week 2 news

Hello my amazing friends and families. I am doing extremely well (so far) during this second week of school at Uganda Christian University. Homework is getting slightly crazy, though, so it's been hard to find time to write.

So some more info about my family. Mama Joyce is 68 years old (as of today I think, actually), and incredibly wise. She works as the secretary to the bishop of the church we attend. I love having the opportunity to spend so much time with her. I feel so blessed to have such a special home stay situation. She has six children, only one of them is a boy. They are all grown, and all but one are married. Martin is her only son, and he has several children, including Emmanuel (Ema, for short), and adorable 2 year old who is kind of scared of me but really likes the hotwheels cars I brought to give to children, and he now knows the expression "ready, set, go," because I taught him how to race hotwheels. Mama Joyce also has a new granddaughter, Jewel, who is the daughter of Josephine, one of Mama's five daughters. The other children I have met so far are Agatha, Sharon, and Angel, three beautiful girls belonging to Martin. This weekend was amazing because I got to meet a lot of my Ugandan family--everyone kept dropping by and we had a large family dinner on Sunday night--we had these things called Chipotis, which are like fried bread (yummm) and then we had them with some sort of a meat sauce...they were really good.

School is going well so far. I have my first presentation/paper in one of my classes on Thursday this week. It's for Reading the NT in Africa, a really good but challenging class, and I am presenting about interpreting scripture in African sermons and art. Pretty cool stuff. I have lots of reading homework and presentations and papers, but not as many exams as I would have at university in the states, so that's nice I guess. The hardest thing so far is finding time to do all of my homework because we are busy on campus all day, and then I go home to Mama Joyce and want to spend time with her. But she lets me do homework at the table while we are all waiting for dinner (usually served between 9-11pm, "whenever it's ready"). So I get homework time during the evenings, I'm just torn between hanging out and reading. At any rate, tonight and tomorrow will have to be homework nights because I have to get this presentation ready! And then I have a presentation and paper due next week, on Thursday, for my class called African Traditional Religions, Christianity and Islam in Uganda. It's a good class, one of two that I have an African professor for. My other African professor is my African Literature teacher. He's a really eccentric, kind of funny older man. He didn't even come to class the first day, and they called him and he was like "I didn't know I had to teach today...and I'm in Kampala, so I'm not coming back". So that was a funny start to the semester. I'm not sure how much I'll learn about African lit, but he'll be a fun guy to get to know. He really likes having American students. The biggest problem with the African teachers is communication--we don't understand their accents, and they don't understand ours...so in my notes sometimes I write the wrong words, and we all look at each others notes, trying to figure out who heard the prof correctly. Good times. I'm sure I'll eventually understand. If I could sit through French lectures this summer (in French) I should be able to understand African English!

Lat night I had dinner with Brooke, one of my profs and the director of the missions emphasis program, and her husband, a Ugandan man I met for the first time. Brooke is pregnant with their first child, so that's exciting. We had some good ol American sandwiches. I don’t really like sandwiches, but it was actually nice not to have to eat a lot—because in Uganda the portions are huge and it’s rude to only have one portion…so I have been eating mass amounts of food. It was nice to just have half a sandwich and stop eating. And I'll take American food and dinner at 7:30 when I have the opportunity (my dinners are normally between 9-10pm)! It was fun to hang out with Brooke, her husband, and some of the other missions students (we were all invited). The rest of the week is basically filled with classes. Then this weekend we are traveling to a town called Jinja to visit some missionaries who work in a prison ministry there. We'll get to listen to them and ask questions and then we'll get to hang out in the city. We'll be attending a Baptist church on Sunday, and Chuck, one of our students, is preaching.

Also some other prayer requests: we have a student who is pretty sick right now. His name is Geoff and he has a virus of some sort--it's not malaria (praise God), but it's pretty bad, and he has had a really high fever. He seems to be improving, but still needs prayer. And Kaia, one of the other girls, also isn’t feeling well. So pray for Kaia and Geoff, and just for God's protection for all of us. Also keep a guy named Chuck in your prayers—he’s one of our students who has volunteered to preach this Sunday while we are travelling and visiting a Baptist church in a town called Jinja.

This week I have met a couple of Ugandan friends (one girl, one guy) on campus. The girl especially is really nice. Her name is Judith. She studies some kind of social work, so we’re interested in similar things. I am looking forward to getting to know her more. I just hope the relationships are genuine. They caution us to be careful in our relationships. Many people here have the misconception that American’s are rich, and also that white women are sexually loose/promiscuous. This is our fault. Pretty much all they see of American is Hollywood. So just imagine if all you knew of the US was James Bond and American Pie. They don’t get very many examples of what most Americans are actually like. So I have to be careful making friends that they aren’t just trying to get close to me to take advantage of me. It sucks to have to be suspicious, but since I don’t really know how to navigate this culture yet, suspicion is pretty healthy. The guy friend wanted to talk on the phone and wants me to visit his hostel, but I told him I would prefer to meet in person, in public, to talk. So I took a couple of girl friends to the café on campus and we had an awesome conversation and he seems genuinely nice. But I don’t really intend to let my guard down just yet. I have in my reserves an imaginary husband or boyfriend if need be  not to mention a fairly intimidating father and brother who would fly all the way to Uganda to chase off the boys…Caleb especially wouldn’t mind beating a few people up for me. I’m generally glad he’s on my side  He might be my little brother, but he’s never shy to take up for me. The American guys here take up for us too. They’re always willing to come along when we go out so we’re not alone.

On Sunday I helped teach Sunday school at the church I go to. It was great. I don’t any of the kids’ names yet, but I’ll continue to work with them throughout the semester. They are ages 7-9 and lots of fun. We sang songs and then one of the other teachers told them the story of Moses and related it really well to them. Then we did a memory verse that went along with the lesson. Eventually I will have the opportunity to be the storyteller, so that’s pretty cool.

Hmmm. This has been a fairly long email. I'm sure there's more stories to tell, but I should probably do some homework or something...I'll write again when I can--later this week or the weekend. For mom and dad, my camera seems fine...I think I got it clean, but I haven't really taken pics with it yet since this weekend. Sorry to wake you up on Sunday morning. I think being so upset about something so small was probably a sign of the culture shock I am going through. But I am feeling great right now, loving this experience, trying to live it up, meeting new people..learning culture...it's good.

and PS anyone who wants can check out some photos that I posted on the internet at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30302363&l=501e8&id=162900835