My birthday fell on a school night so we didn’t do anything too crazy. I had meetings all day long, and luckily my last meeting was in the building right next door to Bao Box, this cool board game restaurant with a great 8th floor terrace. A few of Bill’s colleagues came and few of my friends and colleagues came, so it was a really great evening because we have friends! We ate a lot of food and we played a fun pictionary/charades game. I LOVE pictionary and charades and all sorts of games, so it was the perfect birthday! Plus the french fries were on point.

Bill’s birthday was the next next Saturday, so we spent the day doing exactly what he wanted to do which was: take matatus to Karura Forest for a hike in the pouring rain followed by drinks and dinner at a sports pub. Bill’s new favorite activity is taking matatus.

I understand the appeal in that it is only 40 shillings – 40 US cents – to get to the city center. The only thing I don’t like about them is:

Anyway, we make it to “town”, also known as the Central Business District (CBD), and as mzungus (white people), we are immediately accosted when we get off the bus to buy stuff, to take this other bus, to come with these people over here, to give money to these people over there, etc. I would describe it as moths to a flame, and I really don’t enjoy the feeling of being a flame in this analogy. I know life here is a struggle and a hustle for many people, and I have to keep that in mind when people get up in my personal space excited to sell me stuff.

And I know I lived in New York City for many years, but I really dislike crowds in my old age. I would actively avoid Times Square, Herald Square, and Chinatown, as those places always have too many people and too many people who don’t know where they are going. CBD is like all those places combined, but with even more chaos and no established traffic patterns. So any travel to the CBD now feels like I am overcoming some huge personal obstacles, and really growing as a person by finding patience and positivity.

From the CBD we take another matatu to Karura forest. The forest is within city limits, and actually very close to where I work. We make it to Karura Forest just in time for the rain to start. It was actually a whole bunch of fun walking in the downpour as we had the whole beautiful forest mostly to ourselves.

Bill gave in and let me order a taxi for the trip home instead of taking another handful of matatus. He also gave in about going home first to change out of our soaking wet clothes before heading to a sports bar. My jeans got so wet that they dyed my legs blue!

After a warm shower and outfit change, we head to a sports bar near us called Kengele’s. It was St. Patrick’s Day, so the whole bar was decked out in Irish themed everything. Even the rugby team from Ireland was playing on all the tvs! Good thing Bill is Irish – he fit right in!

Bill watched and I tried to understand the rugby match (Ireland won!) while we capitalized on the happy hour 2 for 1 specials. I had about a million “dawa”s, which means “health” in Swahili. It was a vodka drink with honey in it. Delicious.

Some of Bill’s colleagues came out right as the second rugby game was ending and the dance music was getting turned up.

We all danced on the stage for a long time and had a spectacular time. Since I didn’t dance on my birthday, and Bill wasn’t planning on going dancing for his birthday, we were lucky the place turned into a dance floor! We had a blast and stayed out until (gasp!) 1am!! Now that we are old, that is super late, as evidenced by the fact that we couldn’t get out of bed until about 2:30pm when we had to start getting ready for frisbee practice.

It was a great weekend, which turned into a great week, partly because we had a house guest for the first half of it. Claire, a friend of a friend who we met for the first time when she stayed with us, is a performer/actor/comedian who was in town leading workshops for the Google funded WomenTechmakers event. She has been traveling the world with this global conference leading workshops which is very cool. But the coolest and maybe craziest things of all are:

Anyway, Claire is super cool and I am glad to have a new friend when we move back to SF! Also, because she is a comedian, it was my goal to make her laugh at least one time at something I intentionally said to be funny. And she did! Something about crop dusting as I walk through first class to get to my seat in the back of the plane…