24/2

Tried Zumba with Jackie… She, Mattias and I are a bit like a family after these couple of days, going to be a bit weird when the rest comes back.

25/2

The first people returned back from their holidays today, Frida from Lamu and Olivia from a luxurious trip to Sweden.

Mattias, Jackie and I decided to keep to the family for one more night so we watched a movie. Why the hell I let them talk me into seeing a scary movie, Paranormal Activity, is a mystery. I had to sleep on Lisa’s floor just so I wouldn’t die of fear during the night. I almost did anyway.

26/2

It is over, the others have returned.

Still we got the chance to have one more movie night so we saw both Jurassic Park 1 and 2. Got to into bed at 2.

27/2

And got out of it at 6 again just so Frida and I could surprise Josse who was coming with a plane from Sweden to the airport at 7. After breakfast I slept until 3 when it was time for the daily training session at the gym.

23/2

Went with Elsa to the Karen Blixen museum in Karen for a little daytrip. Her house was so sweat and the garden with the view over N’gong hills was amazing. The weather was perfect for a stroll so after our guided tour in Karen’s house we walked the 15 minuets to the Karen Blixen Coffee Gardens that is a spa, hotel and a restaurant where we ate the world’s best cheesecakes. Mine made me cry a little.

On the way home we asked the cabdriver to drop us of at Juction so that we could by some tomato soap a couple of other things so we could make our own little dinner. Which was followed by a cup of tea at Java with Jackie and Mattias and later the movie The Cider House Rules.

21/2

Went bowling with Sara B, Mattias and Jackie. It was loads of fun, even though it was a bit too long since I played which meant I sucked.

22/2

Took a walk to Yaya center and ate breakfast there after having bought a book and a magazine as a treat to myself. Trained with Elsa and Jackie just as every other day this week and then walked to junction to buy some snacks for Mattias’, Jackie’s and mine sauna, swimming and movie night. Best part was when it started raining when we were swimming, so cozy. The movie for the evening was Barnens Ö. All you old people might have seen it; it is weird, creepy and slightly disturbing.

Museum!

20/2 the National museum of Kenya

After breakfast Anna, Christopher and I took a cab to the National museum of Kenya and the Snake Park. It was fun even thought the museum and the snake park in particular, are both kind of sad. The museum was a bit run down and all the stuffed animals locked old, dusty and badly made. The exhibition on the cradle of mankind was quite cool though, showing different skeletons from humanities evolution.

One thing became quite clear to us after just a couple of minutes at the museum and that was the fact that Swedes and Kenyans have very different traditions concerning how you behave at a museum. This might seem obvious; still you get shocked when someone lifts his or her kid into the exhibition so that it can pull the stuffed hippo in its ear.

The snake park was awful. The only positive things about it were that the snakes and the other reptiles were moving around a lot, probably because they were starving and had to look for anything edible, and that Christopher got to have an chameleon on his head. Their terrariums/boxes where too small, too dirty and too empty some being completely empty except for the animal.

After dinner 6 of us who were staying or hadn’t yet left for Mombasa or Zanzibar went to the Impala club to just sit and chat.

Que Pasa

Yesterday the few of us who are staying at the boarding over the break and those who had yet not left for Mombasa or Zanzibar went out to celebrate that we are free from school for a week. We went to a place, were I had not been before, called Que Pasa, which is a restaurant that around 11 becomes a pub/dance place. We left at 9 so when we got there people were still having dinner. We didn’t want to eat so we just sat around talking until 11 when the dancing began. On the way home from Que Pasa I got to see my first car crash in action. A truck slowed down a bit too much so a small car behind it flew into its behind in full speed. There where car parts and lots of sparks created by metal hitting metal flying everywhere.

When I got back to my room suddenly the power went. If the power disappears when it is dark outside it gets really dark here, really really dark. The whole thing made me scared to death since I couldn’t find my flashlight in the dark so I just started to squeal “Help!” which woke Lisa and her father (who is visiting her) up. Two seconds after it had gone the power was then back again. Today we then got to know that the only reason we had any electricity was because the extra generator was on which meant that there was very little or no warm water at all and that all the washing machines were dead and since I haven’t washed anything for about 2 weeks today of all days was a very bad day for this to happen. T.I.A

Holiday!!

MUN Pics from Karin

(Bhutan’s flag)

(UN car..)

(Speech by the man who toke the pictures for Kenya burning, google for the pictures!!)

(Jenifer presenting Saudi Arabia’s resolution)

(Fanny presenting Ghana’s resolution)

(The economy delegates from Bhutan (I), Ghana and Kazakhstan (Victor Rydberg) discussing the resolutions being presented in their room)

(The MUN boys from the Swedish school, David, Baltzar and Robin)

(I, receiving my MUN diploma)

(MUN is over for ever!)

(All the delegates + principle and Torbjörn)

Kiswahili

Kiswahili is a quite rational logical language, thankfully, which suits me just fine.

Juma = week

Siku = day

The days of the week are really easy to learn, you just have to turn the week a bit upside down since the Swahili week is based on the Islamic calendar and therefore does not start with Monday as our do but with Saturday since Friday is their most important day and therefore should be last.

The first weekdays are easy to learn because since they start with the word juma and ends with a number. I’ll try and explain.

Jumamosi = Saturday (Juma = week, mosi = first)

Jumapili = Sunday (Pili = second)

Jumatatu = Monday (Tatu = tree)

Jumanne = Tuesday (Nne = four)

Jumatano = Wednesday (Tano = five)

After these it gets tricky with the last two.

Alhamisi = Thursday (means something like day before holy pray day and is pronounced in a very Arabic way, a bit like Aljazeera)

Ijumaa = Friday (the most important day of the week, their holy day).

Weird things in Kenya part 4

During our History B lesson this morning there was a dude playing on a bagpipe in the schoolyard. T.I.A?

My sister is coming!

One week left till the spring break!

Tomorrow is Valentines day, which will be including a cozy dinner somewhere here in Nairobi to take a break from the school’s food. Then the rest of the week will just be spent training and doing as much homework as possible so that the break can be spent writing the project essay which has do be handed in in April. After handing that in I will be pretty much done.

The rest of the break I have planed to play tourist by doing all the touristy stuff I’ve so far missed here in Nairobi such as the giraffe and elephant rescue centers, the Karen Blixen museum, the Nairobi national museum, Kitangela glass and others. Maybe I’ll leave a day free to sunbathe too.

// It is raining and all the homes of the children in Kibera is being washed away //

MUN

Mt. Longonot

After a week of waking up 5.30 every morning, waking up at 6 was heaven… (Sarcasm). 1 hour and 40 minutes after waking up we were by the base of the sleeping volcano Mt. Longonot. It was a warm, sweaty, steep and very long walk up to the craters rim and when I finally reached the top I only got a 5 min lunch break before the others wanted to start the 2-3 hours walk around the volcano. I walked around about ¼ of the crater (which is HUGE) then my body (exhausted from MUN) and my feet (they look like hell right now) said stop so I and a couple others turned around and started the long walk back and down.

A point of info to all of you is that Longonot is dusty. I mean really dusty. When I got back I had black dust all over me, it was the brownest I’ve ever looked. The shower after that was heaven.

When we got back we were greeted by an outdoor BBQ dinner. Fancy right!

Now I’m going to sleep until Monday and the dreaded Valentines day.

Love to all, Namaste.

1102 -2011 (Palindrome) the day MUN ended

It is over! I have my diploma and on Monday I’ll have my grade showing that I’ve participated the 29^th EAMUN (East African Model UN) session which, according to my teacher, is something that will help a lot if put in appliances for collages and universities.

I’m going to post more pictures later, some of me, my classmates, my diploma and the funny notes that we passed around during the week.

For now I’ll just try and explain one of the best things that happened during the MUN week. But to do that I have to tell you that there are very strict rules. For example you always have to speak in diplomatic terms, listen to the chairperson speaking and respect him/her and stick to the dress code. One huge no no is if a guy roles up his sleeves.

So what happened was this: A guy called to the chair true his microphone “Point of information to the chair” (which is what you say if you want to address the chair). The chair answered “State your point”. The guy then said “Could the chair please unroll his sleeves” (OOOooooHHH, for your information there were a lot of guys like this just wishing to be funny). Complete silence. Everyone just looks at the chairperson, a guy who just as everyone else is sweating like a pig in the overcrowded assembly hall and who has therefore pulled up his sleeves just above the wrists. He pulls them down but not all the way. The guy calls out again “Point of information to the chair, can you please unroll your sleeves”. The chairperson who is buy then sick and tired of being interrupted by idiots every other seconds then screams as high as he can “Would the person who said that come up and do it himself”! Chaos, applause, shouts of approval, everyone ecstatic.

Don’t know if you understand how big off a deal that was. But it really was!

By the way tomorrow I get to climb Mt. Longonot which I missed last time!

MUN week!

(My MUN badge, I know that is an awful picture)

Resolution after resolution being read, debated and voted for or against. Sitting in crowded rooms in suits or dresses sweating to death. People behaving like big babies, disturbing the peace and the order of the assembly just because they can. These first 3 days of MUN week have made it quite clear to me that I’m going to work for the United Nations no matter what. I LOVE THIS! I love when we all meat in the morning in the general assembly and everyone looks so serious, so business like. I love being able to have my say in these important matters that we discuss, even if the MUN debates have no influence on anything. I love meeting all these different people from different international schools in the east Africa region with all their different backgrounds and experiences, it feels like I’m really learning while doing this.

It hurts to say it but here it comes: the MUN coarse was actually worth it.

So far Ghana’s resolution is the only one of the Swedish resolution that has been debated and passed. Our (Bhutan’s) resolution was debated but failed due to lack of time and misunderstanding, fortunately we found out a way of re-debating a resolution which we are going to try out tomorrow. It is a long shot but we want to make sure we’ve done everything we can to get it true, and if it passed it would be a bit awesome. Saudi Arabia’s resolution is still to be debated, so wish us all luck!

(My fellow delegates from Bhutan on the lobbying day)

(This is the economy room that I’m in)

(This is my chair and my sign)

(Sara who is also in my room and her sign)

MUN

So we are finally here, or in a few days at least, the week we’ve all been waiting for, the Model UN week. Our resolutions have been written and all tree of them passed. Ass I might have told you my country is Bhutan and our resolution is about the slum proliferation in Asia, then there is Saudi Arabia and Ghana, which are countries, also represented by students from my school.

Tomorrow is the final long training before we on Friday have a training mock debate with Victor Rydberg Gymnasium (a school which has come all the way from Stockholm for the MUN week). Then Saturday we get one day’s break before it all starts. Everyone who’s not having Model UN is going out this evening since we are for the first time allowed to be out until 1.30 in the evening… I want to go too…

But then on Sunday we have to be up and ready at 10 because we are then going to have a day of mock debates against Victor Rydberg and Rainbow International School of Uganda which are both coming to our school.

On Monday the actual MUN week starts and we’ll have a week of early mornings and lots of debating different resolutions. It will end with a banquet, which is supposed to be really long, and boring and we’ll all get a certificate that we’ve participated. What would make all our work seem so much more worth it is if our resolution passed. It would just be the perfect ending but that totally depends on the other delegates representing the other countries. I really don’t believe we could have written a better resolution and I have full confident that Frida (our ambassador) will present it in the best way possible to the other delegates in the human rights room. I myself will be sitting in the economy and therefore wont debate any of the “Swedish” resolutions.

// Now I beg you all to cross your fingers and hope it goes well for us next week because we are all horribly nervous //

Mög and fubik

Sometimes it is really hard to live with 45-46 people who most of the time doesn’t understand a word of what you are saying. We are 3 kids who speak Skånska here at the boarding and about 2 more who live in Skåne but they don’t speak real Skånska. I’ve never seen myself as someone with a very country/farm style accent but according to the rest I sound like that. They always make fun of me for pronouncing ost as “ust” and ont as unt. Today I even found out that they don’t even know what “mög” and “fubik” means, my favorite words. Stupid Stockholm people.