My first (real) weekend in Uganda!!

Good news, I now have internet at home!!

That means you'll hear from me much more often, excited?! ;]

Friday was a public holiday, Martyr's Day, so we didn't have to go in to Mukisa. Instead we had a "tourist" day!
It started at twenty after seven when I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep! The dogs weren't barking, the annoying bird wasn't making noise; I just couldn't fall back asleep. I ended up being quite pleased though because I took it to mean I was finally over jet-lag!

I was excited to try some mango flavored yogurt I bought at Nakuumat (a big grocery store downtown) but I soon discovered the only mango flavored things I like are REAL mangoes! It was really quite terrible! I'll have to see if Cat or Florence wants it because I don't think I'll be able to bear it!

Once we were up and ready to go we got a boda into town where we had planned to meet Rachel and Carolyn (other AIM short-termers). We had a few errands to run at Garden City (buying internet!!!) then we headed to "Friday Market". There are markets all over town all week long but on Friday there's a really big one downtown. There are all sorts of crafts and souvenirs that you can buy and tons of mizungos roaming around. I felt like I was going crazy because there are SO many beautiful things to buy, I couldn't decide! Something I really like about the market is that things really are handmade; you can see them making it! It’s cool to see the drums and baskets being made.

Once we were done with the market we got two bodas and were supposed to go to the old taxi park. I don't know if I've explained this already in a previous post but there are two taxi parks in Kampala, the old and the new. The taxi park is a really big area with a million taxis jammed into it; the perfect place to get your toes ran over! I mean it though; it's absolutely insane how many vans there are in one place! There’s sort of a system to it all but it sure doesn't seem like it...there are no lines on the ground to follow or anything like that! I feel like I’m making it sound so terrible but it’s actually quite handy, you can get a taxi to nearly anywhere in Kampala and the surrounding area at the taxi park. You just walk in and ask around about the place you’re looking to go then they point in a general direction so you walk that way and eventually ask someone else until you get to the right place! (If you really know what you’re doing you don’t have to ask around but that hasn’t happened for me yet!) Anyways, our bodas got separated so Rachel and I ended up at the new taxi park while Carolyn and Cat were at the old one. Soon enough we found each other though (thank goodness for cell phones!) and found a taxi to Masaka which was the direction of the equator.

The taxis won’t leave the park until they’re full so we ended up sitting for quite a while. I consider time spent sitting in the taxi park “window shopping time”. Normal window shopping involves walking to different stores and looking at all the things you can buy through the windows, but taxi park window shopping is much easier…you just sit back and relax in the taxi and an endless stream of things to purchase just flows right by the window. People sell everything in the Taxi Park; watches, sunglasses, ice cream, grasshoppers, blankets, even French to English dictionaries! We all bought an ice cream while we waited. Once the van was full we headed out, the trip took about an hour and a half.

We took our pictures at the monuments (you’ll see that in some of them we were joined by some of the children from a nearby shop, so cute!) and walked through some of the shops then had lunch. The tables that were used for lunch were big African drums, very cool looking!

We had been invited for pizza back in Kampala but by the time we were home we were too tired to go out again so Cat and I bought a pineapple from the market and had that while we watched a movie with Florence and her sisters.
 
Saturday morning I got up early to run. It was my second run since I’ve been here and it went much better than the first. (The first was terrible, I tried to go in the evening and it was hot and dusty, not a good idea!) I ran up on the roads behind where we live...I mentioned before that Kampala is really hilly though I didn’t fully realize it until I was running! I had been running about six minutes when it occurred to me that I had been steadily going downhill. There’s hardly a way to avoid the long uphills though so I just kept going. During part of my run a little girl joined me, she was adorable! Later I was joined by a guy that looked just a little older than me. We ran together just a little bit and he talked to me the whole time! He was training for some upcoming competitions in Jinja and was a 400 meter runner.

I had orientation at ten over at the guesthouse that I originally stayed in. It was my first time traveling alone!! Everything went smoothly and the orientation was really helpful. One of the biggest things I took away from it was the importance of setting goals for my time here. I don’t want to get to August 15^th and think back on my time here and realize I never allowed myself to grow. I’ve really got to take some time to think about and pray about what goals to set. I want to avoid setting up expectations of myself and others though, that’s not the point of goals.

After orientation I took a taxi into town (again, by myself…yay!) and met up with Cat, Beth, and Julie at an art festival. It was my first time meeting Beth and Julie and I realized right away how great they are! A while before I left I was given Julie and Beth’s blogs so when I met them I kind of felt like I knew them already!
 
Something else exciting happened on Saturday…I think I finally found “my” boda driver! You can get a boda pretty much anywhere but it’s recommended that you find one you trust that you can use regularly. A lot of the other AIM girls have at least one or two that they’ll call to take them home after dinner or to church or other things like that. I’ve been on the lookout but I’ve had pretty high expectations so hadn’t found anyone until now. My criteria (in order of importance!!): drives carefully, knows the city (or doesn’t mind stopping and asking for directions!!), charges a fair price, understands and speaks English well enough that if I call and ask for a ride he’ll understand where to pick me up!

For church today we went to Watoto East. It’s all the way across town but we went with Josephine, a Ugandan friend we’ve made. Basically, this was the best afternoon I could have imagined. I’ll post about it another day though because Cat and I are going to watch a movie!

Until next time…

All my love,

Molly