Week 2

I have officially been here for a week! It feels like a lot longer because I have already done so much. I did not get to post on Monday, but I wanted to point out that Monday was a big day. It was the 20 year celebration of the Berlin Wall coming down! I wish I could have still been in Berlin to celebrate such a great day in history. Speaking of Berlin, I woke up the other morning with a great surprise in my email. The Leibigers new aupair sent me an email Hannah wrote. It said, 'Catherine, I have so much love for you, kisses, Hannah'. A couple weeks before I left to come here I looked through my photos from my year in Germany and realized how much I really missed my kids. Hannah started Kindergarten in September. I Skyped with Linda the other day and got to see some pics from her first day. Too cute. If I can I will try to upload one on here.

Anyways, back to Uganda. Week 2. Monday morning we went to Nsambya Babies Home. It is much different from the other babies home we visit on Thursday's, Sanyu. This one is a little bit smaller and much less organized. However, I really liked it because the kids have a big playground so they run around outside all morning. The problem is that these kids don't wear diapers. The baby babies where cloth diapers, but the 2 and 3 year olds do not. They don't even wear underwear because really there is no point. They try to teach the kids to go to the bathroom in the grass. Some of them are pretty good, others not so much. I was warned to wear my dirtiest clothes this day because kids would pee on me. I love kids, but the one thing I don't love is smelling like their urine. Anytime I was holding a child that acted slightly like they might have to go I sent them to the yard. I was not going to take my chances. This one little girl, Christine, came and sat in my lap when I got there and didn't let go until the time I left. She was the cutest little thing. One of the cool things for Hannah was when she got here 2 months ago these kids weren't talking. On Monday they were singing songs and saying little words. Christine has learned to say 'I love you', but instead she says 'I love Lou'. Every once in a while she would get the you part right. They learned a song that goes 'Baby Jesus, Baby Jesus, I love you, I love you, You are my saviour,You are my saviour, Everyday, Everyday'. It's a little hard without the tune, but hearing these itty bitty kids sing it was extremely cute. It's pretty amazing how once a kid starts to speak it just never stops.

Monday afternoons we have our planning meetings. This week went on forever because there was a lot to cover for the upcoming week. We plan out who has which duties for the week for household duties, cooking and who teaches what at each of our outreach programs. On Saturday we are having an EAC Sponsor day, which is where the 101 kids sponsored by EAC come to our house. We are making Christmas cards for the families that sponsor them. I know it will be a lot of fun to get to spend time with these kids, but at the same time 101 kids at this house will be mass chaos. Hannah and I are in charge of tea and toast for the kids breakfast and then I will be working with the 4th and 5th graders writing their letters. Should be fun, exciting and interesting! Sunday Hannah, Meredith, Jayan and I leave for our SAFARI! We will be gone until Tuesday. I cannot wait!! As long as I see lots of giraffes, zebras, lions, monkeys and elephants I will be golden. My dad thinks he is quite the character and asked if I had never been to the zoo. Oh Pete. So this week will be busy, but there is a lot to look forward to!

Monday night Hannah was asked to sing at a Bible study that our friend Rachel goes to. I got to take my first 'boda' ride, which is like a motorcycle taxi. They are everywhere here and much faster than the normal taxis. Don't think yellow cab, this is a van that holds about 14 people. The problem is you have to wait for the whole van to fill up before it will leave, so if there aren't any people around then it can take forever. The bodas are also faster because they are small and they weave in and out of traffic. Sounds safe right? Anyways, Rachel just moved out of the EAC house and in with a Ugandan family she has become close with. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met. I feel like I keep saying that about people I have met, but the people here are so incredibly friendly. The kids love to run to you even when you are walking down the street and they don't know you. They yell 'Mzugu' which means 'white' in Luganda. It is not a bad thing when they say this. We joke about it though because in the US you would never run up to a little black kid and yell hey black! Anyways, everyone that we have met has been more than friendly and done everything to try to make us feel welcome here in Uganda. People will always ask if this is my first time here, how I like it and will then say well Welcome to Uganda! I love this place.

Currently Meredith and Sarah are both sick. They went to the doctor on Monday and Meredith has the flu and Sarah has malaria. An interesting fact from the doctor was that no American has been diagnosed with malaria in the past 3 years. I was glad to know that with all the money spent on those expensive malaria pills, I really didn't have a lot to worry about. Many people come to Uganda without the medicine because if you get malaria here they have the proper treatment for it here. You will feel rough for about a week, but then you are fine. The one thing you do not want to happen is to end up with malaria when you get back to the US since it is not common because they do not have the proper treatment. Sarah is from Uganda though so she knows what to do and has basically just been sleeping it off. I have been joking with her all week about how she is not allowed to leave her room because she may kill us all. She chases me every time she sees me. The punchline of the joke is that malaria is not contagious.

Tuesday we went to Victory Primary School. This is for kids who are too poor to pay to go to school. The school has walls created from reed and dirt floors. They are always short on teachers so we always help teach. I had a 3rd grade classroom this week. They just completed the chapter on Safety. It was about accidents, poisoning, not to play in traffic, things of that nature. All of the kids said they knew it really well so I was instructed to give them the test from the end of the chapter. Terrible. They were all cheating. Apparently they thought I was stupid because they were flipping through their notebooks looking for the answers. What they didn't realize was I wasn't afraid to snatch those notebooks up. The first one I took from this little girl and she was so caught off guard and looked up at me with these big bug eyes. All of the kids yell 'OHHHHH' sort of like haha busted. Once I graded their tests I realized I should have allowed them to keep cheating though because their results were depressing. Some of them got all 12 answers wrong. The schools do everything in English, but a lot of the kids don't speak any other English other than at school so I think a lot of it had to do with them not understanding what the questions were asking. After they finished their tests they were allowed to go outside and play. We make porridge for them because otherwise they wouldn't eat anything until they got home, assuming that they will even get to do that. We sing songs with them and they go wild. After that it is back to their classrooms for the afternoon.

We came back to the house and had lunch, which was fried bananas with genot sauce, which is like a peanut sauce. Let's just say I opted for my Cheez It's instead. I planned on savoring each cheez it so they would last, but I have succeeded in polishing off both boxes. I am down to a few more granola bars.

Tuesday afternoon we went to the School for the Deaf. We took tattoos and jump ropes. The kids went CRAZY with it all. They absolutely loved the tattoos that were hearts and flowers and such with glitter in them. We took 300 and ran out before all of the kids had gotten one. Several of the kids took more than they were supposed to. They just swarm you and start grabbing. There is no way you can get them to back up and get in line or to do something orderly like that. The kids all fought over the jump ropes too. It is overwhelming, but when you leave you realize what an impact you made on them because you realize things like that never happen. Jayan's 15 year old brother Maurice is deaf and is in school there, so we got to spend some time with him and his friends. The hardest thing is obviously the communication barrier. Really the only thing I know in sign language is the alphabet and when people start spelling words I have to quickly run through the alphabet to remember what's what. Hannah has done a really good job of picking up some signs over the last couple months. I really hate to see her go in a couple weeks because she really loves all of the projects here. We have a friend Jenny, from the UK, who teaches at the school and it was fun to watch her communicate with the kids. There is also a church for the deaf that is next to the school. Hannah and I caught a glimpse of the service on our walk home from church on Sunday.

Of course I still have more to say, but I need to get moving because people will start waking up shortly. Let me also apologize for any grammatical errors, I don't ever proof read these before I hit post! Hopefully pictures will be coming this afternoon!