Family, Twists, and Pizza!

Hello to the other side of the world!! This is my weekly update. Straight to you from the papisan chair, IMME quarters, Mukono, Uganda. Harry Potter fans, I hope that makes you smile. It reminds me of the letters addressed to Harry in book 1. Ok, sorry. That was a random moment.

I am doing amazing. This is week 9 and I want everything to slow down. I am a little more than half way, and I just want to relish every last moment. Last week was a good week. No matter how stressed I get with school work, it always gets done, or it doesn’t, and it’s not that big of a deal, and no matter how much this is a “study” abroad program, the abroad part is still way cooler than the study part. I really love living here. Sometimes I miss home, but God has given me the gift of finding a home here as well. I LOVE my family here. Spending time with them this weekend, I was just amazed at how comfortable I felt with them, how right everything seemed, how much they have blessed me by including and accepting me. It’s not easy to welcome a stranger into your family, but a stranger who comes from the other side of the world culturally, and who has a different skin color, who doesn’t speak your native language…I just see the love of God radiating through my family here. The Kingdom is global, praise Jesus, and all of us have family everywhere.

This weekend I finally broke down and went and got my hair done. By this I mean I had extensions and twists put in—twists aren’t quite braids, but they look really similar. It took around 7.5 hours. A friend and I traveled into Kampala (closest city, and capital of Uganda) and went to a salon. It was a bit expensive, but supposedly I can keep the twists up to 2 months, and I don’t have to wash my hair. It’s a little sad because I have beautiful, long, healthy hair right now, and the twists will probably cause me to lose a few inches, but washing long hair without running water gets hard after a while. Basin/bucket baths just aren’t the same as showers. So I am probably just going to get over the fact this might ruin my real hair…and enjoy the extra 15-20 minutes of sleep in the morning and NEVER having to worry about my hair.

In Kampala, we ate at the New York Pizza Kitchen, about the closest thing to American food I have had since coming here. I had pizza with green peppers and onions on it, and bottled coke, a chocolate milk shake and my personal favorite: FRENCH FRIES WITH HEINZ KETCHUP. Life just can’t get much better than French fries and real ketchup. They have this stuff called top-up here, but it’s not the same. So it was a good dinner on Saturday night and I was certainly a glutton. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go to that restaurant at least once more before going home.

On Sunday, my family took me into the city again. We were visiting my brother’s wife, who is in the hospital after just having had their third child—it’s a boy!—and he’s healthy and happy and one of his names is Israel…the other is very Ugandan and I can’t remember it at the moment. But we had a good visit. I mostly occupied the other two children, who came along. Emma is 2 and Sharon in 8. They’re adorable and excited about their new little brother, but lets face it: babies just aren’t that entertaining after a while  So we colored and played with my camera while all of the big people talked and played with the baby. It was a good day.

This week is shaping up to be a good one. My big assignment is a paper due on Friday, but it’s about Islam, and thanks to Dr. Farmer’s History of Islam class I took sophomore year, I have it covered. Other than the paper, business as usual: lots of reading I probably won’t do…it’s a good thing I didn’t go to college some place that’s always warm and sunny—it’s hard to make myself do any work when all I want to do is be outside or hanging out with all of the friends I am making here.

Ok. Thanks for all of the prayers and support! Looking forward to seeing everyone at home this summer. I’ll be back sometime in mid May. Hope you all have a good week!

And PS: Time doesn't change in Uganda. So I am now seven hours ahead of Kentucky/TN, nine hours ahead of Idaho, and ten hours ahead of Washington/Cali.