of course. The play was not taken seriously by anyone really until the last minute, which resulted in a lot of panic. In the end, the play was a success, and while not as popular as the ones at Wheeler, it still generated some positive buzz. 

Well, now the basketball season has ended for us MS girls, and it is on to either soccer (football here!) or field hockey. Field hockey is played by a lot of guys here, it is very aggressive and violent! As is rugby, but that is a whole different story. I am on the girls A-team, and I am goalie! It is a huge amount of pressure during games. I love it, but I have started to hurt my wrists more often because of it. We have an undefeated record so far, we are all really proud after our disastrous basketball season! I played one game that I am especially proud of, I let in only 1 goal out of probably 35 shots. I even saved a penalty shot! I was really sick that day, I had a fever all day but couldn't go to the nurse or risk missing the game. That was definitely my best game ever!! We only have a few more games, and a big tournament against Rift Valley Academy, one of our two main rivals. 

I don't know if you have heard, but recently Sam and I have been skyping with the 2nd (sometimes 3rd too) grade at Wheeler about one wednesday a month right after their community meeting, 4:30 our time. It is so much fun talking to them! They are learning about Kenya in Aerie right now, so their questions are really interesting! I think it is weird for them, seeing someone from their school that they have probably seen or met before living in a totally different continent!

In the middle school at ISK, the librarian has started a book club! I am in it with my friends Yasmien and Ellie, and the other girl in it is named Anna. So far we have read two books, the first one was not good or memorable, but the second one was spectacular. It was a graphic novel, but full of content and very well written. It is called Maus, by Art Speigleman. Have you heard of it? It is about the Holocaust and WWII. We are learning all about WWII right now in social studies, going very in depth. Last month, we had a guest speaker who's mother is a survivor of the Nazi holocaust. It was amazing to hear her story, so different than reading about it in a book! She was a very moving speaker, and it really brought a new perspective to the events for me. 

In English right now, we are reading a book called The Power of One. Have you read it or heard about it? It is about an English boy growing up in South Africa in the times of the Apartheid. He faces prejudices and racism, but he is still a genius. He is also a boxing star, and the book is about his journey from scrawny boy who was the constant victim of bullying to a star boxer with ambition to become world champ. It is a really interesting book, with themes of racism between English and Afrikaans, and white and black. It is set around apartheid, so there is also a sense of history with it. We also just finished studying WWII in Social Studies, we went way more in depth than we did last year. It was really interesting because there are some native German kids in our class, and we go to hear their perspective, which was that it was not all germans who were on hitler’s side, and that it was only the nazis. 

Since my birthday is in January, In the US I have to have inside parties because of the cold and snow. Here that was not a problem!! I got to rent a big inflatable waterside, and invite a bunch of friends over! In our yard there is a hill, so we put the start of the hill right at the end of the slide and continued on even after it ended. Once it started to get colder, because the sun had gone behind the trees, a hired henna artist came and did henna on all of our hands! We took a really cool picture of all of our hands in the middle of the circle with the henna on it. We watched 2 movies, (The Princess Bride and Moonrise Kingdom) and all around did sleepover stuff with pizza and birthday sundaes.

I’m really excited for next month, because the MS chorus is going on a trip to Tanzania, to Dar es Salaam! We will be staying in houses of kids from the International School of Tanganyika. (Tanganyika is the original name of Tanzania, who knew?) We have roommates from our chorus that we get to choose, and we get paired with a host family. I can’t wait to get to know all these new people, and to go by myself to a different country! 

THANKS LILY!