what up lugazi

Hello hello hellooo! It is time for the weekly update. I'm doing it
today because most of our projects for the day were canceled because
it is town elections today and the next couple days will be really
busy. So, happy thursday everyone. It is cloudy and windy here, which
is a nice change.

This has been a weird week kind of. Well we will start with Saturday.
We went to Jinga to go to an American restaurant and shop for shoulder
bags which for some reason do not exist anywhere in Lugazi. On the way
there we stopped at the biggest forest in Uganda, Mabira Forest to go
hiking and see monkeys because the place is supposed to be full of
them. We hiked for a while and saw no monkeys, just a creepy man
standing in the trees and some enormous centipede things. Halfway
through the hike you have to cross Jinga Road, so half of us decided
to stop there and catch a taxi to Jinga and start our eating and
shopping festivities. Well it was a lot harder to catch a taxi than we
thought, so we literally started walking to Jinga which is like a 30
minute drive, bad idea I know. We were trying to flag down taxis but
instead of stopping everyone in the taxi would just wave back at he
crazy Mzungus. Haha it was so funny. But then we finally got a taxi to
take us back to the forest place called Najjende where there are TONS
of food vendors everywhere that literally attack the car windows
sticking their food inside. We got there and they were cutting trees
down that were just falling into the road blocking everything off so
it was madness and there were cars everywhere. We couldn't find an
empty taxi for all of us but someone offered to drive us in the bed of
their big truck. Sooo we definitely rode to Jinga in the back of a
truck, but there were big fence things on all sides so we weren't
going to bounce out don't worry. The tailbone didn't enjoy the ride
very much, but we made it safe and sound and the drive was GORGEOUS
from the back of a truck. Don't worry we won't do it again, we were
just desperate after wasting like an hour standing on the side of the
road. It was an adventure, and we are safe no worries. Jinga was good,
we got cheeseburgers and saw some couple missionaries at the
restaurant so it was fun to talk to them.

Sunday...my birthday! I am 20 how weird is that?! The girls woke me up
with breakfast in bed aka mango and bread with nutella that we found
at the supermarket in Jinga. We went to church and then 2 baptisms
after, that was cool. It took literally 10 tries until one of the guys
finally went all the way under. I've never seen that happen that many
times before. After church we came back, got some lunch and hung out
around the house- i love doing that. We went to town and got these
little things of ice cream they sell here and then a group of us went
up the hill behind our house to watch the sunset. It was beautiful,
the perfect ugandan birthday celebration. We had the same dinner back
at the house, but they made me a chipatti in the shape of an A. Oh and
my friend Shaun made ma a homemade pancake when we were at church, it
tasted like the pancakes Eli made conference weekend in midway. aka I
liked it. Then they had a little birthday party for me and everyone
gave me a piece of American food that they brought. SO nice, i don't
know if I could give my granola bars up.

Sunday night was rough, I was sick all night and Hillary in my room
was sick too so we kept each other company all night. Monday morning
we found out that 4 other people were sick too, so it was definitely
something we ate. I had a fever all day Monday and didn't leave my
bed, but I got a lot of reading done so that is great. Mom called that
night so that made me feel better :)

Tuesday I was still feeling sick/super weak so I didn't do anything in
the morning, but ventured to town in the afternoon. I went to a
meeting with some Youth Outreach people at the hospital and they are
so awesome. They are all under the age of 20 and so impressive. They
started this youth outreach program all by themselves and made up a
whole curriculum of teaching AIDS prevention and stuff in schools and
do events like every month. They are super cool and I'm really excited
to work with them. That wore me out though so I came home after that...weak I know

Wednesday I worked on the HIV/AIDS project proposal with Lizzie for
the square foot garden, stove, mushroom house, and youth support
group. We met with the people that afternoon too and it looks like
everything is going to work with that, so we will start that next
week. I also went to a choir showcase of a choir called Mamatoto that
HELP worked with last summer. They were so great. The first thing they
did was definitely a lip sync. We were not expecting that but it was
so great. Then they recited a way intense poem about AIDS and then
another poem about AIDS that had something about prevention for every
letter of the alphabet. The last one was "zip up and stay zipped"
haha. Good motto right? They were all awesome and three of us are
going to work with them this summer. I'm excited to use music here,
and they also do a lot with dance so that will be fun. The other
projects I was focusing aren't going to end up taking much time, so it
will be good to do this choir once a week.

Apparently there was some madness yesterday in town with political
rallies and some mzungus were tear gassed. No one knows why other
mzungus were in lugazi. or why they were tear gassed. So we were told
to take it easy today. I think I am going to help with ESL because I
am the only one that brought the stuff we learned in the trainings so
those are the lesson plans we are working on today. That will probably
start next week ish.

Guess what we are doing on saturday?? RAFTING THE NILE!!!! I am SO
excited. But so nervous. Don't worry father I will be fine, we found a
good company that everyone loves and feels good about. We are going to
Jinga tomorrow night to stay in a hotel because it comes with the
rafting, and we get HOT SHOWERS YEAH!! I'm not bungee jumping though,
so I plan to live past this weekend. No we will be fine, I'll let you
know how it goes.

I am loving it here. It was rough for the few days that I was sick and
I was totally questioning being here but time is starting to go so
fast and I feel like I don't have enough time to do everything I want
to, when last week I felt like I had too much time. I am learning a
lot and growing a lot. I think I need to immerse myself in the culture
more and just soak it all up. Uganda is great. My team is great and I seriously love them all so much. This place is just GREAT