First days in Uganda

[Sunday]

Ok I have sooo much to tell, it’s hard to pick what to write. Hopefully today when we go into Mukono (the little town that’s like a 15 min walk from here) I will be able to buy minutes for my phone

Mostly though, I’m doing great. I went to bed at like 8:30 last night by accident because I was so exhausted. I got my book and my journal and everything and I had my glasses still on and hadn’t gone to the bathroom or anything (those are a whole another story) and I just laid back to read and POW! I PASSED OUT! It’s true. I woke up a little while later completely dazed, so I just took off my glasses, dropped them on the floor by accident, didn’t care, and went back to sleep. My roommates (Kelsey and Ashley) had gone to a worship service (they call it fellowship) and they got back around 10 or something and I was totally sound asleep. I woke up around dawn, went to the bathroom, put in ear plugs (because all the Ugandan girls get up SUPER early so they were making a bunch of noise) and slept until 9:30! I couldn’t believe it. When I woke up around dawn I couldn’t fall back asleep right away so I was just laying there, letting my mind drift.

I also met two Ugandan girls named Grace and Sarah today.

I forgot to mention that I blew up the power in our room! I plugged in that 125V surge strip and it went KABOOM. Seriously. I had to report it to the warden and she said she’d report it but for now we have no power in our room coming from the outlets. Boo hoo. No laptop or nothing. We don’t have internet in our dorms, either. That’s the only bad part about living over here not in the Honors college dorm, cause they have wifi! I’m so jealous just because of Skype. But I’m trying really hard not to be because I can just do this, write your emails from my dorm and then send them later. And I’ll worry about Skype when I get more settled. For now I am all cool!

[LATER THAT DAY]

So we got back from Mukono and I got my phone all set up. It costs something like $0.35 a minute to call the states, so hopefully I can get Skype to work, too!. I did get minutes though, 20,000 shillings worth. It’s about 1800 shillings to the dollar. I also bought hot chocolate (yum), laundry soap, and a mug. The USP girls who live near me bought a hot water kettle that we can plug in to the wall, so we’re going to have the hot chocolate and the tea we bought ALL THE TIME. It’s very comforting to have something other than water.

The “lovely ladies” (as Kristen calls them) that went with us to Mukono were Grace, Sarah, Vicky, and Carole. Sarah says “Okay, please,” all the time and, “thank you, please,” when she just means thank you. She says please all the time. She also said she’d help us do our laundry sometime this week, which is good cause we are totally clueless. It was pretty special, I think, that we’ve been befriended by some Ugandan ladies. Apparently they are much more reserved and harder to get to know than Ugandan men. So I’m really really glad that we got to be friends with them –they call us their sisters, in Christ of course. Vicky and Carole are hilarious, Vicky calls Carole her “second child” or her baby and Vicky just has a fit about that. She tries to say she is Vicky’s mom but Vicky is so much bigger than Carole, who is petite and has the most musical voice. Sarah and Grace are studying development, which when they say it sounds like “Delvement” and Carole is studying law. They don’t say, “I’m studying law” though, they say, “I’m offering law.” They also say, “I will push you to Mukono,” which means, “I will escort you to Mukono.” They have the best accents, all musical.

Tomorrow classes start and this coming weekend I will be doing my "home stay" with a local family for 2 weeks.