Saxophone and kiswahili

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!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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

Update in Pictures

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 jones

Picture 4 - the native americans

Picture 5 - Mandy, stacu, and Kristiann

Picture 5 - Bryan from my language group

Picture 6 - walking home

Picture 7 - our room is on the right, the left is the kitchen with the house girl harima in the door

Hope you all had a great thanksgiving!

Test

i'm attempting to post a blog from my phone.

Language and Final Posting

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

Safe and Sound in 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!

Heavy Lifting and Vanishing Phones

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.