Football, friends and food

So I have been back in Kenya for about 3 weeks now. I already miss American food and hot showers, but otherwise it is great to be back. Work is going so well. I have 2 new staff members who are awesome and work along the same lines as I do, namely doing the right thing haha. So basically it is a new year, with new people and we even have a new office. Well two more stories added to the old office, so we have much more space to work in.

I have definitely figured out how to deal with the stress of my job and let things go. By surrounding myself with the right people, it makes me feel much more confident about leaving here in July and things really being able to continue the way they are now. With work being less stressful, it makes it much easier to have more fun in general.

My 3 American friends here just moved into the apartment building next to mine, so it is awesome to have them so close. We can literally stand at our windows and talk to each from 5 yards away... pretty sweet!

This past weekend I played in a local soccer tournament here. There is a girls team here who I practice with once in a while. The tournament was hosted by a local high school, but it was an open tournament. We played 2 games on Saturday and won both pretty easily. Today, we played 3 more games, including semi-finals and finals. We were playing the other good girls team from Kisumu in the semi's and we were winning 1-0 with about 3 minutes left. The officiating was horrible, no one disputed that, and one of our girls had an obvious handball in the box, almost near the 6 yard box and of course, the referee calls a free kick OUTSIDE the box. So the other teams goes crazy and the girls start swearing and screaming at the ref. Their coaches were calling them and telling them to walk off the field, which is what they did. This is the problem with a lot of soccer here. I have seen this scenario happen MULTIPLE times,but this was the first time I was directly involved because I was playing. Teams have no discipline and the coaches are the instigators in almost every situation like this. What kind of role models are they teaching the kids to abandon matches whenever there is a call by the referee that they don't like. Very frustrating to see...

Anyway, we got to the finals and ended up winning in penalty kicks. It was fun and I scored a few goals so people FINALLY realize that I can play soccer, even though I always say I do. The common response is "but Kelsey, they don't play soccer in America." Maybe now they think otherwise haha.

I am currently sitting in my living room at 4:30am watching the Super Bowl by myself. There are no American commercials, which stinks, and I think the broadcast is about 10 seconds behind the US, but it is live nonetheless. This will be my one major late-night sporting event, besides the Duke-UNC games, but it is totally worth losing sleep over.

I am probably one of 15 people in the entire country watching this game right now. Gotta love it...