Hallelujah.

We had a huge storm today. It was really intense. It started while I was eating lunch. The dining hall, in case I hadn't mentioned before, is an open pavilion. There aren't any walls, but there is a tin roof. In case you have never experienced it, rain is really loud on a tin roof. It sounded like hail. Anyways, it would rain really hard for a few minutes, then let up and drizzle for a few then start pouring again. I was at lunch with my friend Agatha and we went back up to the dorm during one of the drizzling periods. It started really pouring not long after we got up there. The stairs up to the dorm are concrete or whatnot, not we also walk through a few different grass/dirt paths and those were flooding and covered in big puddles. Agatha skipped her 2:00 lecture. It started lignthing and thundering also. The thunder was really loud. I knew it was coming every time because the lightning was only about 3 seconds beforehand, but I still jumped every time. I was sitting in our common room reading Things Fall Apart. I read it...4 years ago but remember very little, so I'm reading it again for African Lit. It's the first of 4 novels we're reading over the next month. We have a novel due every week, by authors from different regions of Africa. We're reading Things Fall Apart, Cry, the Beloved Country, A Grain of Wheat, and...something. I don't remember. We did poetry a couple weeks ago and we finish our short stories this week. All of the short stories were depressing and I'm guessing that the novels and plays (which is our final section) will be also.
My New Testament class is still boring; we have a study guide book and the professor just restates what's in there. I pay very little attention in that class. I think I've spent the past 2 weeks' classes writing letters. I like reading African literature, but I don't really the professor. Conversely, I've never really been too interested in politics, but I love that class. Our professor is really cool. My history professor is funny, but the class tends to be boring. I've written letters during that class and during lit also. F&A can be interesting sometimes, but sometimes it's not. I think it'll be better when we're on our next book, which we start reading next week. I had to read The Poisonwood Bible before I got here (I read most of it on the plane and finished it before our first class). Now we're reading Primal Vision by John Taylor. There are parts that are really interesting, but it's...very difficult to understand. I'm really glad we do discussion and whatnot. Mark (the USP director) taught our class about the book and he pulled quotes and made a study guide-type thing to help us with the reading. Basically, John Taylor (Bishop Taylor) was a Westerner (I'm not sure exactly where he was from) and he lived in Uganda for 20 or 30 years back in the 5s and 60s. Primal Vision is about African Christianity, what missionaries have done and what they should do. It talks about the importance of presence in African culture. It's a very people-oriented culture, not time oriented at all. It talks about conflicts between African Christianity and African traditional religions. It was not my favorite book, but I didn't hate it either. I don't really hate many books. I liked it better than most of the other students here. Our next book is Rich Christians in and Age of Hunger (Ron Sider) and our last 2 are Compassion (Henri Nouwen, et al) and Mere Discipleship (Lee Camp). Those ones look more interesting.
I ran out of toilet paper yesterday. I was going to go into Mukonotown today and buy some, but then it rained. I heard that they sell some at the canteen, so I'll probably head down there soon. I also wanted to get some more clothes and snacks in Mukono. I've only made it up for breakfast twice and lunch isn't until 1, so I'm hungry all afternoon. Maybe I'll go before/after dinner, which is at 7. Yeah...that sounds good. I'm done writing for today. Vaya con Dios!