first day in uganda + first full day in jinja

Hello Everyone!!!
Whelp i live in Jina now. Kinda crazy. Kinda a big deal. It is so different here.
Alex (my cousin) and I got here safe and sound. We had a nine hour layover in London, so we decided to go site see as much as we could. We saw the Buckingham Palace and the "clock", aka Big Ben but i guess we never actually went inside and saw Big Ben. Anyways we went back to Heathrow Airport and slept on chairs as we waited for our next flight to Enntebe, Uganda. Right as they started to board the plane i got sick and started to throw up. Not fun at all. but dont worry it was not that i was sick or anything, i just took my malaria pill when i had not eatin anything. I have learned to always have a meal before now.
We finally arrived in Enntebe. It is green, with beautiful clouds, clouds that are bigger than anything i have ever seen in America or anywhere for that matter. Lake Victoria is beautiful and makes everything surrounding it exotic and new. We walked off the plane onto a bus that drives us to the airport and the first thing i jot down in my mind is... humidity, and lots of it. The other thing that struck me was being the minority. At last i am out of Grand Junction, CO, where everyone is white and a farmer ;)

Rachel, a staff member, and Gover the driver, met us outside.
3 hours of driving to our new home, was the next thing on the list. Stop and go, stop and go. I was getting so car sick. Traffic was out of this world. We probably were in Kampala (nothing bad going on there) for two hours because of all the traffic. Yeah, it should have been a ten minute drive or so through. Okay anyways......We get to Jinja, we almost run over a man that darted across the road, i got my first glimpse of the Nile, and the car ride was finished. Solid ground was very refreshing after two days traveling.

The house that we are staying at is very nice. Very modern. We got unpacked, met Randy, who is Rachel's husband, and then we're off to get lunch at a place called "Two Friends". This place was awesome. It looked like a resort and guess what? They treated us to lunch which was very sweet of them. We ate, talked about expectations, ourselves, Jinja, culture, suubi, and of course food!!!! We got back met the other volunteers being, Heather, Kate, and Ryan. All really cool people who were welcoming fun to talk to and hang out with. I got to meet Betty, who lives in the back house with her one year old son Kimby. She is very sweet. She treats you like family as soon as she meets you. She calls me Auntie Becca and Alex Uncle. I love it! I call her Betty.......duh i am still American. :) I barely unpacked my room, instead i grabbed a chair and started to write Scott (my fiance who lives back in Colorado). I miss him, but not in a bad way where all i think about is wanting to be home. Which is good. Walked into my room fell sleep i was out.


Day Two-
Wow, its real. I heard chanting this morning. First thing you hear is the Muslim prayer right before the sun rises.....next chanting through the streets, right in front of the house. It was so beautiful. Everyone is up and getting ready. Ryan and Heather are packing cause they are leaving today and I am getting ready for the day. First full day in Jinja....bring it on!

Alex, Ryan, Heather, Rachel, and I leave the house on our way to get some chores done.
We exchanged our money, met Agnus and Alice, who are two of the tailors for the EPOH project. EPOH, being hope spelled backwards. Instead of paper necklaces they work on scraps of material to make purses. :)
So yeah the room that they now sew in is in the back of Rita's store....a lady who has this awesome shop off of main street. Then we went to cell phone stores to try and buy one, but they were out of the cheap ones that we wanted. So we will wait till today hopefully.
Walked around the town. Learned where everything is. It is so crazy that i am actually here. The roads are dirt. The people mostly poor compared to the U.S's standards. 10 dollars here can last you a week. You can get lunch and drink here for the price of $2.50, and its a big lunch too. Oh yeah there are these crazy birds here.....most people call them storks, I call them ugly. These are not the kind that bring babies and that are friendly looking, they eat trash and are balding and also have huge gross faces. Yuck :) i will put pictures up soon! Anyways they are about 5 foot and normally you see them walking about picking at plastic or being lazy. I think if i were to predict my next nightmare it would involve me running from one of those creatures. Oh yeah did i mention i ate goat yesterday...... :)
Okay well that's about it....oh yeah i did go and workout at the gym yesterday, the showers there are bomb!
love it. It was really good to practice ballet and to weight lift too. Whelp got home, we bought drums in town today so Alex and i were banging on those and having fun. Moses one of the little boys came inside and gave it a try too. He is cute and knows English, but is too shy to speak it unless its Alex talking to him. No actually working yet, just getting the basics down.
I did try to decal my first pink bead the other day. That was really hard. I smugged it and kept it :) but yeah. Came home everyone ate dinner. bed time!

day three - work in progress. :) first day teaching English...... so happy!