John and Jean: Kenya here we come!

It's mid morning in Kenya and we are at the guest house at the Seventh Day Adventist East Africa Headquarters. Here is a brief outline of our journey here...

Tues - July 5th We headed to RDU for our 3:00 p.m. flight to Newark where we were meeting Nick and Laura. They were flying in from Seattle. Turned out our flight was on a small prop plane. The propeller was right next to me. It was quieter than I thought it would be and there was a nice vibration in the seat - almost a massage chair. Got a fair amount of sleep on that leg of the trip! We landed in Newark and only had to walk down three gates to the Zurich flight and Nick and Laura were waiting. Great start! We only had an hour to wait before boarding so wandered Newark a little - John used to spend a lot of time in this airport! Got on board and we were off...

but not until we had waited our turn!

then over scenic New Jersey and it's oil storage tanks..

lower Manhattan

Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

Midtown Manhattan

Central Park

then along the Long Island Sound, over the Connecticut Shore - we watched for Giants Neck but not sure we saw it and over Cape Cod and off over the Atlantic. It was dark before we knew it and we were being fed food and then off to sleep.

Wednesday, July 6th- Woke up this morning after a pretty good night's sleep. Opened the window and saw the European coast coming up. Unfortunately, much of the ride following was over clouds until we were fairly well into France. Then we got a view of this...

lots of beautiful fields below...

then more clouds for some distance and then they broke up and we really began to see some beautiful farms...

and this lovely river valley on our decent into Zurich...

and this lovely Swiss village just outside Zurich.

We landed, went through Swiss security and then headed up to the gate and only waited for a few minutes before we boarded onto our airbus for Nairobi. It was a Swissair flight and the service was outstanding, food very good (even ice cream!) but the seats are close together and when the seat in front of you reclines you can hardly move. But, we slept quite well. Unfortunately, we were in the middle section so no windows....and nobody in our section of the plane opened their window until right before they landed! What a waste! No pictures of the Sahara, flying over Khartoum or coming into Nairobi! It was a smooth landing and since we already had our visas we got through passport control pretty fast. Interestingly, they scanned our passports, then took a picture and all five fingerprints on both hands...that was a first for us!

Downstairs to baggage to collect our bags...

Nick and Laura connected with Tom - the son of one of their church friends- to deliver the suitcase full of goodies for his family they brought...

then connected with Sharon who took us to our driver and we headed to Advent Hill. The traffic was incredibly slow and many of them drive like maniacs, so it was quite an adventure getting here. But our driver did well and we finally connected with Joy with the keys to our lodgings while here in Nairobi. We threw our luggage into the rooms and headed to the dining room that was closing in 5 minutes and had a wonderful dinner.

l-r - April's empty chair, Laura, Nick, Fred, Jean, John

April and Fred joined us while we ate and caught us up on everything that was happening at the Health Advisory that Fred was participating in. Also gave us some background about the facility and then just had some nice conversation. Food was great - we're eating vegetarian these two weeks. Then off to the room and a quick move the suitcases to get to the bed, brush our teeth and hit the hay.

Mosquito nets are the only addition to our bedding.

Fred and April had invited us to join them for their early morning walk around the compound so we hopped out at 6 and did about 40 minutes around here. It's a beautiful campus.