Christmas at NEGST

One of my fears in staying over Christmas break was that I would be bored. After all, a month of no class, nothing going on, and most people having left to go home? But fortunately, boredom was not an issue for me this break. I actually had very little downtime. After I had been traveling for two weeks, I spent the last three weeks of break back on campus. I spent some time working in the IT, visiting the people who remained, on and off campus, and a lot of time hanging out. It was so fun. The best part was Christmas Day. I had envisioned for a long time having a Christmas get-together on campus for my international friends who didn’t have other places to go, and it really came together. Kelly, a first year student from America, and I spent days planning, inviting people, coordinating what people brought, shopping, baking, and setting up. We ended up with 25 people, from the US, Denmark, Kenya, India, DRC, and Zambia (and had food from Liberia and Ethiopia as well). It didn’t quite feel like “Christmas”, but I really enjoyed it—I think it may have been my best Christmas ever. Although I was disappointed I missed out on all the snow that Maryland was getting over their crazy winter, and I course I missed being at home with my family (this was my first Christmas away from home). We used the chapel to eat, and then had a time of singing and sharing our Christmas traditions, and then that night played games and hung out at my friends Søren and Charlotte’s place.




Then for New Year’s, there was a group of us that went out to a concert at Nairobi Chapel. It was called Totally Sold Out, and there were like 25,000 people there: it was crazy. Had to have been the biggest party in Kenya that night.