Clouds in my coffee

After this week, I'll be halfway through my semester. In a couple weeks, I'll be halfway through my time in Africa. I don't really have anything to say or to comment on this fact, it's just weird to think about.
On Friday, I have a midterm for my Faith and Action class and right after that we leave for Soroti. Soroti is a more rural district or village where we'll be staying for a week with a family. UCU doesn't have a spring break, but we (USP) don't have any classes next week. I have pretty mixed feelings about our rural homestays. It'll be pretty good, but I'm a little nervous. I finished most of my homework for the week; I just have to study for my midterm on Friday. Tomorrow I only have my Lit class and we have presentations (my group went on Monday). I wrote a 6-page paper today in about 2 and a half hours. It's not very good, but oh well. I'll probably do pretty well. For the Ugandan grading system, an A is through an 84% and a B is down to about a 70%.
My head's really itchy. Pretty constantly. I'm supposed to be able to put oil stuff on my scalp and it'll be better. I'll probably put some in again tomorrow, or ask someone to do it for me. That'll be excellent.
That's all I have to say today. I won't have my computer at all next week. Pray for me this week, out in the village and such. Vaya con Dios.

It's the final countdown

So I have two pretty fantastic stories from today (Saturday). I’m going to start with the second one, because it’s fresher in my memory and more awesome. So around 4:15 or 4:30 I got back to the dorm (the first story is what I did today so just hold on). I got to my room, looked through my very ful purse for my keys and discovered that I did not have them. I called my roommate and she didn’t answer. I texted someone else and she told me that a bunch of girls, including my roommate are in Kampala today. I thought, oh great. They’re not going to be back for a few hours. Agatha, my friend across the hall, offered to let me nap on her bed, because I was really tired. I laid down for a little bit and ate some biscuits (cookies), because I didn’t get lunch today either. Tricia, Agatha’s roommate, told me that we should go down and talk to some of the guys and they would be able to break the lock. I didn’t want to break my lock, so I walked around to our window. Our windows have the window part which we usually leave open because it gets really hot otherwise and a screen, which latches from the inside. Coincidentally, I discovered that Rochelle’s window does not lock very securely and that it’s not too difficult to open my latch through there with a comb. Unfortunately, our windows also have bars. And since my keys weren’t on our desk where I thought they’d be, that was the end of that plan.
Agatha and I walked down to the boys’ dorm, Florence, and a couple UCU guys came with us intending to help break my lock. They tried to pick the lock with one of Rochelle’s bobby pins which I grabbed off our desk (I’m pretty intelligent, right?). That didn’t work, so we used Agatha’s butter knife to unscrew our latch. This unfortunately did not release the padlock so it was still holding the bolt in place. Then the 2 guys tried again to just break the lock with a couple stones. Our lock and our door are a little more beat up than they were before, but still no luck. The guys left and Viola, my neighbor, got there and took the screws out of the latch again (we had put them back in). By wiggling the door back and forth and bending some parts of the latch and bolt, we got my door open. Viola is pretty awesome. Then I put our latch and everything back on and unlocked the lock (my keys were on my desk chair). I was really impressed with myself.
But…back to this morning. I woke up at 6:20 and was ready to leave at 7. A couple days ago, Viola talked to someone she knows at a salon in town about getting my hair braided and agreed to take me down there this morning. We went to breakfast and then walked down to Mukono. Viola left me and I sat from about 7:30 until almost 4 getting twists put in my hair. They add fake hair when they do plaits (braids) or twists so I have about 4 or 5 times as much hair as I did this morning. I was really sick of sitting after a while and was almost crying when they put the last few braids again, because they have to do them tight so they were pulling at my hair pretty hard. And after 8 hours, my head got a little sensitive. The fake hair is stiffer than real hair and I’m still deciding how much I like it. I used the toilet in the chapel on the way back because I’d had a half liter of orange soda. It was delicious. I had 2 doughnuts and tea this morning and a few wafers while I was getting the twists, but that’s all I had. After I got back in my room, I had 2 plain biscuits with peanut butter and a few more wafers. They were tasty.
Now I may go take a nap. I have an hour until dinner and hopefully a date with Rusty afterwards. The Internet’s not working right now, so I may be online dating by the time I get this posted. I hope you all are doing awesome and had a good Valentine’s Day! Vaya con Dios.

A roller coaster kind of run

Last night, I watched Last King of Scotland at my professor's house with my Politics class. It was really intense and I don't know if I'll ever watch it again. Before the movie, we had dinner of spaghetti with sauce and meatballs and Parmesan cheese and salad with ranch dressing. And garlic bread and Coke. It was delicious. We had an intermission partway through and had coffee and apple cake. I'm starting to like coffee now. I might try to bring some home for people. I heard of a good place to get some whole beans.
But anyways...Last King of Scotland is about Idi Amin, a fairly well-known "president"/dictator here from 1970-1979. The story itself, about a young doctor who comes from Scotland and becomes Amin's personal physician, is fictional but the background is true. Basically, Amin was head of the military and overthrew the previous leader, Obote. The people were really happy because Obote was no good either, but Amin wasn't educated past about 3rd grade and was a little crazy. During the years he ruled, 300,000 Ugandans were killed, including quite a few of his advisers and one of his wives. One of the lines from the movie talks about how people in a lot of areas weren't even digging graves because there were so many bodies. The movie also talkes about how Britain backed Amin's rise to power. In class, we've talked about how the US and other Western nations will back stable regimes in Africa even if they're really oppressive. We give money to suit out own economic interests. The movie's rated R and there's some swearing and a couple graphic sex scenes and violence. It was really the last scenes that got to me. It was about the doctor, so the actual events weren't true, but thinking that people were tortured and mutilated and...I don't know. And Obote came back to power after Amin. He was in power until 1986 and he killed even more Ugandans than Amin did.
In class this week we've been learning and talking about poverty. That and then seeing Last King of Scotland is just...overwhelming. Some of the movie was shot in Entebbe airport, the airport we flew into. There was also stuff shot in Kampala. Watching it and thinking after, I was just thinking that I've been there. And seeing the people - how they dress and how they talk and the music and the dance - it's familiar. I can see people and think how true it is. I see guys with guns standing outside buildings here. True, it's not as many as during Amin's time, but there are still military guys here. It's still not really democracy. They're shutting down a bunch of TV and radio stations soon. They still don't have a lot of the things that I'm so accustomed to, like freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. We were talking in Politics one day about how amazing just a peaceful transfer of power is. In 206 Kenya had elections and members of the losing party started a riot and started killing members of the winning party - just normal people, killing their opponents and their neighbors. And then talking about poverty in Uganda, in Africa, or in the world. It's just...this is all so far outside what I know and what I can process. How horrible would it be to watch a child, to watch your own child, slowly die because they don't have enough food? Or they don't have the right food? Or of something preventable or treatable - like diarrhea or malaria?
So few have so much. It's not like there isn't enough food in the world; it's just that it's all concentrated in certain areas. Hunger isn't some insurmountable problem that can't ever be solved. Yes, Jesus said that the poor will always be with us, but how does that mean that we shouldn't try to help? How does anything else n Jesus' teaching imply that we shouldn't try to help? Also, I'm not saying that us randomly giving money is going to solve anything either. as I mentioned, the governments here are largely corrupt. Giving money to the guys in charge doesn't mean it's going to get to anyone who actually needs it. I've heard from a few people that Compassion is really good. The money goes right to the kids, to help them and their families, to train them in a trade and help them get out of poverty. It made me really happy that I chose a good organization to send my money to. I've been learning about a lot of other stuff related to this, but...it's really hard to explain.
A week after I get home, I'm going to Disneyland. I'm excited now, but I also know that it's going to be really overwhelming. It's weird to think about coming home, about how I'm going to be different or what I'm going to tell people when they ask how Africa was.
On a lighter note: there was a bee in my room today. It buzzed really loudly and flew by my head and I went out to the doorway/hallway. The girls across the hall came out to go and do something and laughed at me. Agatha told me that bees and good luck and that I'm going to have 5 visitors today. She visited once and Eseza came by with Robert (an adorable little redheadeed toddler boy) and said hi, so I guess that's 3. Agatha said she'd come by 5 times if no one else visited me.
Also, my flight information changed. KLM changed one of my flights home. My flight from Amsterdam to Entebbe is the same, but my flight from Amsterdam to DC is leaving 2 hours later, which means I need to change my connecting flights because 2 hours isn't enough time to go through customs, pick up my bags, recheck them, and go through security, as well as probably have to get to a different terminal. I'm not too excited.
I don't really have anything else to say, so I won't. Vaya con Dios.

You can't pull me down

I usually like using song lyrics or quotes from something as blog titles, no matter how little they have to do with the actual contents of what I'm writing. However, at the moment, the only song that inexplicably stuck in my head is "Makes Me Ill" by Nsync. I don't know why or how it's there, but it doesn't have any good blog titles hidden somewhere in the lyrics, especially since I only really know the chorus. In case you don't happen to know the song, here's the chorus: "It makes me ill, see you...(something)...love and attention at his will, You can't imagine how it makes me feel, to see you with him." I wish I could order a new song. Like a jukebox. In my head. That would be really nice at the moment. And I can't turn on my Windows Media Player or anything because it's 6:52 am and our walls are paper thin. We also have a window screen above our doors. It's actually just a screen, so if someone flushes the toilet down the hall or is having a normal volume conversation anywhere in the dorm, you can hear it. I'll work on thinking of a better song.

On Friday, me and 8 of the other USP girls and Debbie, who graduated from UCU and is now married to a former USP guy (crazy, right?), went into Kampala. We took a "taxi": a mini van with seats arranged to hold 14 people. It was 1500 shillings, which is about 75 cents. It took a little over an hour because of traffic and the cows in the road. We went to a craft fair which they have every Friday next to/on the train tracks. They sold almost everything: food, clothing, drums, instruments, knives, jewelry, batiks, and almost anything I would want to buy. I probably spent too much, but I got some awesome stuff for myself and for others. We were there for a couple hours and then we walked over to Garden City. On the first level of their parking garage is a little rrstaurant called New York Kitchen. They had pizza, pastas, salads, sandwiches, burgers, and delicious desserts. After we ordered, they brought us about 3 dishes of bagel chips and a tomato-y sauce. I had some Hawaiian pizza, a Fanta berry, and a strawbery milkshake. Most milkshakes and smoothies here are mush more liquid-y than in the US, but this one was real. After dinner, we went into Garden City and I changed some money. Then we went to a bowling alley, which also had pool tables and an arcade and "ice skating," which was not on actual ice. They did use ice skates though. I didn't bowl or play pool because I was really tired. I went back with a group of about 6 others (we'd met up with another group of USP and UCU students at New York Kitchen). The ride home took about 2 hours because it was rush hour and we had to take a detour.
Saruday and Sunday were both lazy days. It was our first weekend on campus since our very first weekend here, so it was nice to have free time. I did laundry, worked on a little homework, and...not much else. Today I have a really lame presentation for history, which we think is mostly because he doesn't want to teach. Oh well. Vaya con Dios.

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!

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.

My walk to school

This morning was my last walk to school. I have generally enjoyed my walk to school in the mornings. Emily and I wake up around 6:30 and then get ready and have tea so we can leave our house at around 7. It's about a 45-50 minute walk to school and in the mornings, especially when we walk through the neighborhood, is fairly quiet and peaceful. It's also been cloudy for the whole 2 weeks, which is really nice. Walking home, it's much busier, with boda-bodas, taxi vans, and big cargo trucks driving right by us as we walk alongside the road. In the evenings, there are also many more people out at roadside stands selling food or other products. I don't enjoy our walk home as much.

Tonight, Honours College is going on a retreat to Jinja. The IMME (Missions emphasis; living off-camps with a family all semester) did their trip last weekend and I heard from Michelle that the resort is nice, with running water and a pool. We also take a boat trip out to the source of the Nile. I'm pretty excited.

I bought a UCU shirt yesterday. It's really comfortable. It's really loose, which is kind of nice because I don't really have any loose, casual t-shirts here.

Last night was my last night on my homestay. It was...good. I'm not heartbroken to be leaving my family and I'm glad to be back on campus and able to sleep in my dorm room and do homework at night, but I'll definitely miss my brothers and the kids from our neighborhood. I will definitely not miss the insistence that I eat more or that "I haven't eaten." Last night, my host mom insisted that I hadn't eaten one meal in the whole 2 weeks there. I did eat. Or at least I tried to. True, Emily tried more on many nights, but I tried to fill my stomach every night.

2 nights ago, I was not feeling well at all and my stomach had not agreed with anything I'd eaten that day. We had fish for dinner, so the only thing I ate was a forkful of rice. They couldn't understand that I wasn't hungry. They offered my coffee and tea and were wondering that I was going to bed "with an empty stomach." I told them that I had a lot of water if I wanted anything and they didn't accept that as a reasonable source of food. It's just a very different thought process. They generally eat dinner at around 9 or 10, bathe, and then go to bed. It's weird because at home we're always told to eat small portions and don't eat right before bed because the focus is on not gaining weight, but here it's good to fill your stomach because there are a lot of people living in poverty and obesity isn't really an issue.

I finished my first essay yesterday. It's 6 pages long, about 1.5 spacing, about 12 point font. However, the pages here are an inch longer, so I did have to adjust the paper size on my document, which was weird. It's for my East African History class, about stateless societies in pre-colonial Africa. I don't know if it's very good. I really only had a couple points, but I elaborated on them a lot to fill the space. And then I put in some quotes that said basically the same thing as other quotes and then explained/rephrased my quotes. I hope I do well. We only have 2 essays in the class, so each is worth about 20% of our grade. There just wasn't really a lot of information available or a lot to say on the topic.

The academic system and teaching style is also a lot different style. Uganda was colonized by the British, so a lot of things ae very similar. People have English-type accents, they use British English, a lot of students go to boarding school, they drive on the other side of the road and whatnot. Their school is set up with 7 years of primary school (P1-P7), which goes through about 6th grade. Then the students take this horrifically intense exam for admittance into secondary school. The test is basically rote memorization of everything they're learned in a bunch of different subjects over the past 7 years. Secondary school in 6 years (Senior 1-Senior 6). In the middle of this, when students are about 16, they take O-levels - to find out if they're even eligible/qualified for university. After secondary school, they take A-levels (I think), to graduate. University is generally only 3 years, but they have 3 terms each year. I'm here for the January semester, which started about 3 weeks ago and goes through April. A Master's is also 3 years (I think). Studentsin University don't have majors, they have courses. It was confusing when UCU students would ask "what course are you in?" or "what course do you offer?" because I think of a class as a course, so I'm in multiple courses. I've got it down now and I totally understand most things. Most of the time at least.

Well, I'm going to go and shower before lunch, after which I'm getting smoothies from the canteen with Emily! Then I don't know what I'm doing. I stil need to pack and then we leave at 5 tonight (it's 12:30 now). I hope you all are doing well and if you have Yahoo, I'll be on Sunday night, US time. My username is dolphinfrk2002. I also finally got 13 random pictures us on photobucket. They're not captioned or anything, but they're there. Vaya con Dios!

Pictures from Tuesday, 27-1-09

A bag of rice. They were really hard to untie, in case you were wondering.


Me sorting and rinsing beans


Sharon (in the back), Leticia and Jerry, Patricia, Jolie, and Sifa.


Leticia, Linda, Fred, Jerry, and Patricia.


Our Ugandan family. In the back are our parents, Godfrey and Faith and Joel (our cousin?). In front is Enoch (our brother), Emily, me, and David (no idea what his actual relation is, but I call him our brother).


Ugandan burritos!


Our room, my bed is the one on the left


The other half of our room. Those pots sitting on the floor, those fell at off the fridge in the middle of the night. Big fun. Also terrifying.


Emily, David, and Enoch playing cards and waiting for rice to cook. Jerry's the kid standing and watching. He tries to be in every single picture anyone ever takes.In the background in the woman who braided our mama's hair. They were out there with us the whole time. Mama made us bring the stove over right by her so she could give us instructions better.

Not exactly like I anticipated

Last night, Emily and I made dinner for our family. It was pretty fun. We decided last week to make burritos, because rice and beans are pretty easy to acquire and chapatti is tasty and easy to find also. We also got cheese, onions and peppers (which Emily sautéed), and made guacamole.
We were both done with class and lunch and such at about 2, so we left campus then. We went by our father’s workplace and our little brother was there, so he came with us. Emily had gone with a friend from UCU earlier to buy the veggies and beans from the market, so we just went to the supermarket are got rice, cheese, and spices. I also bought candy bars, which were delicious. We got the chapattis from a vendor right around the corner from our house. The first step in making Ugandan burritos is to clean the beans. We had to sort through them and pick out any grass or small rocks, then put them in water to rinse. We then had to rinse them again and then put them in a pot and over a fire to cook for a few hours. We started on the rice next: put a bag and a half (which was way too much) into a pot with a bunch of water and some oil, salt, spices, and Tabasco sauce and put it over the charcoal “stove.” The stove was like a little pot with charcoal embers. It cooked a lot slower than the actual fire with the beans. We cooked and stirred and added stuff to the rice for a while. It was cool. Our brothers laughed at us a lot. When the rice was almost done cooking, Emily went inside to chop up the veggies in peace, because we were outside cooking for most of this and our mom and our brothers kept telling us what to do and whatnot. It was good, because we didn’t really know what we were doing, but also not the most fun thing ever. When the beans were done cooking, Enoch (our brother) brought out the beans and drained the sauce out of them (their beans look similar to baked beans, but taste a lot different). When we told him not to put the sauce back after they’d cooked over the charcoal stove and we’d added some onion to them, he looked at us like we were crazy. They were a petty similar texture to refried beans, which is what we were going for. After that stuff was done, Emily sautéed the veggies, I chopped up cheese, and we made guacamole. Then we had a break, then we had our tea with dinner, since dinner was ready early and tea wasn’t ready until late (about 8:30).
I think they liked it. They all thanked us a lot and loaded up on the food, which they always do. It was a little blander than I’m used to, but the rice here is usually bland. The sauce that we drained from the beans generally has all the flavor in it. It took us a long time to make our food, but it was a good afternoon. We took a bunch of pictures, of us preparing the food and of the food at various stages, and a couple pictures of our family. It hasn’t rained since 2 nights ago, when it poured for a long time, but it’s pretty cloudy out right now. It was really sunny yesterday when we were out making food. My contacts are faring well here now, better than they do at home.
Our homestays are done after tomorrow night; Friday we come to school and bring all of our stuff with us. Then we leave at 5 to go on Honours College Retreat! We’re going to Jinja, which is an hour or so north of Kampala (it’s on maps of Uganda). It’s the source of the Nile. We’re going to be staying in a resort there, which I heard has running water and a pool, so I’m pretty excited. And because I get to dress casually. That’ll be sweet. I like skirts, but not wearing them all the time. I hope you all are doing awesome at home or wherever. I would really love to hear from you although I may be slow in replying. I’m online at least a couple times a week, but that depends on the Internet and whatnot. I am, overall, enjoying Uganda although there are definitely ups and downs. I’ll be glad when I don’t have to walk uphill 45 minutes to school every day. Vaya con Dios.

Sunshine on rainy days

It's raining today. It was raining for my whole walk from my house to school. I was glad that I had my umbrella. I don't really have anything to say right now. I have a lot of things written down to tell you all about, but now I just want to look at the rain. I'll put a few pictures up. Vaya con Dios.