Just Some Photos

Hola amigos y familia. Como han estado? Les extrano!
Promise i'll write more later. Life is good and i hope you all had a great holiday weekend!
All my love love love

So, i thought it would be a good idea

-photos of home before a rainstorm and a tucked away garden-

I wanted to eat pancakes for dinner. It sounded like a good idea. One of my friends can't eat gluten, so we were substituting flour with oats. Then i realized we didn't have one ingredient that i didn't think was too important. Well, it turns out that maybe baking powder is kinda important and maybe substituting flour with oats might not make for good pancakes. Cause it was a mess. I'm talking "smoke-in-the-kitchen, dinner-talk-stopped, nuns-looking-on-worried/horrified" mess. The "pancakes" were a runny disaster. It smelled delicious at first and then was gradually overpowered by the smell of smoke. I'm not sure of the exact combination of "wrong turns" that led us to being laughed out of the kitchen, but somehow, we made it there. Who knows how i'm gonna redeem myself now. (Mom/Tia, you gotta send me some recipes.) We ended our cooking adventure by abandoning all hope of being able to flip the gooey glop and instead switched to scrambling it. oh yes, a scrambled pancake mess. But, we held our heads high as we marched with our pancake goop back to my house to eat it with a spoon.

Other than that, i've been good and busy doing small jobs at schools and with my neighbors. I can’t put my finger on what makes the days pass so quickly though. Maybe a toothache and some friends leaving have made it feel quicker than usual. Tooth is better by the way. It was taken out. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Lately it has been cold. Yes my friends, cold. I had chills and goose bumps the other day. I was very surprised and kinda happy to be cold. For most of last week here, even in Kampala (which is usually hot as heck compared to the coolness of Kisubi...) it has been windy, cool, and rainy. I used it as an excuse to purchase a very pretty blue scarf at the craft market in the city. It’s a really neat place with lots of odds and ends for foreigners to pick up on their way in or out of Uganda. The prices begin outrageously and then, depending on the time of day or how much effort you’re willing to put into bargaining, come down to a reasonable price. This is a bargaining culture so I’ve been having lotsa chances to haggle in the markets. I’m still learning my numbers in Luganda (not to mention still learning how to put together coherent sentences…) so I generally stumble quite a bit when I’m trying to tell shopkeepers how much I want to spend. Usually they’re just glad to see me trying and attempt to coach me along the way. Sometimes on-the-spot language learning is fun and easy and sometimes it’s just embarrassing and kinda like getting a pop quiz in public.

I miss you guys and send you all my Love!
XO

Thank You Posta Uganda

I finally received packages that were sent in February/March. And thank you so much for the assortment of love you sent! They will be taken care of (savored to the last drop if food, tacked up to my wall if pictures/cards, and gratefully taken to heart if gentle words of wisdom...)


Other than a wicked toothache i have been doing great in Kisubi. I've played games with the girls who stayed on campus over the holidays, learned how to crochet a scarf, tested out my ugandan cooking skills (by making spaghetti!), taken walks around the neighborhood, gotten my bike fixed(turns out someone must have accidentally switched the real bike chain with a fake bike chain, which is why it broke the moment i began pedaling), organized my room to feel like home (stuff on the walls, pictures of home on the mirror) and tried to speak Luganda with shopkeepers.

Thanks again for the letters and packages. They brighten my day!

Birthday Wishes

*Happy Birthday Q...Stefan!*

I was thinking about you all day yesterday giving you long distance hugs.
XOXO - lest