My time in Kenya

All of us at the conference (minus Michelle)

My time in Kenya was great!  I was going expecting to go to a conference where we sat a listened to one person talk for the whole week about education.  And yes, education was the topic the whole week but it was more of a conversation. Have you ever heard of Edcamp?  It is a conference formate that gets people  involved and sharing ideas.  Where participants get to choose the topics of the conversation.

Our trip to the school in Nairobi was great!

Before the conference even started we were given a list of possible topics and then we were to e-mail the person in charge to add any other topics we were interested in hearing more about or we wanted to share about.  Once the conference started we were given the list of different topics everyone wanted to talk about. From there we were told to vote for 5 of the topics. From there the topics with the most votes were the ones we started off with. There would be someone facilitating the conversation and then some one writing notes. Over the period of the week we would re-look over the topics and revote to see if what people wanted to talk about was still relevant. If you want to hear more about Edcamp feel free to Google it or to check out the Edcamp website.

Me taking pictures of the 3 and 4 year olds

The conference it’s self was really good and informative!  It was also good to be with fellow MCCers and to be able to have formal and informal conversations. I had also met some of the participants at Christmas time when the Southern Africa MCCers got together for a retreat. This was really great to catch up with them and to also meet new friends.

They were so beautiful!

The place we were staying was right across the street from a mall so in the evenings we would often go across and either walk around the mall or just go and drink coffee. There were 3 different coffee shops in this mall.  I tried 2 of the 3 and they were good! My favourite was The Nairobi Java House.  There was also a movie theatre in the mall!  So Michelle Potts and I went over on the Monday night to watch Pitch Perfect 2!  It was good, and funny, but I still think I like the first one better. Then on the last day there was a few of us who went to go and see Spy with Melissa MaCarthy. This was a good one too…though the language was a little sour.

Joan and I stayed an extra day in Nairobi to be tourist! We ended up going to the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage. This was such an amazing experience. I would defiantly tell others to go if they are ever near Nairobi. Not only is it an incredible experience but they also do such good work!  After the orphanage we went to a Safari Walk. Which was good, though it was not quite what I was expecting. It was almost like a glorified zoo, the good thing about it was that all the animals that were in the enclosures were all animals that had come from an animal orphanage and were not able to set back into the wild. We also had ourself a guide, this was good as we probably would not have seen half the animals if he was not there pointing them out. The one that shocked me the most was the spotted hyena and how big it was! My favourite one was the leopard. What a beautiful animal! We finished off our excursion with a nice lunch at at restaurant and shop where I might have bought some things for myself! :)

Joan took this picture of me in the lounge

Our trip ended nicely with us in the Johannesburg airport in a nice lounge. You know those ones that you always walk by in airports and wonder what they look like on the inside! It was nice to feel like a millionaire and be able to eat or drink what ever I wanted for free! :) Thanks for share this experience with me Joan!

Until next time...