Lake Victoria & Bank Day

We walked to Paga beach on Victoria Lake this morning.  It took us around 45 minutes on a scenic, rustic road.  On our way there, we saw a goat herd, many children who yelled “Mzungu, mzungu, how are you?” and most of them wanted to shake our hands.  We ran into a ton of butterflies on our way there. I have never seen anything like it.  It was beautiful.  I also climbed this big, African tree and posed for a photo.  This mama who spoke English quite well told us when saying good morning to many people, we must add “uru” at the end of “oyaore”.  So we must say “oyaore uru”.  Down at the beach, children were fishing with a wooden stick without success.  Children here don’t have fancy toys like N. American children. They play with straws, tires, fishing, lids that are rolled, garbage bag soccer balls, and drawing on dirt.  They look very blissful playing with these materials which made me feel very greedy, having everything I need in life and still wanting more. 

a tree climber

These ladies taught us what "uru" meant

Amsterdam

After 6 months.. I am attempting at writing again.  This time, it will be a bit different because I am actually headed to Kenya for about 2 months with a volunteering organization called GIVE (Global Initiative for Village Empowerment).  Since flying over to Kenya is not the easiest, my teammate Rashma and I decided to stop by the Netherlands for a couple of days instead of being in layover for about 35 hours.  We flew to Amsterdam from Vancouver which took us around 9 hours, found a nice cozy place on air bnb and decided explore this city.  

We didn't do any research before our arrival so it was exciting to find things along the way by asking the locals. After yesterday's first glimpse of Amsterdam, these are the things I learned about Amsterdam.

1. Cafes everywhere.  Funny enough, I was actually looking for a big fat burger with fries to realize that I wasn't in N. America anymore.  Most places serve sandwiches with soup.
2. Cannabis.  You can get your own starter kit for 2.50 euros.  
3. Sex.  Sex museums, red light district, prostitution etc. etc.
4. Flowers.  There is a flower market which sells the root of the plant.  It was an interesting to realize once again how ugly roots grow into something so beautiful.
5. Cheese. We went into one of the stores and just tried out their cheese. #hippielife
6. Canals. Of course the signature. 
7. Cyclists. Some, very angry if you are getting in their way. This lady gave Dina, who is also a GIVE traveler this year, the biggest disapproval when she stepped on the cycling lane.  We went because the signal told us that we could walk.  I am not sure how that works around here. 
8. Very tall people. Some look like models.