Fearless, astonished, and amazed

Our Internet at school has been really funky, on and off randomly, lately. It’s a little annoying. But other than that, I’m doing well. I like almost all of my classes, I like my family more, and my homestay roommate is pretty awesome. We got rolexes this morning (it’s like a 1-egg omelet with onion and tomato rolled up in a chipatte). It was delicious. Last night we went to a graduation party at our uncle’s house. It was crazy. There were, I think, 3 or 4 university graduates and 4 business school graduates. It was really elaborate; all the girls attending were in really nice prom-like dresses. There was a cake for each group of graduates and a formal deal for them cutting the cake. There were about 200 people there, our host father said. There was also a huge line to present gifts. One of the graudates stodd to accept them all and they were piled really high on a table. Emily and I were sitting by ourselves, with our friend Kya’s host mom and sometimes with our host father. We each got a bottle of Coke and a small piece of cake. It was a little weird sitting by ourselves at this table when everyone else was sitting in chairs facing the graduates. We were in some sort of place of honor.
After a while, we went inside James’ house and ate dinner. It was cool. We watched the end of Obama’s inauguration, basically starting when some Reverend was praying. We got to eat normal sized portions; they didn’t even force huge amounts of food on us like they do normally. After we ate, we went back outside. The kids swarmed us again and I talked to my older host brother Samuel. Then our mom dragged us into a circle and we danced in a line of the women. It was pretty sweet. We went home around 8:30 or 9 and they basically told us we could/should go to bed. So we brushed our teeth and got into bed. I journaled for a little while and then finished reading Matthew. Emily got to talk to Andrew, her boyfriend. When we went to bed, the party was still going and we could hear the music pretty clearly from our house, which is probably…4 or 6 blocks from James’ house. The streets don’t run in a grid like Phoenix and we take little shortcut paths everywhere, so I have no idea what the real distance is, but far enough that the music had to be really loud to reach us. I think it also helps that there isn’t really any other noise pollution, so the one loud thing going on could be heard for a long ways.
Some other random notes on my homestay over the past few days:
-The food here is pretty up and down. We has pineapple with one meal, which was delicious. Yesterday after we got home from school, we had samusas (no ideas how it’s actually spelled, but that’s close to how it sounds) with our tea and this morning, like I mentioned, we had rolexes. A woman in the neighborhood (Mama Eddie) gave Emily and me each a sugarcane piece on Sunday and that was interesting. You peel off the outer shell, then basically chew on the sugar cane part. You chew to squeeze out the juice and then spit out the filament part. It’s weird, but it was pretty tasty. We also had fish, which was surprisingly not horrible. A lot of the meat tends to have a lot of fat on it, so it’s not tasty. Some other foods: jackfruit (it’s really sweet and the texture is really slimy), matoke (they take unripe/green bananas and cut them out of the peel then steam it in banana leaves. Some people like it, but I do not), posho, Irish potatoes (one of my favorite foods here).
-Do you remember when you went on field trips in elementary school and any time a semi-truck passed by, everyone tried to get the driver to honk? A lot of the time walking around here, I feel like the semitruck driver. The kids all yell mzungu at as anywhere we go and they say hi or hello or how are you and they love when we wave back or say something to them.
-There are a lot of kids that I see around my house, but there are a few that are super adorable. First, the baby Eric. He’s less than a year old and he likes Emily and me. He’s adorable. Next, Leticia and Linda. They’re about 2 or 3 and they’re scared or Emily and me. They love to run up near us and say hi mzungo!, then run away when we wave or say hi to them. Third, Fred and non-Fred. There’s a little boy (3 or 4) who lives near us and he’s really cute. He doesn’t know English, but he likes to sit next to me. I like him because he’s not crazy and swarming me all the time like a lot of the other kids. It’s nice. At the graduation last night, there was a little boy who was about the same age as Fred who looked like him. He was funny too. He kept looking over at Emily and I and would dance around when he saw Emily and me dancing. Of the older kids, there’s an adorable girl named Patricia (about 7) with braids, a girl named Sifa, who’s missing her 2 front teeth, and Emmy, who has a rounder face. There’s also Faith (10 or so), who lives with us. She doesn’t know a lot of English and she’s pretty shy, but really cute also. I took my sweatshirt to the graduation party last night, but didn’t end up wearing it. At one point, I put the hood over her head and then I got dragged into dancing and she put my sweatshirt on and wore it for a little while.
-Africans identify and distinguish between people differently than we do. Our host father mentioned seeing another girl in our group and I asked something about her hair. He didn’t know, but I mentioned that she’d been wearing a green shirt and skirt and he immediately knew. I think it’s because everyone has basically the same hair color and a lot of people, especially the guys and the kids don’t really have any hair. With the kids, that can make it difficult to distinguish gender, which always makes me feel bad.
Today Emily and I are going into town with our host father to get dresses made. On Sunday, we’re going to a family reunion-type deal. It’s going to be pretty cool. Then next weekend, we’re going to Jinja, the source of the Nile! I’m excited for that one. I’m going to sign off now, or at least stop typing. Vaya con Dios.