Mid-Week Update

Hello, everyone!I am sitting at the Guest Centre waiting for dinner (it is 7:36PM) and I'm pretty sure I ordered a quesadilla (which is, in all honesty, the exact same thing as what we would consider back home a burrito..just with vegetables mixed in with the meat) for my meal. It's really good and I'm incredibly lucky to be able to say that. While, yes, I am still a little skeptical of meat, for the curious minds out there I AM eating and I AM enjoying every meal. Lunch was chicken mango wrap with salad and breakfast was French toast. Francine and the other kitchen/Guest House staff have been so thoughtful and take my random requests for a bottle of water, toast and butter with whatever meal, no rice, and fruit with everything with a smile. Picking our meals out every day has started to become a challenge! I've rotated through the same 5 or 6 meals -- and it's hard to bring myself to deviate from that! They are SO good. I know I haven't done a great job of posting photos of my delicious meals each day, but that's because I get it and I eat it almost immediately; I am usually so hungry by mealtime each day. Today, we worked in the office again. I went through my data and decided what I wanted to analyze as "frequencies" and what I wanted to do "comparisons" on. An example of this would be if I wanted to see what people responded to one particular question (frequency) or if I wanted to see what they answered to question A based on what they answered on questions B or C. In short, I went through the questionnaire, looked at my overall objective (gender perceptions on aflatoxin), and made a lot of notes on a blank questionnaire. After spending the morning doing this, Eunice and I tried to export it, the computer froze (I'm borrowing an old office one to use the data-entry program!), and unfortunately I lost all of my progress for the day. Because of my notes, it was very easy to restart after lunch and I got done in just over 2 hours as opposed to the 4 it took in the morning. Plus, I think I understood what I was doing a lot better the second time!It exported correctly and I am now able to work on my personal computer which will be nice for a little while! I've been researching aflatoxin, post-harvest losses, hunger in Kenya, food safety in Sub-Saharan Africa, gender perceptions, and everything in between to find different articles, recent aflatoxin outbreaks, and reports to supplement my personal knowledge before Uganda and the end report that I will produce. Aflatoxin is a subject I am, regrettably, not as familiar with as I should be and hearing the Kenyan farmers ask questions that I couldn't answer throughout the interviewing process has encouraged me to be able to better assist those in Uganda.After working in the office, we went to teach! Every day we teach from 5-6 and I am still in Form 5 English. I LOVE my class! Even though I can't say many of their names accurately, my kiddos are so nice and excited to be educated. I make up the lesson as I go most of the time and Isaac's class was taking another exam so he started the class with me today! The Kenyan boys certainly liked meeting a mzungu boy. We talked about speech marks (quotation marks) and made little bunny ears to represent them. We talked about semicolon however comma and we worked on spelling! Today's words, at the students' request, were deforestation, resolution, knowledge, and considerate. We spelt the words with our bodies and that was a lot of fun! Two boys were goofing off in the back of the classroom and an administrator walked by, walked into the door of my (that's weird) classroom, pulled the kids to the front of the room, and hit them on the heads. Rather loudly and aggressively. I jumped at the first one because I had no idea what to expect and the kids laughed at me. I tried to remain composed, but honestly I was shocked and was not prepared for that! I'm planning on doing some sort of insight into Kenyans educational system soon, based on my teaching experience. After teaching, we walked to the gym and the trainer guy put me to work immediately. 45 minutes later, I've jumped rope, lifted heavy weights, and can't feel my stomach. This is the life, I guess! I am thankful that there is a gym here, though. Very thankful. Not only for my preparations for Miss Missouri, but more realistically speaking, for life. Most of my work when not in the field is behind a desk and the only walking is to and from eating (where I sometimes cheat with a soda). It's nice to get some sort of physical exercise once a day (never thought I'd say that!) and I like it. It may become a new hobby, especially when Mizzou has as nice of a Rec Center as it does. Isaac gets to FaceTime the participants of the Florida Youth Institute tomorrow and I'm jealous! Being a part of the group that started the Missouri program will always be one of my favorite activities and this experience has just given me more of a platform to connect and reach sponsors, college students, kids, and organizations that need to know about the World Food Prize, our Missouri program, and food waste/agriculture/hunger in general. Tomorrow, I will likely continue with the literature search and write down some areas I want to explore deeper. There are two couples that we interviewed and I'd like to look at some of their answers side-by-side to see if there are discrepancies!Goodnight,HollyPS I started this blog post before dinner and now I'm signing off at 11:18PM. I'm trying to stay as close to my "daily post" as possible!