Update + new pictures!

Hi Everyone!

We haven't written in a while, mostly because life in the last couple weeks has been more or less the same as when we last wrote. We've done a lot of cooking and gardening, and we've started running! (I know, right?!) For those who don't know me super well, I've hated running for as long as I can remember! But we decided now is the perfect time to try to start liking running, so we're giving it a go! Where else can you run through meadows past cows and incredible green hills. We've been at it two weeks now and I haven't failed yet, so there may be hope for me yet! We have a goal of being able to run a 5k before the next term of school is out....I'll keep you posted!

We've also branched into sigeeri cooking. A sigeeri is a super common cooking method here in Uganda. It consists of a clay or metal pot-like stand that you fill with charcoal. Then, you can put pots and pans on top to cook with. Our host family had at least 4 sigeeri's going at any given time, and cooking dinner on them usually took no less than 3 hours! Not surprisingly, it takes a great deal longer than cooking on a stove top, so we use it rarely. (We bought a two burner gas stove top before we left Kampala that is our primary method of cooking - thank goodness!!) So, mostly we use our sigeeri for a dutch oven. So far we've baked sourdough bread, deep dish chicago style pizza, chocolate cake, and brownies! It works really well and expands our choices of what we can make!

We've still not been able to get any mail at our new site, which is disappointing. Here in Uganda everything comes to PO boxes and nothing is delivered to actual houses or businesses. We are grateful to be able to use the PO box at our college, and yet we aren't exactly sure of the system yet. So, much of this week we've been trying to get a hold of the single PO box key so we can walk into Bushenyi and see if we have any mail. Since Monday, nobody has been able to find the key. Just this morning, someone told Ryan that the person who kept the key left their job here and took the key with them (What?!). Which means, the college has not gotten any mail since said person left. I have no idea how long it's been, but it's been at least a month since no mail has arrived since we came to the school. But, they are sending for the key keeper and with any luck we might have access to the mail in the next week or so! One of those situations that would never happen at home, but here in Uganda you just have to laugh!

Monday the students return and we begin teaching shortly thereafter - the actual start of class is still yet TBD (Ugandan time, of course). We are starting to panic mildly because we still don't have much of a sense of what we are going to be teaching and it's beginning to feel quite real now that we are only a few days from standing in front of students. Yet, this is just the Ugandan way - everything in due time. So, hopefully by next Friday I will have been given some idea of my teaching load, and maybe will have even gotten in front of some students! I'm ready to get going, but a little anxious at the same time since I still don't have a great sense of exactly what it is that I'm getting into! But I've been missing teaching and working with students, so I really look forward to getting back into it! Ryan has fortunately been able to work somewhat regularly in the computer lab with his counterpart over the holiday, so he at least has some idea of what's coming. But, I'm sure we will both be learning a lot and having some interesting and potentially awkward moments in the next week or so as the term gets started. We'll keep you posted!

And...here are a couple of links to some new photo albums I just uploaded on facebook. I tried to avoid looking like a tourist the first few weeks of being here, but decided yesterday it was safe to break out my camera! I think it gives a decent sense of where we are and what we've been up to. Enjoy!

This one is mostly just views around the landscape of our village : click here

And this one is specifically our college and our house at the college: click here

All right, I'm out. We think of everyone all the time and miss home a lot! Thanks for the emails and letters and keeping posted! We hope you all are well and love and miss you all!

~emily~

Friends & Cheese

We've been at site now for a little over a week, and things are going well, but slowly. Because of the timing of things, we have arrived at site just as most people are leaving. This has its advantages and disadvantages. It's nice to have some time to get settled and begin to get to know our community without the stress of figuring out teaching on top of it, but it's also a lot of down time! Most of the tutors (professors) at the college have gone home for the holiday, and classes are out. Unfortunately, we don't know what we are going to be teaching next term so we can't even work on preparing lesson plans. It's a little hard to get here, all geared up to do good work, and find 4 weeks of downtime waiting for you at site!

But, we're trying to make the best of it and enjoy a little relaxation in the mean time. It's a good time to get to know our new community, and spend some quality time together! So, we've started our garden, gone on walks, experimented cooking things from the market (Cassava! I got an individual lesson from one of the women in the market), practiced our Runyankore with some of the community members, and read a lot of Harry Potter out loud to each other! I've felt a bit homesick, but I know that as relationships start to develop and our work here starts to feel more significant it will help me feel like our time here is being well spent. Also, I watched "Singing in the Rain" and plastered our living room walls with pictures of people and places from home, so that helps bring some cheer too! :-)

Tonight we had some of our PCV neighbors & friends over for dinner. We made garlic naan and a coconut milk curry...delicious! We loved hanging out and chatting - so nice to be with friends! Also, they were in town today so they picked us up some real, live cheese! Gouda! I'd never had gouda at home, but I'm pretty psyched to have some cheese in our pantry and a great excuse to eat it all in one sitting! (no refrigerator!) So...Friends and cheese, who can ask for more? ;-)

Keep in touch,

Emily

New photos

So, I still haven't figured out the best way to do this....But I added some new pics from PST and swearing in to my facebook album. Check them out!

new pics - click here!

Emily

Everything grows in Uganda!

Since we’ve been here, one of the phrases we’ve heard over and over again is, “EVERYTHING grows in Uganda!” It’s been said in positive ways: flowers and herbs, beautiful plants and trees, etc. and in negative ways: funky things in your drinking water, diseases in your GI tract, etc. So...we’re starting to test this theory (in its positive aspects) at our new little home in Bushenyi!

We brought with us a plethora of seeds from home, and yesterday we started a little seed nursery with some of them! Since Term 2 (the first term in which we will teach) doesn’t start until near the end of May, we have some time to kill before we really have to get to work. So, along with getting to know our new community and setting up our house, we are starting our garden and our compost! So far, we’ve planted oregano, basil, big boy and roma tomatoes, watermelons, and morenga trees. We have lots more seeds but will wait and plant some directly in the ground. We will have to experiment a little with the best seasons for growing here, but nothing should have much problem as long as we water when it is dry season. So, we’re enjoying our own little tribute to spring right here in Uganda!

We are supremely fortunate to have an incredible backyard! On top of our many banana trees, 2 avocado trees, and passion fruit vines, we have a great space ready for us to garden. We’ve already spotted pumpkins and rosemary already growing there, and are certain if someone with a discerning eye came over to help us out, they would be able to spot lots more growing hidden in the weeds! So, that’s a lot of fun and something to be excited about before we get started with our teaching next term. We’ll keep you posted on our garden’s progress!

Missing you all!

Love,

Emily

These are a few of our favorite things...

Hey Everyone,

A few people have asked us what things we would like sent to us if they were going to send us a package. So here are a few ideas/cravings we have had:

• Seasonings - Poultry, Onion Powder, Garlic, seasoning blends (Mrs. Dash type), and Penzye's cheese sprinkles (Brady street, sandwich sprinkle, etc.)

• Parmesan cheese


• Candy-Emily likes almost anything dark chocolate related (especially lindt and ghiradelli), peppermint chocolate, gummy bears, chocolate covered raisins, and red vines licorice. Ryan likes fruity type things (like Starburst Jelly Beans), Peanut Butter chocolate things, peanuts (especially honey roasted), and carmel chocolate type candies.


• Crystal Light packets


• Just-add-water oregon chai mix packet

• Mac N' Cheese cheese package

• Dried Black Beans

• New music


• Pictures from home!!

Well that is what we can think of so far, but we will keep this updated as we miss more things.

Thanks for asking!

Ryan and Emily

Home Sweet Home... Eventually

It is true we are finally PCV!!! Hard to believe that 10 weeks of training are over and we have been sworn in. The last two weeks since we have written have been filled with many very exciting things and some harder things. The week after we got back from our Future Site Visit was our last week of training. We had a lot of wrapping up of things to do. So on Wednesday we took our Round Robin assessment. This consisted of us going around to meet with people from various areas of Peace Corps (Security, Cultural, Medical, Primary Education, and our Country Director). It was pretty straight forward, and we both passed with flying colors. A couple questions that stumped some people were:

• How do you tell which beans are good and which are bad?
• Who created Peace Corps, and why?
• If you have latent TB how long do you have to take the medication?
• How do you prepare rice in Uganda? (the basic rice here has twigs and stones that you must pick out)
• If you get in a car crash in Uganda what must you have on you? (Answer: Your Peace Corps ID)

So these were some of the interesting questions.

Then on Friday we had our big Language Proficiency Interview *Dramatic Gasp*. This has been the single day of training that I had been dreading the most. The good news is that Emily passed!!!! Emily scored an Intermediate Mid (one above where she needed to be). The bad news is that Ryan did not :-(. I scored a Novice High (one below where I needed to be). So I will get to retake in about three months! My frustration was palpable on Saturday when I got my score but it has subsided since.

On Saturday we had our Homestay family good bye ceremony. It was good but got very long by the end of our time. Each language group (9 total) presented twice once for 10 minutes and one for 5, which ended up being more like 20 minutes and 15 minutes. So the day got long. Our group presented a video thanking our homestay parents for our longer presentation, and then we did a mock cooking show for our other making PBJ! Afterwords we had a picnic lunch Ugandan style.

Then on Monday morning we left our homestay family, to stay at a hotel for our last week. Monday half of our group was going to go shopping and the other half was going to visit the Peace Corps Office. But in the end both groups just ended up visiting the hotel pool. Because due to riots that have been happening in larger cities in Uganda recently we were put on “Standfast” once again. So this meant that no Volunteers were allowed to leave their sites, or in our case the hotel. But on Tuesday the riots had subsided and we got to pump our day full of many things.

We started by visiting the US Embassy. It was a very interesting visit where we got to learn many facts about what embassies do and what the one here specifically does. One fact that was a little bit unnerving is the fact that the US supplies 85% of the ARV drugs for Ugandan’s who have AIDS, and it represents hundreds of billions of USAID dollars. The USAID officer told us that America could never really back out of this commitment now that it has made it, unless the Ugandan government took it over, or we would be responsible for millions of deaths. Another fact that was hopeful was that America tends to spend significantly less on many projects that European countries spend more on but make a larger difference by the strings attached to the money. So it is good to know that our trusty embassy will be there to support us if we lose our passport or go to jail. Following our embassy visit we went to the Peace Corps office to tour and get our final vaccination. Then we went to a shopping center called Garden City to do some shopping. We got a few of the more essential things that we would need at our house.

On Wednesday all of our supervisors (except for a few which sent replacements, like ours) came to the hotel for a supervisors conference. This lasted for a day and a half. The conference was pretty repetitive from the rest of our training and we had to sit through it all. The evenings were fun times to reconnect with all of our new friends before we were miles and miles away from each other. We got a last few chances to play bridge, before our gang split up across the country from each other.

On Thursday we had our official Peace Corps swear-in. It happened in the afternoon at the deputy ambassador’s house. It felt like a graduation with the training manager presenting us to the Education program manager, who then introduced us to the PC Country Director. The Country director then passed us to the US ambassador for swearing-in, and then he presented us to the representative for the Ugandan Ministry of Education. Following our swearing in where we vowed to defend the constitution of the USA, we had appetizers and drinks. It all felt very formal and celebrative, and a good conclusion to training.

Now as for Friday, the reason I put “... Eventually” in the title of this post. The best way to sum up the day is to provide you with a timeline:

7:30 - We leave the hotel (in Kampala) in route for Bushanyi

8:48 - We stopped at a supermarket called “Game” in Kampala to get bikes. It didn’t open until 10, because of the holiday.

11:00 - We get to downtown “crazy” Kampala to buy bikes from shady basements. Note: We thought walking through markets in Kampala was nerve racking, but it is significantly more frightening driving through crowded markets with all of your possessions in the back of truck.

11:45 - We realize after sitting in traffic for a significant amount of time that our car wasn’t working right so we went to a garage in Kampala.

3 - The mechanics return with the parts for our car. They had to ride on a motorcycle to get them fixed somewhere else because the garage had no power. Then we finally are able to leave the city we started in.

5 - Our brand new bikes fly off the back of the truck.

6 - They decide to pick up two large bags of charcoal and squish them on all of our stuff in the back.

6:05 - Things start flying out the back of the truck that they had moved when they put the charcoal in.

7:30 - We reach Mbarara. While leaving we rear-end someone.

8 - We finish leaving Mbarara after they are done arguing about the collision.

9:30 - 207 Miles and 13.5 hours later... Home Sweet Home

9:35 - We find the things they told us we could leave in our home, because no one would be using it, were gone because someone had stayed there. Additionally mud is slowly seeping from our pipes, until it stop all together.

This morning we woke up ready to have a fresh start in our new home, and we did. We listened to music, settled in, went shopping, dreamed of our soon to be garden, got the water turned back on, found Akatunda (passion fruit) growing in our backyard, and hung a hammock (and if you know Emily you know how happy this made her). Our day has been a wonderful relief after yesterday. Tomorrow we plan to have a traditional Easter Chili dinner with some other PCVs at our house! Happy Easter everyone! We are wishing we could be at home with you all and here at the same time!! Eat lots of candy for us, and maybe send us a little to!!

Stay Well and don’t get stuck in the traffic jam around Kampala,

Ryan

PICTURES! :-)

Hi Everyone!

The time has finally come that I can post some pictures! We got internet today (woo hoo!) and I've been dying to share with you some of the things we've been seeing and doing!

I intended to put all my pics on my flickr photostream, but am having some problems with it today. So, instead, I posted about 100 pictures from the last 9 weeks on facebook. I'm not sure whether it will be a permanent solution or not....I'm still holding out some hope for flickr, but we'll see.

Anyhow, here's a link for you to check them out - I think it should work regardless of if you have facebook or not. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2102517&id=63801186&l=c33282632c

Emily