Right before it started to chase Will
Today we were committed to getting up early and going for a nice long run, but we both slept in after repeated wake-ups. Conveniently we have absolutely no real responsibilities or commitments at this point so we went for a short jog anyways. Yesterday our very kind neighbor generously lent us her car for the time we're here which solved most of our transportation woes. While chatting with her, she recommended that we check out the elephant orphanage in Nairobi National Park, so after our jog this morning we took the Corolla for its first excursion to check it out.
The goal of the orphanage is to help nurture orphaned elephants and rhino to adulthood so they can be released back into the wild. They raise money with tourists, but they really aren't supposed to have much human contact, so visiting hours are strictly from 11am-noon. The alleged 45 minute drive took almost two hours with traffic and we only had ten minutes to check out the animals, but it was completely worth the four dollar entrance fee. The elephants were totally cool, but the highlight was definitely the baby rhino. The bizarre looking creature was about 2 feet tall and oddly disproportionate. At one month old, it's about as small as it was when it was born and hasn't really started growing yet. It looked almost fetal, but somehow extremely cute at the same time. It walked up right to our camera, stumbling a few times before being whisked away by the caretakers. There were also two adult rhinos which we got to pet (through a fence). They don't call it rhino-skin for no reason; their hide is about an inch think and very calloused. They were surprisingly gentle, although I suspect if it were in the wild I would have been a human shish-kebab in no time.
After 12 we decided to check out the nearby giraffe center. Again we paid a nominal fee and got up close and personal with some awesome animals. I'll let the pictures do the talking. We did end up seeing a giraffe in the wild on a quick nature walk, which was a little too exciting. We found it feeding by the fence, and it started walking toward us in a seemingly menacing fashion. Cornered by the fence, Will was forced to flee and escaped narrowly through the gate after a harrowing chase (the story is a bit embellished but factually accurate).
We picked up Ben from school and came home with big plans to go to the local youth hang-out and meet some kids our age. We came up with elaborate plans to entice girls and embarrass Ben, but we ended up getting distracted by a pick-up soccer game between our expat neighbors and the local Kenyan worker-boys. Alex got his first taste of third world soccer, including the ceaseless cheating and bickering. It was a ton of fun, even though the level of play was a bit slow. Will is certainly sore, which isn't surprising considering how fat and out of shape he is. Alex the gazelle doesn't seem to be feeling it as badly, which just means he wasn't playing hard enough.
Good night!
P.S.-Sorry the pictures are in backwards chronological order, we'll get it figured out for next time but its too much of a pain to fix these ones now
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