danger!

- the night before leaving for kenya i got my first taste of teargas! street hawkers started rioting as police where trying to move them off the streets at about 6:00, which is just when me and my friend were walking to meet an incoming berkeley student at a local hotel. suddenly everyone started runnign down the street and we heard gun shots, so we stepped into a resturaunt and waited for about 20 minutes, generally confused. when we came out and walked around, police where everwhere and our eyes and mouths started burning -- turns out the area we were in had experienced some (apparntly regularly occuring from the nonchalance of locals) violence, a woman had been shot, and the place had gotten teargassed. very exciting, though i promise that we were safe. as it turns out, the friend we were meeting had been on the (cancelled due to instability) first flight from the us to kenya, and he came about 5 hours late, so we sipped tusker (local beer -- much better than its cost-rivals in the states) on a hotel balcony late into the night.