If you hear someone say mzungu in swahilli, it means white person and they're talking about you.

Started my first full classes. I had about 25 4 year olds for my first class and freaked out a bit. Some had floaties on their arms, some not. Before i was there, the teachers would put these floaties on all the kids, pop them in the water then watch from the poolside. A bit different to Aussie eah? My first instinct on seeing this was to divide the class into two groups, take the floaties off half of the kids, sit them on the wall and teach them swimming like I do back home. Easier said than done. The group was too large so a lot of time was spent on taking kids swimming individually. Some of the kids cried (probably thinking 'whats this crazy lady doing to me? give me back my floaties!!'). I felt very exhaused after doing this for 3 hours, so as soon as I got back to the house I sent an email to my guardian angel/swimming mentor Tracey England to give me some help. Then I passed out for 8 hours.
She replied with heaps of tips on handling big groups of little kids and some ideas for swimming lesson plans. Next day, the lesson plans are working a treat. Trick is to keep the floaties on for now and do lots of group activities. And have some fun! I'll eventually take floaties off them in a few weeks.
Some days its beautiful and sunny here (up to 35degrees) but others its cloudy and rains a bit and the schoolsdecide not to come in because they think its cold??!
I also taught some 13-15 year olds in the afternoon. I worked with their current coach, who said he learned a lot from me which was cool. Two other coaches have approached me and want me to help them with their swimming squads. One squad was a bit too advanced for me (the kids had just come back from winning some Sub-Sahara Championships representing Kenya!) but it was great to learn from their coach and see what drills he does with them.

In non-swimming related news:

• Getting my way around the place with these mini-buses called matatus. Basically they stop at random points on the road and yell out the destination like "Bamburi!" or "Ferry Docks!" and you jump on and bang on the roof if you want to get off. Its pretty cheap, around 50 cents a trip. The drivers compete with other drivers to have the dopest-looking van, painting random english quotes on the back like "I got my mind on the money and the money on my mind" and installing deep bass speakers into the back seats. Yesterday I spent 1 hr getting into town with BOOM, BA-BA BOOM rattling in my ears.
• Don't really like travelling around in the dark anywhere. I'm not being racist or anything but the other day I was standing by myself waiting for the matatu and suddenly a man smiles with his white shiny teeth and scares the crap out of me. Didn't even know he was there.
• A lady fell out of a moving taxi the other day. She rolled up into a little ball and people started crowding around her and the taxi driver was yelling at her. In any other circumstance in my home country I would run right up to her and check she was ok, see if she needed medical attention. But as this is a foreign country to me I thought I may get myself in trouble so kept walking. Felt a bit guilty, but gotta use my common sense a bit here.
• Some families over here use a regular taxi driver who they call when they need to do lots of erruns. Ours is Davis. Its about $20 for the day. He took me to Bamburi Beach the other day I hadn't eaten so he took me to an outdoor restaurant on the beach. So many white tourists there!Part of me felt comfortable being around people who looked like me (hadnt seen another white person for about 5 days), but the other half of me felt like I shouldn't be there. It wasnt the real Kenya I was used to at all! Very unfriendly and everythings three times as expensive. I like the streets of Mombasa now, the smell of meat being smoked, noisy matatus and people yelling out Jambo (Hi) everywhere! Kind of glad I'm staying here.