For Jen

Playing Kinect

New York

I know this is a few weeks late but I went to Rochester, New York over Thanksgiving to visit my sister. It was so good to see her because I haven't seen her in about a year.

This picture of Peter and Eli was just cute. Eli came to wake me up while wearing this pilgrim hat and Peter was representing BYU (5 seconds after this picture was taken, Peter threw the hat on the floor).


This was on Hill Cumorah. It was freezing there. Utah is colder and dryer than Rochester. Rochester is more humid so the cold went straight through my layers. Jen was awesome. She was freezing and she still walked me around to all the different sites in Palmyra.


This is the Palmyra Temple. It is so beautiful. You can't see in this picture but the stained glass is of the Sacred Grove and is awesome.


This is all of us (besides me, taking the picture) on thanksgiving day.


Also a few days ago when me and my roomates were at the grocery store, we saw these cute bottles of Martinelli's for $1 each so we each got them and partied it up like it's 1999.

Fall Fun

A few weeks ago I went to my first corn maze fair. Just a warning to all those who have never gone to a corn maze before, don't wear nice clothes. I went with a friend, Michelle, to a corn maze and I realized that I was over dressed for it. I wore these super cute flats and a nice coat (you can kind of see in the picture below but not as much). Anyways, at a corn maze there is lots of sawdust and dirt so by the end of the night I smelled like dirt and had woodchips stuck in my flats. But it was really fun. Here is a picture of Michelle and me at the end of the maze. We beat the other team.


The fair was lots of fun.


For Halloween I was Lady Gaga. I went to a stake party with my roommate, Karen, and a friend dressed up as my back-up dancers. haha I also realized that for the past 3 years I have been a diva for Halloween.


I just remembered that I never blogged about conference but it was way fun and Albert came up for it. He spent the weekend in Utah and we stayed at our aunt's house near Salt Lake. Albert comes up for almost every Conference and I love his visits so much. I am always really excited for like the whole month before he comes. This is a picture of us in the Conference Center before the second session.

What is our world coming to...

I don't know what people are thinking when they speak.

Michelle, a friend, and I went to Arby's last night. We went through the drive through and after the man told us how much it cost we did some quick math and realized it wasn't right. When I asked him how come it cost so much he replied, "Because you guys eat too much." Really? That attitude was unnecessary and he had charged us twice for a few things so the total was wrong. Then after we got our shakes (which were supposed to be chocolate) we tasted them and they were gross. They didn't taste like chocolate at all. They tasted like vanilla shakes. The man said that's what chocolate tastes like. I know the difference between vanilla and chocolate.

Then today, I introduced myself to this girl sitting next to me in class, she asked me, "What year are you in...you look old." Again, was that necessary?

Moral of the story...don't eat at Arby's and don't be friendly to people in class. haha

I'm alive

Does this animal look terrifying...I think so

(ok it's not the one that wanted to eat me last night but I'm sure it's similar)

Yesterday I went hiking up at squaw peak with 5 people and it was dark by the time we were on our way back. Somehow I got separated from the group for a few minutes and when I had just been rejoined with the group, we heard a cougar growl from about 10 ft away from us. Immediately we shined our flashlights at the cougar and froze in our places. No one really knew what to do so we just decided to walk away slowly. Then we heard another growl and decided to get weapons. 2 boys had huge knives and 2 people grabbed rocks (I don't know how effective the rocks would have been but its all we had). I didn't have a weapon because I was shining flashlights at the cougar (I think I got gypped though). Another 20 minutes later we were at the car. Scariest moment of my life.

Cuties

So I have been back from Uganda for a few weeks now and I am a slacker. While I was here I spent a lot of time with my niece Ali and my nephews Trevor and Phillippi so here are a few pics of us.

This was at the San Diego Zoo...she makes a very cute caterpillar.


We were having a sleepery party (she was a little confused about the name haha)


I spent a week with Trevor and Phillippi. This was outside of a pool in Bakersfield.


And finally, I made a quilt this summer out of fabrics I bought in Africa. Tell me what you think.

Taxi Day

Last week I had a very exciting/scary/annoying day. To start off let me give some background info. The taxi’s in Uganda look like VW Buses and can hold 14 people (sometimes they hold more, one time I was in a taxi with 25 people…yes I did feel like a sardine). To get a taxi I just stand on the side of the road and hope that a taxi comes by going to the place that I need to go, which could take a long time. Or I could go to the taxi park, get a taxi and wait for it to fill up. Waiting for a taxi to fill up when it is empty could also take a long time, case in point, last week.
So my day started off waiting in the taxi park, with my friend Brellis, for about 45 minutes for the taxi to fill up. Finally it did and we were on the road to Jinja (about an hour away from Mukono). About 30 minutes into our drive, the taxi started to make a funny noise and it barely made it up the hill we were going up. On the downhill we were cruising and I thought it would keep going but once we hit another uphill the car stopped completely. Someone told me that the car ran out of gas and that is when people started yelling in Uganda and a fight broke out when a passenger wanted to exit the car. Once there was a break in the yelling and fighting, Brellis and I jumped out of the taxi quickly. I tried to ask what was going on but everyone spoke Luganda and my Luganda is very limited. Now there were about 17 people walking down the road (for all I knew they were walking the rest of the way to Jinja, probably a 30 min drive from here) but thank goodness they hailed another taxi and I just followed.
On our way back from Jinja is when it got interesting. We hopped in another taxi and to our dismay it was empty again. When we tried to get out after about 10 min, the driver shut the door and held it closed. At this point we were just annoyed so we kept telling him he needs to let us out. After being trapped in this taxi for about 45 min we finally started to get really upset because he wasn’t letting us out and he wasn’t driving back to Jinja. So the two of us started to yell at the driver, use a tiny bit of force and make enough of a ruckus that finally he started driving to Mukono. Honestly, though I was starting to get worried that the driver was going to keep us there for a few hours. He probably would have if we didn’t take action haha. It was an adventure last week.
Also there were a few bombs that exploded in Kampala, Uganda by Somali terrorists but it wasn’t in my city and I am doing ok.

Doing Laundry

I only have 2 weeks left in Uganda and guess what that means? No more hand washing laundry. I love the person who invented the washing machine. It might be one of the greatest inventions. To do laundry here I have to set aside at least 4 hours of my day (and that doesn’t included checking on the clothes throughout the day and putting them away) and I have to start in the morning so that my clothes have all day to dry. First, I have to fill up three huge buckets of water and carry them to the back of the house (maybe 20 ft). Then I have to scrub at my clothes, with two different detergents, for the next few hours to get any dirt and smells out. I have to change the water every half hour because it gets dirty quickly. I have calluses on my hands from all of the scrubbing. Then comes the easy part; rinsing and hanging the clothes. If it rains that day then it stinks because I have to bring my clothes inside to dry. I’m glad I didn’t bring more clothes. Ok, I can’t complain too much because there are a few good things about laundry. First, it gets your clothes extremely clean. Second, there are no machine costs just the cost of detergent so it is approximately 10 cents to do 20 loads of laundry (it’s sweet considering the fact that in America I pay $2 for one load). I just did my last load of laundry in Africa. It’s bittersweet really.

Reaching Over 1000 People

This week was extremely busy for me so this post might be a little long. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had an eye camp for the elderly. At the eye camp we gave out about 150 pairs of glasses and medicine and the doctors performed 30 surgeries on people with cataracts. We screened over 300 people. It was awesome to help so many people. My specific job was to give patients the medicine on their prescriptions and give them their glasses. They were so excited, even this one lady started crying when she put on her glasses. I even got to see a cataract surgery, which was probably one of the coolest things I have seen. This is a picture of me checking in the people who had surgeries on the first day.


Then on Thursday we had a football tournament in a rural area about 2 hours away from where we are staying. The tournament included 6 primary schools and 2 secondary schools came just to play a game against each other. In between each tournament game we had trainings for things like Leadership, HIV/AIDS prevention and saving for the future. It was so fun how much the kids like football, every time a goal was even blocked they went wild. When someone made a goal they went crazy. Everyone would run onto the field and do flips and cheer for like 5 minutes at least. Also our HELP team played a game against a local woman’s group at the end and it ended in a tie. Afterwards, we gave each of the schools at the tournament a football because they cannot afford them but they love football.
Lastly, on Friday we had a dental camp at a primary school. We screened almost a 1000 children and extracted about 900 teeth. The children would get checked on by a dentist assistant for any obvious cavities and then sent to a room to wait to be numbed and then be numbed on the other side of a slab of wood separating the numbing room and the waiting room. After they were numbed they would be sent to another building to get their teeth extracted. I was in the room with the children waiting to be numbed and it was horrible because the children being numbed would scream at the top of their lungs because the needle hurt. So it was my job to distract the children by entertaining them. It was probably the hardest thing I have done here though. It basically broke my heart hearing the children screaming. I think I did a good job of entertaining the children by singing and dancing. Even some of the children that didn’t have cavities were trying to sneak in the room, they did not realize what those children were waiting for.

The Nile!

The festival went fantastic; the students loved the interactive lessons. We are going to have one this week too. On Saturday I went to Jinja, It is the city where the Nile starts. Mostly we went for souvenir shopping but there were also a few sites. We were supposed to go to a monkey reserve but time would not allow for that. The taxi ride on the way there was the most ridiculous taxi I have ridden so far. By the way, a taxi in Uganda isn’t like the ones in America. They look kind of like a Volkswagen bus but they are Toyotas. One time when I took a taxi they fit 21 people and a chicken in it. So anyways the taxi on the way to Jinja stalled halfway there. After like 10 min the driver finally got the taxi started again and we continued to Jinja going slower than I could have walked for about 20 min. Finally there was a downhill so the taxi just cruised down it and from then we were cruising at a normal speed, except at every uphill the taxi jerked like crazy. Once we got to Jinja we decided to see the source of the Nile, which was pretty anticlimactic but it was still fun cuz technically we went into Tanzania while on Lake Victoria.

This is a picture of me at a bonfire that one of the primary schools had for us.

Festival for kids and running

We are starting a new project this week. Every Friday until the end of the summer we will have an after-school activity for elementary schools to teach them through fun activities. It's called the Do-It-Yourself Festival (We had another name picked out but this is what the District Education officer wanted it to be called.). So we set up 6 booths (aka we stand with posters on the ground) in a school field and each booth has a subject like nutrition, environmental safety, life-skills, etc. The kids have a half an hour at each booth and then rotate around for 3 hours so that they see every booth and have time to play games and learn about each subject. We have our first festival on Friday and we hope it goes well. I will let you know how it turns out.

Also it is a national Holiday today Heores' Day so all the schools were out on holiday but since the schools are mostly boarding schools all the students were at the high school. So we went to visit one high school that we are working with because they had a track meet. And somehow we got roped into running a 400 meter race. I won but that's besides the point. It was so funny. As we were walking to start the race the announcers were like "It's the race of the century". They were so excited to see us Americans racing in their track meet.

Nile

Just chilling on the Nile. Our guide, Tabani is in the back.


This is an action shot of my raft.This actually is not the time we flipped. I am wearing the blue helmet,you can see it through the splashes.

On Saturday I rafted the Nile. Let me say that again...I RAFTED THE NILE. It was so awesome/crazy/scary. I loved it. We rafted 30 km so it took most of the day. It was so sweet because the part of the Nile we rafted had class 5 rapids. And many of you know that I am not what one would call a "daredevil" actually I am probably the biggest chicken ever so this was big. I was really scared at first but we had an amazing guide and there were kayaks all over to pick up people who flip so I was never in any real danger. Our guide's name is Tabani and he was awesome. He has been rafting longer than I have been alive so he is very experienced. There was one time that we got stuck on a rock at the top of about an 8 ft waterfall and he jumped onto the rock pushed us off the rock and then jumped back into the raft while we were going down the waterfall. There was a strom in the middle of the trip which made the rapids worse about 2 hours and I was cold for the first time since I have been here for but then it went back to being sunny. Our raft also did flip once but I think that Tabani flipped us on purpose. It was awesome, we were going down some huge rapids and we flipped so we rode down the rest of that rapid on our backs in our life jackets and then the safety kayaks picked us up. And the food was so good. We got fed breakfast and snacks on the raft, which included the best pineapple I have ever tasted, and a barbecue afterwards for dinner.

After- School programs

Schools started this week and since most of the work I’m doing is in schools, I have been very busy. One school we are working at is called Crane’s School. At Crane’s School some of the students board for the term and some just go there during the day and go home after classes end. About 100 of the 300 students that attend Crane’s School are orphans. We are helping the students who are weaker in certain subjects like Math or English and we are doing a few after-school programs. We went on Wednesday and Thursday this week. On Thursday when we got there we were informed that one of the teachers was ill so they asked me and a girl on my team to teach a math to a 5th grade class. The subject was the metric system and conversion of different units in the metric system. I think I would have been confident about teaching anything but the metric system. Considering that I have rarely ever used the metric system, I think the class went very well. The headmaster even had me assign homework. Then after school we split up the students into different groups (music, dance, sports and reading). I was leading the dance group and the students loved it, they kept sneaking out of other groups to join mine. The kids were so great, it was so much fun.

Pictures!

So this post is to make up for my lack of pictures. These are some pictures from my first two weeks in Uganda:

Carrying Adobe for miles, ok it was just like ½ a mile but still it wasn’t easy (the sack kept slipping).

Mixing Adobe with our feet

Eating grasshoppers...yum haha

Carrying water up a hill on my head (like a Ugandan)

On Saturday, we went to a football match, Uganda vs. Kenya, at the Mandella Stadium. It was so exciting. It was the African Football Championships and Uganda won, 1-0! We sat in the VIP section because it was pretty cheap and sitting next to us was the FIFA President, the Ugandan Minister of Defense and a bunch of other dignitaries. We're cool.

Write me

This is the road I walk on everyday to go home.
Here is my address in case anyone wants to write me a letter:
Melissa Thompson
The church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints
Mukono Ward
PO box 390 Mukono, Uganda

Story of the day: So I was walking home one day and this woman stopped me and told me about how her sister died of AIDs a month ago and her sister has a very young daughter. Then this lady asked me if I would take the daughter (as in bring the daughter back to America with me and keep her). Of course I said that I couldn't but I was shocked. This complete stranger was offering me her niece. So yeah that was kind of surprising but I guess you experience something new everyday here.

Sore Muscles

This is our team and some Ugandans

Sorry for the lack of pictures but it's kind of hard to put pictures on these internet cafe computers but I will try next time.So on monday we helped build a clinic and plant a maize field in a village for children whose parents died of Aids. We didn't finish it but we got quite a bit done. I helped mix the cement, which was made of rock, cement and dirt. It was difficult mixing the rocks and the Ugandan men thought it was hilarious that I was doing male work. I'm also starting to pick up a few phrases of Luganda so they gave me a Ugandan name. Now they call me Nabatanzi Lugave.
There are lots of new things here. Specifically the food, which is so good. They make the most delicious beans and there is something called rolex, which is the Ugandan version of a breakfast burrito mmmm. Another new thing is bucket showers which I actually love. We have a shower in our house but the water drips out out the shower head (at best) so I take bucket showers out in this little structure behind our house. I love them because they are so nice on a hot day, basically everyday is around 80 degrees and it's my only choice so I gotta like them.
Yesterday I also helped build an adobe stove. It was sweet mixing the adobe by stomping in it. And one thing that was part of the mixture was water so we carried water from THE NILE to the orphanage we were working at. And lastly I ate fried grasshoppers. They were suprisingly good. They tasted like popcorn. I even ate a few. So that's all for now.

I'm in Uganda!!!

Olio tia! So I arrived safely in Uganda and wow...I love Uganda. It is amazing and beautiful. It is like no place I have ever seen. It is hard to take everything in at once. It amazed me how even when we were driving in the wealthy areas, conditions were not very good. Now I am in Mukono, the city that I will be staying in for the next four months. There are so many cars on the road and the drivers are so scary, they drive as if they can never crash. The roads also aren't very good but thats what I expected. There are also things called botabotas that are like little motorcycle-scooter type things and I feel like the other cars will smash me when I'm riding on it. I love it and my first Ugandan food was this chicken stuff. We ate lunch at a fancy restaurant but it was still cheaper than practically any american restaurant. ok well my time is almost up so I will check back with you in a lil bit.

Stopover in London

I love London...everything about it. I love how everyone talks and the phrases they use and the buildings. I'm not a big fan of British Airways though. Last night my 4 hour layover turned into a day and a half layover.
About half hour before my flight, we boarded the plane like usual and sat at the gate for about a half an hour because they had lost some luggage. Then we sat on the runway for about two hours. When the pilot informed us that there was some minor technical error. We sat on the runway for about another hour when the pilot said that our minor technical error was that the second engine wasn't working. He said it was possible to fly to Uganda but he didn't wanna "risk it." I very much respect the decision (and am kinda of confused why he even debated the other choice). He informed us that we could fly out on another airplane and they just had to switch all the bags and food over so we could take off shortly. We waited another hour for them to switch everything over. We then boarded buses on which we waited for about another half hour for them to tell us that they cannot fly out to Uganda because one of the runways were closed. About a minute later the pilot came on the PA and said, "there is a second shorter runway in Uganda and we are doing calculations to figure out if it is long enough to land on." Now I wanna know what their margin of error on these calculations are, like, if it's rainy are we just going to slide right off like a slip and slide. It didn't matter because a few minutes later the pilot said that that runway is closed as well. Now our flight was rescheduled for tonight more than a day later. In total we waited till 3 in the morning and like 5 of those hours were on the runway. On the brightside the airline gave us hotels and meal vouchers and I get to see london. Well that's all for now. I will update you next week when I'm actually in Uganda.

BYU-Luau

Since January I have been practicing for a luau that I performed in on Tuesday and Wednesday. BYU puts on the luau every year to raise money for scholarships. The luau has dances from the polynesian islands and I did the Tahiti section. It was so much fun and it was such a good workout. I was sore after every practice. Here is a picture of me before the show, in my costume.

Here is a good action shot. This was during the performance. Sorry it's so blurry, I was just moving too fast lol

I'm going to Uganda

So I just found out that I have been accepted to a program that goes to Uganda to do volunteer work. I will be leaving at the beginning of May and coming back right before school starts, at the end of August (so basically I will be gone all summer). I will be going to Mukono, Uganda (which is a tiny village). While in Uganda, I will be doing many different projects. A few include teaching classes to elementary age students and construction projects. I am so excited but it's kinda scary flying to Africa, considering I have never left the country. So yeah, I will be spending the summer in Africa :)

Flsahback

I went to my first 80's party on Friday. I didn't have any 80's clothes so my roomate dressed me up. I was told that I looked like that girl from napoleon Dynamite. It was pretty fun. In this picture I look 80's fabulous with my huge jewelry and leggings. I'm actually not sure if this is what they wore back then but it was fun.
Yesterday I woke up early, around 8:30ish (and yes Jen that's early), to do my laundry because I had a lot of stuff to get done. So I separated my clothes and went down to the laundry room in my apartment complex, loaded up and started all the washers. As I walked into my apartment, I realized that I had been holding the laundry detergent the whole time but had never actually used it. Luckily, I had run back down quick enough that the washer doors weren't locked yet so I was able to just pour the detergent directly on my clothes. That was almost a waste of $4, I blame it on being tired.

I'm fixed!

As some of you know, I have been having shoulder problems with my right shoulder. Before last week my shoulder was always sore and I wasn't able to lift my arm higher than my shoulder. So I went to the doctor and I guess I had a lot of inflammation in my shoulder (specifically my bursa). This actually was a pretty easy fix because he injected cortizone into my shoulder and now I am healed. Here is a picture highlighting how I have full movement in my shoulder.

Last night I went to a BYU volleyball game, we lost :( but it was still a lot of fun. During one of the timeouts the announcer asked if anyone knew the single ladies dance so I went down to the court and did the dance. It was actually really embarrassing to do it in front of a bunch of people. I would have gotten it on video but my camera batteries died so I couldn't but here is a picture of me and a bunch of friends at the game.

Christmas!

Ok so it has been a while since I last blogged so this is kind of a long post. I went to Bellflower for christmas and It was so great to see my family. I realized how much I missed my nieces and nephews and how much they have grown up in just a few months.

Here we are playing cards, like we always do when a lot of Thompson's get together. I'm not playing this game but I was the champion of all the games I played.


Adele wanted me to teach her some hair styles so here is one that she successfully did on her own. She looks so pretty.

This is my niece, Ali. She is just precious and she loves me the most hehe. You can't see in this picture but she had just finished putting on chapstick so she had clown lips.

Nick, Jason and Sam are seeing who can knock each other over with their feet while doing a handstand. Nick's method was to get as far away from Jason and Sam and let them knock each other down. It worked, Jason and Sam lost everytime.

Here I am arm restling with my nephews Phillipi and Trevor. It is hilarious arm wrestling with little kids because their arms are so short that my arm is almost touching the ground completely.

Here are some presents from Christmas. I got 2 more wii remotes. Now I can play 4 player on my wii. I also got some earrings, a Kohl's giftcard and a laptop!

This is the family on Christmas morning, ready to open up some presents :)

Here is a picture of Phillipi, Me, and Kat. This was the best picture we had because Phillipi kept looking away.

New Year's eve was so much fun. Me, Jason, Sam and a friend went to a dance and it was awesome. I loved the music the DJ played and there were a lot of people there. They were giving out glowsticks so here we are after all the partying. We were tired and kind of sweaty but we had fun.