SPRING BREAK 2009: SOROTI!!!!

Just wanted to leave a short note to remind you of my super sweet spring break plans. Tomorrow morning around 10:30 am, we'll leave for Eastern Uganda. Then Saturday morning we'll be dropped off at our respective families in Soroti, which is a very rural village. We'll be there until Friday morning, where USP will pick us back up an we'll head for a weekend retreat to Sipi Falls. One of the most beautiful spots in all of Uganda!

We'll be returning to campus the evening of Sunday, March 1st. Until then I'll have no access to the internet, or cell phone reception. Meaning: I won't get to talk to any of you for over a week! But keep me in your prayers, and I'll supply you with lots of stories and pictures of my time there!

Mirembe (peace), my homies!

My Week in a Nutshell (Sort of)

Well, this week has been nothing short of eventful. So as opposed to the usual run down of my days, I'm going to share the emotional journey that Uganda has taken me on these last few days.

To start, I'm going to ask that everyone continue to pray for me. I'm in the midst of pretty frightening spiritual battle. I think the fact that God is so present and relevant in this place is making the devil really uncomfortable. I've really begun to begin working on my relationship with God, and Satan is pretty threatened by that. The last 2 days I've been surrounded by what I can only describe as evil. I can't even put it into words, I just feel the devil attacking my mind and it's been quite unnerving. I've really been wrestling because sometimes I can't even differentiate between my own thoughts, and what Satan is trying to make me believe.

Anyhow, last night was it for me. I broke down and asked God to forgive me, and although I knew I didn't deserve it I asked Him to make Himself known to me, because I was really scared. Not only did he lovingly and gracefully do those things, I also asked Him to drive out the evil that was surrounding me and fill me with His spirit. He came through. I'll leave it at that, but know that I'm doing a lot better. It's a continuous struggle trying to trust in His plan for me, instead of leaning on my own understanding and trying to do what I believe to be best for me, so please keep me in your prayers.

Aside from that, I've been kind of sick these last few days. I don't know if it's nerves or stress or what-have-you, but I just can't seem to keep things down! So please pray for that as well.

Now, onto the big stuff. Mommy- you'll be receiving an e-mail from Best Semester giving more details and such, but for the rest of you, here goes: Yesterday, the University received a threatening letter from what is belived to be a radical Islamic terrorist group (BUT IT'S NOT FOR SURE, SO DON'T FREAK OUT YET!). Anyway, we weren't given much info as far as what the letter said, but we were told that one line said something along the lines of "All Americans should go home." UCU and USP are taking it very seriously and are tightening security accordingly. As a safety measure, all USP participants have been told we're not allowed to leave campus for the next 48 hours...until we leave for rural homestays, which will still proceed as planned.

On top of all this, Uganda police forces also released a notice yesterday of terrorist threats in Uganda as a result of extremist rebel forces who are not happy about Uganda's peacekeepers in Somalia right now. UCU is taking all necessary precautions, and increasing security, as far as who can come on campus and apparently they've also increased security within the Honors College, since that's where all us Americans are staying.

It's pretty crazy news...all of it. But I feel completely safe. I honestly don't think the letter was anything but a disgruntled student wanting to stir up trouble. Regardless, please keep Uganda in your prayers, as the threat of terrorism is real. I love you all, and if you have any questions or anything, you probably already know how to get ahold of me.

Love you all ♥

Post-Valentine's Day Update

I feel like I really don't have much more to report, but I'll write a little update so I don't start slacking on this blog business!

For starters, I've been wanting to run the past couple days, but haven't because I've been cooped up inside trying to escape from the heat! The rainy season started a few weeks ago (early), but these last few days have been insane. I'm constantly sweating up a storm.

Friday night we had a movie on the lawn in front of my dorm. Katy and Bea went into Mukono to rent a few movies and then we set up a projector and chairs on the grass and watched Kung Fu Panda. I actually ended up leaving about halfway through because my allergies have been bothering me, and I was pretty tired. One of the IMME (Mission Emphasis people that don't live on campus, but stay with host families the whole semester) girls, Kaia, spent the night in Katie's and my room. We have an extra bed, so we cleared it off for her and had like a little slumber party. It was nice to have a visitor!

Saturday I really didn't do much of anything. After lunch, Katy, Katie and Bea decided to go into Kampala just to get some American food, but I stayed behind because I knew I'd end up spending money that I shouldn't. So I wasted my life away on the internet for a little while, got some homework done, got a candy bar from the guild canteen (so I could say I had some Valentine's Day chocolate) and took a nap.

When they got back, we decided to watch a movie in the common room of our dorm. Bea had bought 'Slumdog Millionaire' a couple days before at the video store in Mukono. I'd never heard of it before, but apparently it's been nominated for a bunch of Oscar's so we decided to check it out. The decision- two huge thumbs up! I would highly recommend it, if it's even out in the U.S. We had a pirated copy, so I don't even know if it's out on video yet. We snacked on popcorn and g nuts (ground nuts, which are just like peanuts). I headed to bed shortly after.

P/c

Aside from my fairly lame weekend activities, I've spent a lot of time the past couple days researching grad schools. A LOT of time. I've narrowed my search down to three: Notre Dame in Indiana, American University in DC, and University of Glascow in Scotland. So I guess we'll see what the future has in store for me!

It's pretty crazy- this Friday I have a mid-term in my Faith & Action class, and immediately after we're boarding a bus to go up to Soroti (in Eastern Uganda) for our week-long rural homestays over Spring Break. We'll be dropped off at our homes Saturday morning, then picked up the following Friday. That weekend we'll all gather back together to spend the weekend at Sipi Falls. I'm so excited about that, because it looks absolutely gorgeous!! The only problem is, in order to go on the day-long hike you have to have raingear (which I don't) so I'm hoping to find at least a poncho or something in Mukono sometime this week. Maybe even today, because I need some serious snack food too!

Anyway, come Friday, I won't be able to contact anyone until I get back to campus the Sunday evening after Sipi. A little over a week with no communication? Aah!

That's really all that's currently going on over here. I hope to have a lot more exciting stories after rural homestays!! Nkwagala!

Spaghetti and Garlic Bread

Before I get into my activities of the past couple days, I keep forgetting to share one of my favorite moments since I’ve been here. I believe it was about a week ago. My girls and I were at dinner with a couple of our Honors College friends. We happened to start talking about pie, pumpkin pie, to be more specific. We tried to describe to our Ugandan friends what it was, and realized they don’t even have pie here. Anyhow, we asked them what they eat for dessert and Jones responded, “I’m a Ugandan! I eat rice, beans and mtoke.” It was absolutely priceless!

Onto the week’s events. Tuesday I had my Ugandan Politics class at 9:30 am, followed by Faith & Action at 11:00 am. After classes, I came back to my room to finish up my Creative Writing assignment. I went to lunch around 1:30 pm and went to Creative Writing from 2:00-5:00 pm. Even though Tuesdays are my busiest days, they might be my favorite because Ugandan Politics and Creative Writing are my two favorite classes. They’re laid back, and yet, I think I’m learning the most in both of them. I went for a run right after I got out, and then came back to the room to do some hardcore paper-writing for my East African Politics paper that was due today.

Yesterday was quite a bit more interesting. I actually slept in until almost 10:30 am because I didn’t have my African religions class until 11:00 am. Once I got out of lunch, I went back to my room to continue writing my East African politics paper because my night was jam-packed. At 4:00 we had our rural homestay orientation, which was just two hours of lots of do’s and don’ts and attempting to make us aware of cultural idiosyncrasies. As soon as we got out I hit the track again, and gave myself a pretty tough workout, and I’m glad I did.

At 7:00 pm, our Ugandan Politics professor had us up to her house for a spaghetti dinner. There are only nine of us altogether, so we have class at her house on a regular basis and she always makes us tea and coffee, so we obviously adore her. There was spaghetti, meatballs, salad and my personal favorite- garlic bread! I ate 4 pieces! It was the highlight of everyone’s week.

With our bellies full of pasta, we watched the movie The Last King of Scotland. I’d never seen it before, but I knew it made a huge difference actually watching it in Uganda. For those of you who may not know, the movie is fiction, but based on all the events that occurred during Idi Amin’s reign as President of Uganda. I consider myself to have a pretty strong stomach, and have never felt ill watching blood and gore, but the movie literally made me sick to my stomach. I think a lot of it stemmed from the fact that I knew I wasn’t watching a low-budget horror film, but something that actually happened in Uganda. I mean, my host parents were alive when Amin was in control. They were alive as thousands of Ugandans were tortured, massacred, beaten and left for dead. It got to a point where Amin’s troops didn’t even bury the bodies of the victims they killed. People would walk through the streets of Kampala, stepping over corpses. All of this really happened!

P/c

Anyway, we didn’t end up leaving our professor's house until sometime after 11:00 pm and we had to walk back to our dorms in the dark, with everything we’d just witnessed in the back of our minds. I’m scared enough of the dark at is, but it took everything I had not to ask one of the girls in my class to hold my hand, because I was scared witless. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well at all last night. I was just left with this awful, uneasy feeling and slept for maybe three or four hours. It ended up being good though because I got up this morning for breakfast for the first time since I’ve been here. I’m so proud! It was a roll, boiled egg and a cup of African tea. Mmm!

Now that my East African politics paper is done I have the day pretty much free. I’m going to set up my schedule at the Children’s Library on campus where I'm assigned for service learning at around 4:00 pm, and that’s about it. I might clean my pig sty of a room, I might walk into Mukono, or I may just waste my life away on the internet when it decides to start working since I’ve been unable to the past few days. The latter is looking pretty good right about now!

Love and miss you all! Keep sending me the virtual love, it makes my day!

I Ate a Cheeseburger!

Yesterday was the most American day. Period.

p/c: Katie Kovarik

Katie and I had the fantastic goal to wake up by 8:00 or 9:00 am and do our laundry. Instead, we both decided it was a much better idea to sleep in until 12:30 pm. Best plan ever. When we finally got up we showered and by 2:00 pm, Katy, Bea, Katie and I were on our way to Kampala. We took our first taxi ride which was a pretty big deal. The taxis here are like 15 passenger vans, and it only costs the equivalent of $.75 to $1.00 for a half hour to hour long ride (depending on traffic). We even got off at the right place! Yay us!

Once we got into the area of Kampala that we wanted to (Garden City Mall) we were on a mission to find this supposedly fantastic restaurant called NY Kitchen. We finally found it and it definitely lived up to the hype. Katy and Bea got calzones, Katie got pepperoni pizza and I got a cheeseburger and French fries. Katie and Katy also both got chocolate milkshakes, and I got a banana one. Soooo good! We totally filled ourselves up. Katy was very close to throwing up, and I made Bea burp me because I basically couldn’t move. But it was totally worth it!

After lunch, we decided to walk a couple blocks up to this outdoor market. It was so awesome. I’m pretty much going to decorate my future home with half the stuff that was there. I bought my first souvenir, but I think I’m going to keep the details to myself. I will definitely be going back there at least once more during the semester, because I didn’t even get through the entire thing. Oh, and here’s a side note: (Random, but it’s funny, I promise.) While I was there, I really had to use the bathroom. I went in and the bathrooms were like flushable squatty potties and about halfway into my business I realized that these particular bathrooms didn’t have toilet paper, but rather a faucet and little pitcher to pour on you. I was in desperate need of something to wipe with and there was absolutely nothing in sight…or reach. So I ended up pulling out a 5000 shilling note and took care of business. Everyone was laughing at me, but hey, converted, I only spent about $2.50 to go potty, and I was very resourceful!

Around 6:30 pm we left the craft market and headed back to Garden City. We decided we wanted to watch a movie at the cinema there, and we ended up seeing Valkyrie which was the story of the last attempt by the Germans to take down Adolf Hitler. We invited a couple of the Honors College guys we’re friends with to join us for the movie, but they got into Kampala way late and missed it. So they went and got food, then waited for us to get out. When we met up with them it was about 9:00 pm and we decided to go bowling. It was a ton of fun! One guy, Charity, had never even been bowling before so it was cool to introduce him to something new.

By the time we got done bowling it was going on 11:00 pm, so we wandered around Kampala trying to find a taxi back to Mukono. It was really awesome, because I got the opportunity to talk to Jones for awhile, whom I absolutely adore. We have a lot in common as far as our majors and possible careers are concerned. We finally found a Mukono-bound taxi that could fit all 7 of us and went back home. We got back to campus 3 minutes after they closed the main gates, so a security guard had to let us in. Oops! Oh, I should also mention that the people that worked the bowling alley gave us energy drinks on the house because our lane was malfunctioning. I was nowhere near ready to sleep when we got back, so I got online and ended up talking to Joshua until 4 am. The internet was working so fast, I couldn’t resist! I downloaded at least 30 songs on iTunes.

I woke up this morning and almost felt hung-over, on account of not sleeping and a crazy day. I ended up skipping Church, but I did do my laundry…which took forever! I was doing it for about 2 hours. Not fun. Now I’m writing this on Word and waiting for the internet to start working so I can post it!

Peace out, loves!

T-Minus 90 Days til I'm Home!

I feel like I'm grasping for anything at all to talk about, but I need to keep everyone up to date! Plus, I'm definitely going to appreciate these blogs once I get back and even years from now. So I'll start with yesterday and work my way up...

p/c: Katie Kovarik

I actually slept in until 9:00-ish. Yeah, that's right. 9:00 am is sleeping in for me now. Bet you didn't see that coming! When I got up, I did the whole showering and getting ready business and went to class at 11:00 am. Afterward, Katie and I dropped our books and such off in our room then went to one of the canteens (like a campus store/stand) to get candy bars for ourselves, Katy and Bea. Bea said early on in the semester that the one candy she was going to miss from home were Twixes. The other day, Katie and I discovered a candy bar called U & Me, which is the Ugandan version of Twix, so we were really excited to surprise her. They were sooo good too!

After lunch, I went down to the Florence common room to use the internet and idealistically start research for one of my papers. Guess how much of that I did. Joshua called me around 4:00 pm I believe, and I got to talk to him for a half hour or so, over the crazy, heavy rain and over the sound of my dying battery.

After I talked to the boy, the internet almost immediately stopped working. I wrote like 2 sentences of a paper that's due next week, then packed up my stuff and went to my room. I read some textbook stuff for classes, and was thinking about running but it had just rained so I really didn't want to. One of the Honors College girls on my hall came in to talk and said that her and 2 other girls usually go running at 6:30 and she decided I was going to join them.

We went down to the track and I was actually quite a bit faster than them, which surprised me. On like my 2nd lap, this random kid started running next to me and was like "I like your speed." I was just like "Umm...thanks?" He ran with me the entire time which was a little bit sketch, but it was kind of good because I had someone there to kind of push me to run more than I would've otherwise. I ran about 2 miles I think, then sprinted like the last 100 meters. After we were done, he asked me for my number, but luckily I didn't have my phone on me and don't know my number so I told him I'd probably see him there again (not).

I went to dinner right after, a sweaty mess and mud up to my knees, but it was wonderful. I know this sounds really bizarre, but my favorite food here is definitely cabbage. SO GOOD. Katy, Bea and I ate dinner with a couple of the Honors College kids. When we got back they went to watch a movie with my roomie, Katie, and I stayed in my room to do more reading. I feel like it's all I ever do, and I still get so little accomplished! I went to bed around 11:30ish and it was wonderful :)

This morning I had to get up earlier than usual because I had orientation for my service project at 8:00 am. I'll be working on campus, and we can choose to either work in the Children's Library (which doesn't involve as much interaction with kids) or the Day Care or both. I'll probably end up doing the Library, because swarms of little children can be somewhat intimidating for me. Immediately after the orientation at the Day Care, I went to my East African Politics class and by the time we got out at 9:30 am, I was starving! I went to one of the canteens on campus to get a chapati (tortilla-type thing) because I heard they had the best ones around. But when I got there....they had BROWNIES! You can bet your ass, I got me one of those! I got one for Katie too, and she pretty much died. I'm pretty much the best roommate ever.

That all leads up to now! Hope everyone that reads this has a blessed and fantastical day! Nkwagala!

I've Given Up Keeping Track of the Days

I thought I'd post a quick update on the events of my weekend.

We left campus at 5:00 pm on Friday evening. It was about an hour and a half long bus ride and believe it or not- the President of Uganda, Museveni, passed us on the way there. The bus had to pull over and this huge procession of government vehicles passed by. I didn't realize until after the fact what all the craziness was about.

We arrived at the resort, got checked into our rooms, then went to dinner. Some people got put into rooms with UCU students, but I was put in a small little room with another USP girl, Rochelle who lives on my hall and I rode next to on the plane rides here, so I knew her fairly well. I was actually really grateful that I was with someone I knew because I could just kind of relax in my room. Plus, I forgot to pack PJ's so I was really excited that I had a roommate who I could sleep in my underwear with! Sorry, that may have been an overshare...

All the meals were amazing. There was loads of good food. Meat, chapatis (kind of like tortillas, but better), fruit, veggies, spaghetti. So good!

After dinner, we all went into this big room to play ridiculously corny, but super fun get-to-know-you name games. After that, a bunch of people went into the pool then I headed to bed. The next morning, we had breakfast then went out on the lawn for more name games and a dodge-ball tournament! My team was like all girls, so sadly, we did not advance. After that was over, we spent a good couple hours in the pool. We started some form of Water Rugby that was pretty brutal, but ridiculously fun. I think everyone came out with battle wounds. After lunch, I could feel that I had gotten sunburned already (despite reapplying sunscreen) so I wanted to just hang out and talk in the shade.

We had a slightly serious moment, when a group of us were sitting in the shade just looking out over the lake. A couple of boys who lived nearby had come and were just kind of talking to everyone and asking to take pictures with people's cameras (I hid mine because I was a little sketched out). Anyway, about a half hour into it, one of the Honors College kids' phone had gone missing and soon after someone figured out that one of the kids had stolen it. When his family found out, his father started "caning" him. The kid was crying and screaming in pain and took off. His father started chasing him around the part of the resort we were at with this long piece of bamboo/wood. It was slightly horrifying, so one of the Honors College guys, Moses, eventually approached the father and told him that we didn't really appreciate his disciplining his son like that in front of us. The father was understanding, and that was pretty much the end of it. But it created a momentary dark cloud over our day.

Maybe an hour after all that transpired I got on the boat that took us to the source of the Nile. There were shifts of about 8 to 10 of us going every half hour. The tour guides took us to a little island right next to the source where we took pictures. We got back in the boat and they showed us this little island where all these birds lived, this humongous lizard thing, a pillar what was a monument for John Picks, who discovered the source, and then a monument where some of Gandhi's ashes had been scattered.

We got back, I tried sugar cane for the first time (not that big of a fan), started up a game of Uno, had dinner, then started up a game of poker. I actually did really well, I made it to the very end, and it was just between me and this guy Beau. It was late when poker ended so I went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up for breakfast, we had a worship service (with yet another crazy God moment) then I went and took a nap until lunch time because the lack of sleep and the abundance of sun had worn me out and I knew I had work to do when I got back.

After lunch, we immediately boarded the bus and headed back to campus where I later had a fantastic girls night with my 3 good friends here- Katie, Katy and Bea. Yeah, there's three Kaity's in my group. It makes for amusing introductions. I didn't get to watch the Superbowl. We tried staying up to watch it, but by 2 am, we all had to call the quits. That about catches everyone up! I should get going on my work for tomorrow!

NKWAGALA!
(That's 'I love you' in Luganda)