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.