It is almost over

It is hard to believe two weeks have flown by so fast. We spent our last morning with the monkeys today. By the end of this morning we had followed all eleven female monkeys for at least one hour. Five of the monkeys we followed for one and a half hours over the past seven days in the field. The longer I spent with the monkeys the more quickly I have been able to recognize them. At first all of them looked exactly the same but even after our short time here each monkey began to stand out as an individual monkey. I certainly saw several ideas that I will be able to use in the classroom. I am very much looking forward to being back in the classroom on Monday though I might be bit tired from the trip so please be kind to me upon my return!

I am sorry I wasn’t able to put up anything on the blog yesterday but the electricity was out from 8 am until midnight. Sixteen hours is not normal for an outage. Often the electricity will go out for a few hours from time to time but it is unusual for it to be out for an extended period of time like it was yesterday. I am still not sure what happens with everything in the refrigerator. People here simply deal with the inconvenience of the electricity going out.
Yesterday after we finished with the monkeys we went to a small village next to the Gede ruins. The local trip in this area is the Giriama. We watched a short performance by members of the village. They used five different sized drums and sang while several women and two men preformed a dance to the music. I took pictures and video of the performance that I will show you when I get back.

This trip was not just about the monkeys but also about the people I meet on this trip. It is always fascinating to watch a group of people who have never met before to interact and develop a relationship in travel conditions. Often there are specific topics that are inevitably brought up during travel. The topics generally revolve around shared experiences that allow strangers to quickly begin to relate to each other. Topics include food that you are experiencing in the country, food you miss from home, almost anything related to the bathroom, and shared experiences on the trip among other things. At some point people’s background begins to emerge which allows for a better understanding of each person. Not everyone gets along all of the time but people tend to work things out since the contact tends to be for short periods of time.

I hope you all have enjoyed my blog and photos while I have been in Kenya. I did not get to speak with my afternoon classes as much as I would have liked but being on the other side of the world does make my job here more challenging. I will be happy to be back in class on Monday so I am able to share my time in Kenya with you in more detail.

See you on Monday!