Kampala

So trip to the big city this weekend. Finally got my first sweet care package that has been waiting for me at the peace corps office. Thank you soooo soo much Shay!! It's absolutely awesome. Here's a quick rundown of the highlights: ramen noodles, grape jelly, a portable fan!!, lots of crackers, pringles, a pitcher, granola bars, batteries, pretzels, etc, etc, etc....soo great! the portable fan might have already gone through 2 batteries :) but i've got more than enough AA's so it will be going strong for a while.

Went to the Uganda v. Niger football (the real football) game yesterday. Had tons of fun. They won 1-0, although we missed the goal as we were moving from the sunny seats to the shade (a diff of at least 15 degrees) but had a great time all around. The entire city was alive with fans yesterday afternoon and had a great atmosphere. There were about 30,000 fans at the stadium which was about 2/3rds full....including a young ugandan man in a bra leading cheers (so very culturally inappropriate). Here's our sweet $1.50 cranes visors we bought at the market in kampala. I also had a flag that we bought with the visors but our driver's flag fell off halfway to the game so i held one out the window which got snatched by a girl driving by on a boda.

Other than the game I've just been hanging out and eating good food that I can't get in the village, ie: pizza, chinese, salads, etc.

School is getting underway now, last week was the first week of the new term. They have beginning of term exams all week until this monday. I did not set any exams this term but I did supervise the s4's for two of theirs. Keeping watch for cheating becomes quite difficult when you've got 65 high school students crammed 4 to a desk in a dark room...but I think overall it went pretty smoothly. This week I will start teaching two streams (classes) of s2 biology, as well as finishing up the topic I was working on with the s4 physics class. I am hoping to get some more classes added to my load, but as of right now I will just be covering various topics in different classes so they can move me around to interact with as many kids as possible.

Had an interesting trip back from fort portal one day last week. The matatu's are always a great source for stories. This particular one I was on ran out of gas about 20km's from my village. So we pulled over on the side of the road and the conductor took a jerry can and ran down to the gas station at the next town which was about 2km's away. They had no gas. So the driver flagged down a boda driver who drove up to the next town to look for some. Took about 20 mins before he came back, this time with gas. So the conductor poured it into the tank (using a piece of cardboard as the funnel) but then wanted to also put a little into the fuel line for good measure. So how does one get gas into a fuel line from a jerry can without a funnel?? well you use your mouth! Next thing I knew he had tipped the jerrycan up and took a big mouthful of it, then leaned over and spit it into the fuel line and spit the rest out onto the ground and we were off! Never a dull moment, and there is absolutely no such thing as impossible. There's always another way to do something.