Back to School

Hopefully you all have survived the first of school.  The year is officially is underway here in Kampala and week One is in the books!  In the last few years now, Erin has had a few first days of school, but this one may have contained the most uncertainty concerning what in the world to expect.  As you can imagine, there were all sorts of questions swirling around in her head concerning how effective of a teacher she'd be here and what her kids will be ready for, what the kids will be like, what she will actually need to teach, how will they feel about her, will there be any way at all to cram in all the things she wa worried she may have to teach them this year, will she be able to effectively communicate and relate to kids of all sorts of backgrounds, can she teach middle schoolers, can she teach senior physics, and I’m sure much more she didn’t tell me about.  It was a nervous night Sunday night.  She was calm, but just had a ton of questions.  But the morning came, and she hurried off to school.  …And I anxiously waited through the day for the phone call telling me what she thought and how she felt.  This was a bit of a critical point in how this year is going to go, so I admit, I was a little nervous myself.  3:00p rolled around and I received the call.  She said she couldn’t really talk now, but ‘the kids are GREAT!’  So we hung up, and I just smiled.  And even now after 4 more days, she says the same – now there are plenty of different questions swirling around, and she is still very unsure about many things concerning the direction of the science department for this school year.  But her kids are ‘awesome.’  They are respectful, cooperative, and fun.  She teaches kids from approx. 15 different nationalities.  Her largest class is 17 kids - 7^th grade.  And her smallest class is 11^th grade, with 2 kids (soon to grow to 4 or 5).  The students in each class are all on different levels, so she will be teaching different things to kids in the same class.  But the kids seem to be ready for everything, and that makes all the difference.  ...And they are a little further along than she thought they might be – except in biology…the subject she knows the best and enjoys teaching the most.  So it is great.  And so it seemed appropriate to celebrate the first day with a walk to get some ice cream!  Many of you will want to know more about the start of school experience.  Erin has broken it down in more detail for those of you who are interested at the end of the blog.  So read on below!

At eMi, I’m developing standards in the office as we gear up for the new year and am working on a design for a guest house for a developing school in the heart of rural Africa.  Most of the staff has returned to Kampala now, back from Colorado Springs for the companywide conference eMi has every 5 or so years.  Our East Africa field office staff here in Kampala consists of John - the office director, Pat - a project team leader who is a civil engineer, Phil - a project team leader who is a structural engineer, and Brittany - an office administrator who is a mechanical engineer.  We also have an architect joining the staff in about a month.  Staff members have a commitment of at least 3 years.  I am a ‘Long Term Volunteer,’ and my commitment is for a year.  Robert Donahue, who I’ve mentioned previously and has been doing a fabulous job of showing us around and holding down the fort while everyone was gone, is also a long term volunteer - and also an architect.  We have another long term volunteer, a structural engineer, joining us at the end of the month.  So we have a pretty well-rounded little office here.  And then for each semester during the year to liven up the place, we also have 5 to 6 interns come in to help with production for the project trips.  The eMi family here is really quite amazing and work together very well.  I’m glad to be a part of it. 

We’ve had a good week otherwise.  We are feeling at home.  Erin even made her first batch of chocolate chip cookies.  As more of the eMi staff and interns get into town, we will want to move into more of a hosting role to greet them instead of being the ones being hosted all the time.  ...well….…we’ll just say that’s Erin’s ‘great’ idea.  ...Though if it means more chocolate chip cookies, who am I to complain.

We are gradually figuring out a repertoire of dinner recipes.  Erin is feeding me well as always.  She might be making a lot of it up as she goes along, but you can’t really go to wrong with just sautéing something with the fruits and vegetables here.  I got a quick shot of her at one of the market stands by our house buying produce.  At this stop, we spent about $3 – and got a dozen eggs, a bunch of bananas, 2 bags of onions, 2 (large) avocados, 5 lemons, a head of cabbage, and a pineapple.  And every bit of it is great.  Ugandan bananas are the best I’ve ever had, pineapples here are to die for, and I don’t know what it is, but the onions are amazing.  We didn’t get any tomatoes this time, but they also seem to just make everything good. 

Well, we have pictures this week of Erin making cookies and eating ice cream, so you know we must be doing alright.  It feels good getting to work as well.  It is so good to see Erin filling a need and enjoying her kids.  And it makes me proud to see the school being so grateful that they have her.  And it’s good to make friends with people we are beginning to regularly see every day.  I think we’ve said this before, but it is not hard to make friends with Ugandans. 

We hope the start of the school year is going well for all of you.  We miss you all.  We’ve been gone for over 3 weeks, and it is starting to sink in that we’re not on some sort of vacation.  We should have thought of this before we left, but we ought to have brought some actual physical pictures of you all with us.  We could make a bulletin board here to put up in our room of American friends and family to help us feel closer to you.  ……So we have yet another request.  If you are reading this, would you consider sending us a picture of you (and family) for us to pin up at our place?  Nothing fancy – just a fun picture, any size.  No need to write a letter with sappy stuff - that will only make my wife cry.  An international letter costs 98 cents and you can just add that to the list of things we owe you.  We can accept mail at: eMi, Attn: Gary Hightower, P.O.Box 3251, Kampala, Uganda.  Thanks so much!  We would love it. 

Take good care of yourselves.  Talk to you soon.  And now, read on for more detail of Erin’s first impressions of school…

It’s about this time of year that I hear Nemo chanting “First day of school! First day of school!” over and over in my mind, and I tell myself that I should be that excited…

I’m just going to share my school summary as of right now, because it’s been pretty up and down – each day brings new knowledge and realizations that either (a)makes me want to quit teaching forever or (b)makes me feel slightly relieved and that I am at least somewhat capable of doing what I need to do.

So a little background on my kids: From a cultural perspective, they are a very diverse bunch. I think there are over 20 countries represented among the student body from the US to the UK to Sweden to India to Korea to Uganda – you name it, we’ve got it. Most students speak pretty good English, but there are a few new students that we’ll be working with very closely. I have one from Liberia that is just one of those students that you instantly grow attached to – he is very sweet and soft-spoken, but also very intentional about his studies which is cool to see. This group is also just as diverse when it comes to academics – this has been the source of my somewhat weakened mental state these days: How to get 62ish students with such different background knowledge to learn what they need to learn in the amount of time given. To be more specific, here’s the breakdown of my classes:

7th Grade – Dear Jesus, I didn’t sign up for 7th grade – you have a funny sense of humor! They are a squirrely, awkward and also tender-hearted, curious, and enthusiastic bunch of kids. They are also my biggest class – 16 students, just the right size for this fuddy duddy teacher! There aren’t too many gaps here. As far as resources go, I should be receiving teacher materials soon – soon means about a month here, so I’m winging it for now. They are going to be fun to work with as things are still very exciting for them.

8th Grade – A more subdued version of the 7th grade – 12 students strong. The boys are quiet and respectful, but I caught them having what they thought was a private conversation, and they’re a fun, goofy, innocently funny group of kiddos that I am going to have fun getting to know. The girls are highly motivated and studious – it’s amazing to watch them go. They care very much about doing things well, and it is absolutely refreshing to see. The boys are highly motivated too, but the girls are pretty serious about it - very cute to watch! Just like the 7th graders, I am waiting for teacher materials and making it up as I go until they arrive J Also, I have the 8th graders for morning devotions – they are very reserved, so I’m going to need to work on getting them to speak up. And if you have any devo ideas for 8th graders, send them along please!

9th Grade – I really like this class (but I’ll probably say this about all of them!). They are an interesting mix of old students who have been at the school for a long time and new students from all over. There are 7 of them. 9th grade is where the academics start to get interesting. Since I work at an international school, the curriculum is a little different – they are trying to revamp things such that bio/chem/physics are covered over 9th and 10th grades (done in the UK – those crazy Brits!), and I’m the lucky one that will be getting the students where they need to be in order for that to happen. So 9th grade will get an entire biology course, about 25% of a chem course, and about 15% of a physics course. Don’t ask me how that will happen in the 166 school days to come, but that is the goal. I should also specify that when I say “curriculum”, all I really have is a student textbook and IGCSE learning objectives – no teacher materials, pacing guides, frameworks, etc. to speak of – I’m literally making it up as I go for 4 out of 6 classes. And to boot, one of the students is only here for 1 year, and in order to get credit for biology when she returns to Iowa, she needs to have covered the US bio standards – fortunately she is very self-motivated (wants to be a medical scientist), so I’ll just need to make sure she gets any additional content she might miss in the regular bio course.

10th Grade – This is going to be a fun group to work with too. Just some really classy kids from so many different backgrounds – I have a lot to learn from them. But again with the diverse academic backgrounds, holy cow, this class is a winner. I will be finishing up IGCSE (that funny UK curriculum) biology, chemistry, and physics with the 3 returning students, doing strictly US biology with one student and strictly US chemistry with 2 students. How I will be teaching 3 things at once is beyond me – I’m thinking of setting up contracts for them to work independently, but I’ll need to gauge just how self-directed they can be first.

11th Grade – This class cracks me up. There are 3 students currently – another should be returning when he gets back from wherever his home country is sometime next week which will bring it up to 4. Again, a great couple of students – very neat kiddos. All of them are thankfully returning and on the same page, so the plan is to spend 1/3 of the year on random topics in biology, chem, and physics, and then they should be squared away with their science requirements.

12th Grade – And, I have to say it again, I really like this class. There are 14 of them, and they are a pretty tight-knit group – and ultra-sweet and respectful. But academically, I’m just making it up as I go. They’re basically done with chemistry and physics, but in all of their past science teacher rotations, biology got lost in the shuffle. However some students transferred in to the school after having already finished biology. So here’s my brilliant plan (actually stolen from one of my students). For the first semester, half of the students will work through concepts they missed in biology – the other half will work together to come up with fabulous labs and learning activities that they will share with the other half of students each week. They were actually pretty enthusiastic about this plan and looking forward to learning biology and getting to help teach their peers. But of course, it can’t be perfect – as I was talking to them today, one of the new students said, “Oh, Ms. Hightower – I’ve already had chemistry and biology – I’ll need to take physics.” ::sigh:: Oh course she would need something completely different than her peers… The second half of the semester is still up in the air, but it will most likely include (pending approval from the higher ups) a fabulous science room makeover with all manner of science-related murals to be painted – they don’t know this yet, but I think they’ll be pretty excited about it!

So in short, the kids are awesome. Figuring out what to teach them is slightly less than awesome. Six different classes, and two of them have 3 different content groups within them. So it’s kinda like teaching 10 classes really – that was depressing, forget I said that. But I’m feeling better now that I at least have a plan for what they need to learn – it’s just the implementation that has my head spinning. Doing a lot of praying for wisdom and trying to not lose focus on just loving these amazing kids – too easy to get bogged down in the details of work.

As I go along, I’ll share more of the specifics of how the school works – there are interesting differences between how things work here versus in the US. For example, we get to do all kinds of fun stuff I would have been afraid would lead to a lawsuit in the States – how liberating!

By the way, as I was writing this, a gecko ran across our bedroom floor and is now making his way into our dresser. Gary has the lower drawers, so I should be okay J Oops, spoke too soon – he just ran into one of my shirts on the top of the dresser. Note to self – I need to pay very close attention to my clothes before I put them on…

And I wish to state for the record that I am totally fine with not having a dishwasher… but if I had hot water in the kitchen, that would be heavenly…!

 

Point A to Point B

Another cool Uganda evening and all is well. Seems a little quiet tonight. Usually there is always plenty of activity.  We still haven't figured out when Ugandans sleep.  And soon is when it will really get exciting.  We’ve been told that once football (soccer for us US folks) season gets really going, it’ll get much more lively. We forgot to learn all about the soccer-football before we came over, oops!  Hopefully just yelling "Go Hokies" every once in a while like my husband taught me works over here too.



Gary's desk at eMi field office

This has been an interesting week for both of us as it has been the start of both of our jobs. We’ve both been able to ease into things which has worked out perfectly. Gary is learning the general procedures of the office as he assists with a few smaller projects – things will get much more exciting later next week when the rest of the staff arrives from the EMI conference in Colorado. It would have been nice to have gone to the conference if my school schedule allowed for it, but it has also been very nice to get a head-start on adjusting to life here as well as to have the undivided attention of the staff remaining here – we’ve certainly been taking advantageof them!

On the school front, things are looking interesting! We had new teacher orientation this week. Thus far, I have learned my boss is leaving the school to focus his time on another ministry he is involved with.  And I am teaching two additional classes than I was anticipating (“secondary” equals grades 7-12, not grades 9-12 as I’m used to in the US). And I also do not yet know whether I will be teaching a US-based or UK-based curriculum – and they are VERY different.  So...I'm bossless, with six completely different preps per school day (2 of which are for middle schoolers!) on a curriculum that still isn't figured out yet! I'm afraid what I'm going to learn next week! But it is all good. I am determined to be very positive and go with the flow. And above all, to not freak out. We came here because it was going to be a challenge - trusting that God would not put us here if it were more than we could handle. We didn't come here because it was going to be easy.  All of the other secondary teachers are in the same boat – teaching many different classes – and I am following their example of staying cool, calm, and collected. Next week is pre-planning, so I will have many more answers and much more to report then. For now, I am focusing on not focusing on school until I know what to expect – denial is not my normal strategy, but I think it will serve me best in this situation!  To the side is a video of my classroom I'll get set up this week.



Today, we’re going to explore the art of transportation in Kampala as we have come to understand it thus far. Here are the options:

#1 = Your feet – our transportation of choice for most days. People are constantly walking along the roads, but you will not find any sidewalks except in front of the US Embassy. Some of the major roads have a large median, but you have to share that with bodas and matatus. The streets are DUSTY and just a teeny bit gross, so it is absolutely essential to add foot-washing to your daily routine when you use your feet for transportation.

#2 = Boda bodas – the fun motorcycle rides. This is an art in and of itself. At various parts of town, there are boda “stages” – places where boda drivers hang out until they get a call for a ride or until someone drops by needing one. We have a list of boda drivers that our people here have come to know and trust, so whenever we need anything – really, anything (please pick up a pizza, please take me to the market, please pay this bill for me, etc.) – we give one a call and see if they are nearby. But you have to be specific, because in Uganda, people don’t like to say no – it’s considered rude – so “nearby” might mean an hour away J  We haven’t run into this yet, but perhaps that’s because the drivers we’ve used are a little more familiar with dealing with us crazy mzungus who like exact times. Proper protocol is to sit on the back of the boda, but you cannot touch the driver – you get on by yourself, and you hold on to a bar behind your toosh – I tend to be more of a white knuckle rider, holding on for dear life, but we’ve seen people riding on the back of bodas with car engines, chickens, a bed frame, and one woman was even riding side saddle holding her infant child in her arms. If I wasn’t holding onto the bar, I’m fairly certain I’d land on my butt behind the boda. I think Nasser is my favorite driver thus far – he is very safe and tells me about the things we pass that I don’t understand (which is a lot).

Bodas will transport just about anything

 

 

#3 = Special hires = these are basically personal car taxis. The only person I’ve ridden with is Peter – he is awesome. I tend to gravitate towards the Ugandans that let me ask dumb questions without looking at me like I’m dumb – this is mostly all Ugandans I’ve met thus far. But Peter is also super happy all of the time – he always smiles and laughs a lot which is really helpful when you're driving through lots of "jams." Special hires cost about twice as much as a boda, but they are totally worth it if you have a whole lot of shopping to do or if it is raining.

Matatus are everywhere

#4 = Matatus (pronounced mah-tah-toos) – these are van taxis. They are all over the place. Apparently they went on strike shortly after the elections here in March, because petrol prices went up, and the city basically shut down – needless to say, they reached an agreement pretty quickly. This is not my favorite mode of transportation as it is difficult to figure out what the pattern is and they also fill up very quickly. But they are very cheap – 1,000USh will get you to downtown, which is about 38 cents.

So for us, our feet are our go-to transport. The hardest part about this is that they drive on the “wrong” side of the road (I should be culturally sensitive… I guess it’s just the "opposite" side of the road…). And given the fact that there are no sidewalks and you have to dodge traffic, it’s actually really important that you know where traffic is coming from. Not that there are lanes on any of the roads, but vehicles tend to drive on the left side. Thus, we walk on the right. That seems simple, but I have to rethink this every single time we walk somewhere to make sure I’m doing it right. I guess it’s not so bad, because vehicles are also fond of their horns here, so it’s hard to miss someone coming. I like walking, because you can take in the scenery much better – it is full of interesting plants and animals. Below, you'll see the cool cow I took a picture of... and if you look closely, you'll see the monkey that was sitting behind him (confession: I didn't see the monkey until after I got home and was looking through my pictures, haha!).

A note on roads: They’re not so good. Some are paved, but a lot of the ones close to our place are not. We’re talking mac-daddy potholes. But just in case you feel like speeding, there are some randomly placed speed-bumps (or more accurately, speed-mountains) as well. J I am impressed by the boda drivers being able to navigate the terrain – surprised that I don’t bounce off when we go down our road! We are getting more comfortable with boda rides, and that opens up a whole new range of places to go. And pizza delivery… mmmmm…

Durring one of our morning devotionals, one of the EMI staff who is Ugandan, Monica shared her view on Ecclesiastes 3: - she talked about the difference in the kinds of prayers rich and poor people pray, and it might sound strange, but I think it’s the first time I’ve heard a non-rich person talk about this (I figure anybody I’ve heard talk about this in the West is pretty rich…), and it is pretty convicting. Dependence on God is definitely very different for rich vs. poor. I think about my “please help us get to Point A safely” and “please help us make the right decision about yada yada” prayers – they're not "bad" prayers, but they seem so small compared to what people pray for here. Our neighbors pray that their goats stay alive so they can sell the milk and have food to eat or that they will be able to buy medicine for their children. This is a totally different level of dependence that is hard to understand. So I’m sure we’ll continue learning this lesson, and we’ll keep our ears open to the wisdom of the people around us.

Time to go to work!

Hello All,

Happy Monday.  We are getting all settled in here in Kampala.  The people here are so kind.  …Well, it is a free-for-all on the roads, but for the most part, the people here are very kind.  Many Ugandans aren’t exactly sure what to make of us mzungus (white people), but a kind word and a smile on our part can generate some of the biggest smiles you have ever seen, as well as some very interesting conversations.  And it is so nice to be around people who love to laugh as much as Ugandans.  Africans are extremely social and communal.   …you know, just like me (this is Gary writing, if you can’t sense my sarcasm).  But as much as I am often times ready to get on with it and get to work, it is nice to just slow down and appreciate each other.  This is just one of many lessons I’m sure I will be taught while I am here. 

Ggaba Road

We had a good weekend.  It was nice just getting a little time to wander a little more on our own.  We had fun trying to stock up our kitchen with a little more food shopping.  Erin fixed her first meal in our kitchen and proved that this kitchen can produce excellent meals just fine!  She prepared pasta primavera, ……and I cleaned my plate.  We then finished it off with an awesome, fresh pineapple that cost us the equivalant of 50 cents.

Maggie showing us around

The weekend also consisted of the Donahues showing us around a little deeper into downtown Kampala where there are a few more westernized stores.  Maggie took us to a fish market, and we took more boda rides.  Sunday morning we walked to a church service not too far, and enjoyed worshiping and praising as one with people of very different heritages.   

The Donahues

I think we’ve mentioned it a few times, but we are so glad God has been watching out for us. Our transition here thus far has been absolutely seamless. Everything has fallen into place beautifully, and we know that’s no coincidence. He’s provided wonderful people to show us how to do life here and just to share their awesome stories of God’s work here.  Maggie and the Donahues are continuing to take very good care of us, showing us the ropes.  I don’t believe we’ve mentioned, but the Donahues have a 6 year old son named Caleb, and he is a bunch of fun.  He is excited about just about everything and has no problems telling us what we need to see in Uganda. 

A view of Erin's classroom
through the window

Erin will start her classroom preparation at the school this week.  We’ve gotten a peek of her classroom, and hopefully she will be able to get in it soon.  I was pretty excited to see the classroom with ‘SCIENCE’ on the door.  Erin seemed to be more concerned with the mess inside that she will have to organize, but I was happy to see where she will be and will soon get settled in.  It is a beautiful campus, complete with stone paths and well taken care of green spaces.  The school is growing, and they are currently building several more classrooms.  Tomorrow all the new teachers report, and she will get an official tour of the campus.  Erin is very eager to meet with some of her fellow teachers and admin and get a few more of her questions answered.  It is hard for a natural planner to be going into the school year so blind.  But it is truly inspiring to see her be excited to tackle the start of class whatever direction it goes.  I hope I prove to be half as good as she is with rolling with the punches.  Students arrive for classes on the 22^nd of August. 

Heritage International School Campus

To the eMi office

I put in a day of work at the eMi office today.  It felt good getting settled in and finally getting ‘back to work.’  It is very quiet in the office these days as most of the crew is back in the US for a conference - so Robert Donahue and I have the run of the place.  I worked today with some minor tasks on an orphanage project and school project while I familiarized myself with eMi standards, building practices, and working with the metric system.  It was interesting walking to work today on a dirt road saying "hi" to the goats that woke me up this morning with their constant morning calls and walking up the hill with my laptop over my shoulder, nodding to pedestrians and boda drivers. 

We are very thankful God has allowed us to come here to this land of people with such kind hearts.  And I’m so glad we get to be here to help build some infrastructure and provide some education into a system that has little.  And by doing so, hopefully the next generation of Africans will be even better able to support itself and still maintain this beautiful sense of community that we are learning to love more and more. 

Safe and Sound!

Well we made it!  A very special thanks goes out to our family for actually managing to get us out the door (A)with everything we need and (B)without beating us in the meantime! The last hour or so before we actually left was a frenzy of activity – there were just so many little things to wrap up. Then we finally managed to make it out the door to go to Gary’s dad’s house to load up the truck, and guess what this genius of a person forgot?? Passports! Are you kidding me?! I remembered my cookie scoop and yoga mats, but not the passports.  Fortunately, Gary asked me about them before we got too far, and my Dad had not yet left the house to meet up with us. I only share this story, because I realize it’s one that will live forever in the archives of dumb-things-Erin-has-done, so you should hear it from me first J

We managed to make it through our goodbyes – by far the hardest part – and we were on our way. Uneventful flight – we slept fairly well, but we are good sleepers. We spent our 11-hour layover in London doing the Big Red Bus tour and also managed to sneak in a ride on the London Eye (as well as a fish ‘n chips lunch) – and then we were on our way to Entebbe, Uganda, which is about an hour from where we live. We got another good night’s sleep… and we arrived at 7:50am to a rather cool and breezy Uganda!  And not only did we make it, but so did all of our luggage, which has surprised everyone here.  Apparently all the luggage actually making it here is a bit of a rarity.

Robert, another eMi long-term volunteer here, met us at the airport to take us home. He says he’s only been driving four-wheeled vehicles here for two weeks, but we were pretty impressed by his ability to not run over pedestrians and navigate roads with no painted lanes. He and his wife, Heather, have been absolutely wonderful to us – giving us lots of advice, feeding us, and showing us around. We managed to make it to our “compound” and were met there by Maggie who was trying to beat us here with a bouquet of beautiful mini orange roses for our table and a “Home Sweet Home” sign for our home-sweet-home. We managed to arrive during one of the rolling blackouts. But we are fortunate to have lots of windows, so when that happens during the day, it’s no big deal.

Day 1 synopsis: Got in town – settled into the apartment, which we are still very impressed by – walked to EMI and Heritage International School, 10 minutes and 5 minutes respectively – ate a great dinner provided by Heather – and then passed out. We have a nice, clean apartment with an avocado tree made easily accessible since it is located right next to our 2^nd floor front porch J  …Which will hopefully translate to great FRESH guacamole in the very near future (apparently the tomatoes are super yummy here too).We just have to hunt down limes which will be difficult since what I thought were limes are actually lemons which don’t look much different than Uganda oranges which don’t look too different from US limes – aka small and green.

Jet-lag earned us a very good night’s sleep to get us ready for Day 2. We ate delicious zucchini bread from the Donahue’s for breakfast – got a tour of the neighborhood by Heather (btw, the neighborhood is Kansanga – next to Kabalagala – say that 10 times fast!) – ate scrumptious lunch with the EMI crew – bought some money, phones, and internet stick – ate yummy rice, beans, and guacamole (which is apparently more of a salad here than a dip) – dessert was fresh red bananas from the tree in front of Maggie’s house – lost power somewhere during dinner – got propane stove lessons and heard some cool stories about how God is working here – and Erin’s FIRST boda boda ride (motorcycle taxis) which was great fun and uneventful, which is how I would like all of my boda boda rides to be.

On a side note, in regards to EMI lunch: Janet does the cooking. She is a fabulous cook, so I told her I was going to camp out in her kitchen so she can show me how it’s done – I have several mothers at home counting on me knowing how to do Ugandan cooking when we return! Today was samosas (wontons stuffed with a meat mixture) – apparently every other Thursday USED to be samosa day, and when the EMI staff tried to change the schedule and samosas did not appear, there was a revolt. Hence the return of samosas today – I don’t blame them, they were delicious. We also had rice and beans – she put carrots in with her beans – again, she’s going to have to show me how to do that, because it was yummy. Don’t worry, mothers – I’ll definitely be bringing these two recipes back home – you will love them!

By the way, matatus are big vans that serve as mini buses/taxis – always loaded with people and always stopping on the side of the road and making it lots of fun to avoid collisions if you are on foot or in a vehicle or anywhere in the vicinity. We’ll try to remember and add all of the fun words we learn as we go.

Keep us posted on how you are doing! We’d love to hear from you!

24 Hours

Where to start… it’s a little hard to think these days because I think all of the food we’ve been eating is interfering with proper brain function. Seriously though, what’s the best way to express our love and appreciation to others? Through food, of course. And we love A LOT of people! We’re trying not to focus on the goodbye-for-a-year part – it’s more of a bye-for-now type of thing. That’s been enough to keep me from melting into a puddle at least! The worst part is that there aren’t 40 hours in a day, so we haven’t been able to catch everyone – we’re hoping that Skype is as wonderful as it seems and that it will suffice until we return.

So here are the facts – our flight leaves Monday night at 9:15pm. As of right now, that is less than 24 hours away. Holy cow! Another fact – we get six 50-lb bags, two 15-lb carry-ons, and two personal items. We’re right on the edge on all our bags and are hoping our luggage scale is a little conservative with its weights… Thus far, I probably packed and repacked about 3 times on my own, and then we did one final packing this week – check out our stowaway…

Just to annoy Diane, we might repack again tonight J  We’ll head down to the airport with a caravan of hopefully emotionally stable parents around 4:30, and our flight will head out for Heathrow at 9:15pm. We really got lucky with the flights. We’ll fly overnight (and yes, we sleep well ANYWHERE, so we’ll get some quality rest on the plane), and then arrive in London at 10:45am. Our flight doesn’t leave for Entebbe, Uganda until 9:15pm, so we’re just going to have a mini vacation in London (as in a 6-hour vacation) before we get ready to get on the second leg of the flight and another good night’s sleep.

And then the fun begins! Who am I kidding – we’re going to have way big fun before then! We arrive in Entebbe at 7:15am, and it’ll take about 2 hours to get to our apartment. One of the EMI folks and his wife will be picking us up from the airport – I’ve already decided that they are awesome and that I will like them a whole lot. From there, Maggie, who has been amazingly helpful and has worked very hard to get our apartment ready and just pass along helpful information in general, will be guiding us through some orientation-type activities to introduce us to the community – I’ve also decided that she is awesome and that I will like her a whole lot too.

I’m sure we’ll have lots of prayer requests in the coming year, so here comes the first one. We need to be able to legally work in Uganda! We’ve applied for our work permits in plenty of time for them to process them, but due to some changes they have going on in their immigration process (woah, we’re immigrants – that’s kinda funny to think about!), they’re a little, um, backlogged. As in we’re application #2100-something and they’re on application #834ish. EMI has been awesome about working through this process, and they’ve told us they think it’s still cool for us to head on over – which is good because we didn’t realize that was in question! From what we’ve heard from other folks over there, this isn’t entirely out of the ordinary, so we’ll just be praying that this doesn’t get any more complicated, and we’d sure appreciate your prayer support with this as well!

So I think that about does it for our final pre-departure update! We are SUPER excited – I mean, butterflies-in-your-stomach excited! We are just amazed that God has led us to this point – we figure He knows what He’s doing, because we’re pretty clueless right now, haha! Our biggest hope is just that we will honor Him in what we do over there – whatever form that takes.

Stay tuned for our first we-made-it-to-Africa! update!

9 Days and Counting...

Hello all! Gary here. August 1^st is coming fast! It’s hard to believe how quickly June zipped by and now July is about done.

This past Friday was my last day at work. I was pretty busy, so it didn’t really hit me until the end of the day when I really had to start saying goodbyes. Pieper O’Brien Herr Architects has been a big part of my life since 2000. I’ve been with them since I graduated, and I feel very lucky to have been a part of the firm. It’s amazing how much of our lives are driven by a single decision. We all have many of those times, and I won’t go into it other than to say that I’m very thankful that my early professional employment circumstances went as they did. My firm, POH, has been very supportive of our trip and very excited for us.

Erin was busy last week getting all the packing squared away. We each can take three 50 pound bags on the plane. So Erin has trying to fit our clothes, household items, toiletries for a year, her school supplies, my work supplies, and other miscellaneous supplies in six suit cases. It’s quite a trick, but we’re getting there. Six, 50lb bags seems sort-of like a lot. …and we ‘thought’ we lived pretty minimally. But we are not finding it easy to get all the things we want to take in there. Now that I‘m off work, when we get back in town, I get to join in the fun task in deciding what all we leave behind.

But now we are headed up north to visit Erin’s family in the New Jersey / Pennsylvania area. Our first stop is to see Erin’s Aunt Kate and Knight in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Next we are off to see Erin’s Aunt Laura and Uncle Rich and cousin Sara in Collingswood, New Jersey. Then, we are off to see her grandparents in Honesdale, PA. We are not far into the trip, but so far it has been fabulous. It’s too bad we needed leaving the country as an excuse to come up here to visit everyone. But we are just glad we have any excuse. It has been very good spending some time with everyone. We are very lucky to have such good families.

With me off from work and us off to give our final farewells to family, it definitely hits that we are in the home stretch leading up to the trip. With this little preamble, in many ways it feels like our adventure has officially begun. We have also received a few pictures of our apartment in Kampala, which also helps make us feel like we are close to being there. We were very excited to get the photos - and the apartment is really quite nice. eMi has done an amazing job of getting it ready for us. We knew we’d be fine, but of course we were a little unsure of what our living arrangements would be. But as you can see, we’ll be quite comfortable. We can’t wait to get over there.

We’ll post more soon, but we just wanted to give a quick update. And of course, no post would be complete without a huge thank you to all of you for your support and encouragement. There have been no snags in the preparation that have not been countered with an outpouring of encouragement from one or many of you. I don’t know how you seem to anticipate when we need it, but I hope you also know how appreciative we are. Support-raising is going very well. We can’t thank our contributors enough for making this thing happen.

We leave Monday night, the 1^st of August. The first leg of the trip will be about 9 hours and we’ll have an 11 hour layover in Heathrow airport in London during the day of the 2^nd of August. We are hoping to take advantage of this and wander around London for a while. So if anyone has any experience around Heathrow and has any suggestions of how to best use some time around the area, please let us know! Then that evening we have another 9 hour flight to Kampala. And on the morning of August 3^rd we will land in Uganda… The Donahue’s are another long term volunteer family who will pick us up from the airport and our African way of life will begin.

And finally, I will add one little P.S.

At the end of Erin’s last post, she put a list of random bullet points of misc going-ons. And midway down, she listed that she was disappointed that we didn’t make it on NASA’s list to be able to buy tickets to watch the Atlantis shuttle launch, the final shuttle launch, at Kennedy Space Center. We figured we’d still go down there and find a parking lot or something in the area to get a glimpse of it. But unbeknownst to us, our friend from our trip to Haiti, Steve, emailed another of his friends, Melba, to see what she recommended. Melba is a regular attender at shuttle launches and has seen quite a few. Steve has the biggest heart, and his friends certainly do as well. We emailed back and forth with Melba a bit and she gave us some pointers of good places to see the launch. And then, I’m not sure what strings she had to pull and how much it cost her, but the Sunday before the launch, we met Melba for the first time, and she surprised us with official tickets to see the launch at Kennedy with a parking pass. We certainly don’t deserve all that, but she said she felt given our certain circumstances, she felt the shuttle launch was something we didn’t need to miss before we left. And so we went, and Erin's mom was able to join us. The launch was perfect, and the experience was amazing. And we are so glad we got to go! We’re very proud of NASA and their 30 years of amazing work, and are so thankful to be there for this monumental event. Atlantis is back on Earth now, and her crew are all safe. And that launch is something we will never forget thanks to the kindness of friends.

Reality?

These past few weeks it has become increasingly apparent that I have approximately a 15% grip on reality. Maybe that's not the right way of looking at it - I have a 15% grip on where reality is leading. It's like I can see it coming but can't place myself in it. Every now and then, Gary and I look at each other and exclaim, "We're moving to Africa!" like it's a new revelation.

Even the last day of school (insert happy dance!) - said goodbye to kids, hugs, warm wishes, etc. and then a few hours later, I'm standing at the front of my empty classroom staring at the empty stools sitting on the floor - realize I should have told my last class to put them on the tables before they left. And it hits me - one of those heart-in-your-throat moments... that was it - no more school. The next students I see will be in Uganda, holy cow!! But really? It took me hours to settle into my present reality of summer. 

But I feel pretty blessed to have a lot of people around me to bring me back to reality. For example, some very incredible coworkers gave me the surprise of my life - nothing like expecting a quiet evening of conversation and walking into a celebration with all your favorite people. I really need to ask Britt for the picture she got of me walking in - the months of careful planning of some very special people definitely got the desired effect - I was speechless (and about to hit the floor from shock) and incredibly humbled by the show of support from so many people that I respect and admire so much.

I think that's the biggest lesson Gary and I are learning through this whole off-to-Uganda process. We are learning that God has a purpose, and He will knit together the people and means to accomplish just that - we are a piece of the puzzle, but it's one of those 10,000 piece ridiculous puzzles, not one of those wimpy wooden preschool puzzles, haha :-)  Probably the most tangible way for us to see that right now is through support-raising. When we started, we were told it would take 6-9 months to raise everything - for two very financially cautious folks, that was not cool, particularly since we had only 3 months to do it all from the time we got official acceptance & approval with EMI and Heritage until we are to leave. But here we are, half-way through it, and we are over 80% to our goal. I mean, really? That is DEFINITELY not us. And I have to say - knowing with 100% certainty that you are in sync with God's plan - not just for our lives but the whole nine yards - that is an awesome place to be. I don't think He could make it much more obvious unless He wants to start literally flinging open doors, haha :-)  We are so thankful to have so many people working together to spread His love!

Other piece of the puzzle that we are very excited is in place - we have a tenant for our condo!! This is a big one as there is no way we would be able to sell this cute little place without losing ridiculous sums of money, and incidentally, it's hard to pay a mortgage when you don't have a paycheck. So on July 8th, our hopefully very clean and courteous tenants will move in, and we will take up residence in my father's basement. Have we mentioned that it's great to have supportive parents? Because it really is!

And so as I contemplate getting my butt moving and going for a run, a few random thoughts:

• I really need to go to bed before midnight someday.
• I am SO thankful for my sweet students this year. If I was ever down or overwhelmed, they would walk in the room and actually make it better - that is a huge blessing. I really will miss them... 
• Taco salad is basically the best food ever.
• Spaghetti squash is a close second.
• Okay, maybe the peach frozen yogurt from Yogli Mogli trumps them all. Too bad they stink and got rid of it!!  :-P  
• How does one clean vegetables in a foreign country if one wants to eat them raw? Feeling a little nervous about using bleach water as recommended - isn't there some other way?
• Hoping that Gary can leave work early today and rescue me from boredom. Not the I-have-nothing-to-do type of boredom. Just the if-I-spend-one-more-second-looking-at-that-physics-book-I'm-going-to-throw-things type of boredom.
• Why must everything I hear have some correlation to a quote from Finding Nemo? 
• Sad that NASA didn't pick us for tickets to the shuttle launch, but thankful that although my mom had to move away, at least she moved close enough to see such things. Very much hoping it happens on schedule so we can take in just a little bit of that history-in-the-making.
• I miss the cat... He's been staying with his grand-folks since we got the carpet cleaned for obvious reasons to anyone that has ever owned a spiteful cat. Unfortunately, when he sees us now, he associates us with a car ride and gives us major attitude. But I still miss him! It must be bad - I saw a young cat with exactly the same color fur as my hair lounging by the dumpster at the travel clinic, and I seriously stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the road debating whether or not to grab him and bring him home... A concern for the continued health of my marriage set me back to walking to my car.
• My yellow-fever-shot-arm is unhappy. Hopefully I won't get the fever to go with it in a few days - dumb live vaccines...
• So thankful for good friends! We've had the pleasure of getting to connect and reconnect with some wonderful people in our lives as we prepare to head out - makes it a little harder to go, but thank goodness for email and Skype! Especially for sweet baby Liam, our newest friend :-)
• And lastly - my string cheese wrapper said that the cat's IQ is only exceeded by that of chimps and humans. That can't possibly be true.