Today is Independence Day in Uganda. This means I get the day off, but Greg has to work, so the first grade teacher from my school and I decided to go downtown to the mall to see Hairspray. Yeah, I was kind of surprised they have those things here in Kampala, too. The movie theatre was even air conditioned. I was freezing.
Nothing too exciting has happened lately, but maybe that's good because it means we are settling in. I've started running in to people I know around town (not just ex pats, but Ugandans), and it makes me feel good, makes me feel like I really live here and I'm not just visiting. Living here has also made me feel like the world is huge and tiny, all at the same time. I can talk to my friends and family over the internet, which makes them feel so close, but sometimes the culture here is so different that it reminds that the world is also huge. I'm pretty sure Greg and I make cultural mistakes on a regular basis, but the people here have a lot of grace for muzungus.
We have found a church home, Calvary Chapel Kampala. We really like it there. There is even a cell group that meets not too far from where we live, although we haven't been able to go yet because they are on hiatus for a few weeks. But we are looking forward to joining that when they get started up again. Greg has also been able to volunteer at a babies home in our area, and I hope to be able to join him soon. eMi allows their employees a little more flexible schedule than a school, so we are trying to find a time when we both can go together.
School has been busy, but it will return to normal for while now. We had our rain festival last week, (which is kind of like a Halloween substitute - which is really funny since most of our kids don’t' even know what Halloween is, but the school was started by Americans, so traditions stick.) and 5th grade was in charge of the weekly Chapel. They did a very good job. My students put on two skits, one about Abraham and one about Noah, and they led the elementary students in worship. I was very proud of them.
Greg and I are getting ready for a busy few weeks, we will be going to Murchison Falls National Park this weekend, up in the northwest part of the country, then the next weekend we will be traveling to Rwanda. In November we will be heading to Northern part of the country to visit with a friend's family. Time is flying by for me, but that usually happens when your life is divided up into semesters. Greg says that life is not going by quite so fast for him.
We are thinking about you and praying for you, and are so thankful that you are doing the same. There are some things we would love you to pray for Greg and I about. I think i will put them in a list format.
1. Pray for one of the eMi staff's (Monica) family. They live in Northern Uganda and their crops have been ruined by the floods.
2. Speaking of Northern Uganda, they have been really flooded, and lot of people have lost their homes and crops. Please pray that they will be able to make it through the year, or the next few months, and be able to rebuild their lives.
3. Pray for Greg and I, especially that we would be able to make good relationships with our neighbors. Sometimes it is difficult because we are not sure what is and is not culturally acceptable, but we really should be reaching out to our neighbors mroe, because they are our neighbors!
Ok, i hope everyone has a wonderful day today!
-Stephanie
p.s. there are some pictures too!
p.p.s. If you scroll down more on our blog, you will see a couple of small entries that weren’t sent out over e-mail. Sometimes we update randomly and don't send it out.
This is John's graduation party. John is an intern for eMi this semester, and he is from Jinja, a town down the road from Kampala, and at the source of the Nile! We felt very awkward. For some reason, it is tradition to sit muzungus up front at parties and such. I don't really know why. John is the guy with the wearing robes on the left. It was a lot of fun to go to a Ugandan party!
While in Jinja, we went on a boat road and got to see the source of the Nile. It was neat! There was lots of bubbling going on at the source, you could really tell that there was springs around us.
Another view of the Nile.
This is a cool little bug in Jinja. Isn't he pretty?
Here's a monkey along the Nile. They were cute.
These are Ankole cattle. They're the cattle in Uganda. I love their horns! In fact, I bought some.
These are a couple of little punks we got. They will probably be food when we leave, and if they have any babies, they will be food too. This probably shocks a lot of you who know me well that I could talk of rabbits this way, but it is fun to have them while we are here. Its really easy to feed them too, here. All I have to do is go to a market and ask them if they have any greens they are going to throw out, and they just give them to me! It's awesome. We call them Squash and Potato.
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