Fingerprints

I got back from our retreat today. It was really fun. We went to Kingfisher Safari Resort near Jinja. It was about an hour and a half bus ride and I talked to Caroline, one of the other USP girls, for a while. She’s really cool. She’s one of the girls I’ve talked to more here.
At the resort, we were staying in little individual huts. I was in one of the smallest rooms, about half the size of most of the other people’s rooms with Patsy, a UCU girl. She was pretty funny. We hung out a lot on Friday night, but not a ton after that. On Friday…we had dinner, did name games, and chilled. I went swimming. It was a little cold. The resort was really pretty. It’s right on Lake Victoria and I took some really pretty pictures, which I probably won’t upload until I get home. On Saturday, we had a fantastic breakfast. I had an omelet, sausage, cereal, and coffee. We did some more bonding games and then just had free time until lunch, which was also delicious. Then we had free time and they offered boat trips to the source of the Nile. It was pretty sweet. I heard from Annie, one of the interns, that they know it’s the source because it used to be a waterfall, flowing from Lake Victoria right into the Nile. But they dammed the river, so now it’s just a really funky current, because of the change in depth, and no waterfall. There’s a little island there and a giant rock thing that I climbed on top of. It was sweet. I got ants all over my hands climbing down though because they were all over. I took a ton of pictures with Emily. Some are weird, but some turned out really cool. Emily’s really awesome also. I went swimming Saturday afternoon again. I wasn’t going to; I was just going to put my feet again, but then I gave in. I like swimming. A lot. We had dinner around 7 and then watched Akeelah and the Bee. It was good. I liked it. After the movie, I showered (with hot water!) and went back out and watched some of the USP students playing poker. I played a couple different solitaire games, then started playing with the deck of cards. They were of the states. The highest numbers were the states with the highest populations (the aces were California, New York, Texas, and Florida and the 2s were Wyoming, DC, Puerto Rico, and Vermont). Then I alphabetized them and then I laid them all out on the table to make a US map. It took a while, because the cards didn’t have the actual state’s name on them, just a little map in the center and the state bird, flower, tree, and name (i.e. The Grand Canyon State) on the 4 sides. I was impressed with myself. By then it was about midnight, so I went to bed.
This morning, I woke up for breakfast and then we had a worship service. It was awesome. I really enjoyed it. One of the UCU students gave a message which, I confess, I didn’t pay too much attention to. I couldn’t really hear him a lot of the time, plus I was distracted looking for things in my Bible, which I think is stall an admirable thing to do in a church-type setting, right? I had to check out of my room right after that, so I finished packing my bag and put it in Kelsey’s room, because she didn’t have to check out until later. Then I walked down to the lake, then back up and sat by the pool for a while. One of the guys, Tim and the other intern Phil were playing guitar so I sat near-ish them and listened. Then I laid out on a deck chair right next to the pool and put my feet in. I’m not really a big fan of tanning, and I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, so I didn’t really get much sun. It’s good; a lot of the girls sun burnt this weekend and I’m still good. It was really nice to dress casually and feel more normal and more “American.” I wore jeans all weekend and a few different t-shirts and even a tank top. I know; it’s scandalous. Overall, it was good. I got to know some of the other UCU and USP students better and I think I know all the UCU girls’ names. There are way more guys and they’re harder to distinguish from each other, so I haven’t tried too hard to learn theirs. There are some really cool USP and UCU students.
I think my favorite class so far is Intro to Ugandan Politics. I’m already looking forward to it and it’s on Tuesday. It makes my whole week better. Tomorrow I have a lot of classes. I have a couple or a few on Tuesday also, but I would stay in Politics for much longer than our one hour. The course content is really interesting and I really like our professor. She’s American and she’s been here for about 4 years. I’m also excited to start my service learning thing – working in the daycare on-campus – this or next week. I’ve been missing kids. There were a lot at my homestay, but it was overwhelming at times. They all wanted all of your attention and there were (as there always are) somewhat annoying, pushy kids. There were also adorable ones though, so it was good. It’s a little weird to be back on campus, because I haven’t spent the night here in a couple weeks. That’s all I have for today. Vaya con Dios.