Hello!
Well I have really started to settle in here and I am absolutely loving it. This past week in the village has been great and the students and I are really starting to get comfortable with each other. I have been teaching math and English to the three upper level classes, usually about three to four classes a day. School starts at 8am with a morning assembly and the first class begins at 8:30. They then have two hours of classes with a half an hour break at 10:30. At 11am they continue with class and go until 1pm when they break for a one hour lunch. Many of the children play soccer during the breaks and the girls really enjoy jump rope. It's been fun playing with them and making them laugh. I think often times they are laughing at me but I suppose thats ok since I must look pretty funny jump roping with a bunch of 10 year olds :)
My day in the village starts at 7am with breakfast. Then at 8am I head to the school, which is a short walk from the little house, where I am staying. Then at 1pm I come back for lunch and head back to school around 2pm. At 4pm when school gets out I usually take a rest or hang out with the three girls that work in the village. They do the cooking and cleaning in the house and its been fun getting to know them. They have yet to let me help them with anything but I'm sure that I will be able to weasel my way into doing something soon. Then at around 7pm I eat dinner. By the time dinner is over it is completely dark out and since there is no electricity in the village we use lanterns. Everyone heads to bed around 8:30 and I usually use that time to read and get ready for bed.
This weekend I have come back to Kampala to greet the two other volunteers that will be here while I am here. One of them had already arrived by the time I got to the house on Friday. Her name is Vicky and she is a special education teacher from Nashville, Tennessee. We seem to have clicked and its been fun getting to know her over the last few days. The other volunteer arrived late on Friday night. Her name is Gina and she is an Occupational Therapist from Pennslyvania. She is in her early fifties and has two grown children. She has been wanting to do this kind of thing for awhile so she is excited about being here.
On Saturday Vicky and I hired a taxi for the day which ended up being about thirty dollars each for 8 hours. We had him drive us to a mall called Garden City and it was interesting to walk around that. It's pretty similar to an American mall with an assortment of shops and places to eat. The driver of the taxi also drove us around Kampala a bit and was able to show us a lot of the buildings and such. We had the driver pick a place for the two of us to have lunch and he chose a somewhat Italian restaurant connected to a hotel. Then we were able to find a market. It reminded me a lot of being in Chinatown in Manhattan with the people selling things trying to get your attention and bargain a good price. There are a lot of interesting things to buy here and I got a few good purchases. So that was a great day exploring and getting to know the city more.
Today, which is Sunday, Vicky, Gina, and I attended the church where Jim was guest preaching. We got there at 11am and the service had already started and left around 2 before it had ended so I'm pretty sure it was around a 4 hour long service. It was a lot of fun and really interesting so it definitely did not seem like it was that long. In the afternoon we spent a few hours on a place called the African Prayer Mountain. It's a large grassy and wooded area on the top of a large hill where people are continuously praying. We walked around the top and got an amazing view of Kampala and the surrounding houses. It's so beautiful and green.
I hope this new post finds you doing well and enjoying your summer. I look forward to updating you on this coming week, as I'm sure it will be even better than the last. There are now three of us who will be teaching and a team from Australia coming to teach as well. I'm excited to see how the bunch of us can really work together to help out in the school and village in general.
Love always,
Lea
On Saturday Vicky and I hired a taxi for the day which ended up being about thirty dollars each for 8 hours. We had him drive us to a mall called Garden City and it was interesting to walk around that. It's pretty similar to an American mall with an assortment of shops and places to eat. The driver of the taxi also drove us around Kampala a bit and was able to show us a lot of the buildings and such. We had the driver pick a place for the two of us to have lunch and he chose a somewhat Italian restaurant connected to a hotel. Then we were able to find a market. It reminded me a lot of being in Chinatown in Manhattan with the people selling things trying to get your attention and bargain a good price. There are a lot of interesting things to buy here and I got a few good purchases. So that was a great day exploring and getting to know the city more.
Today, which is Sunday, Vicky, Gina, and I attended the church where Jim was guest preaching. We got there at 11am and the service had already started and left around 2 before it had ended so I'm pretty sure it was around a 4 hour long service. It was a lot of fun and really interesting so it definitely did not seem like it was that long. In the afternoon we spent a few hours on a place called the African Prayer Mountain. It's a large grassy and wooded area on the top of a large hill where people are continuously praying. We walked around the top and got an amazing view of Kampala and the surrounding houses. It's so beautiful and green.
I hope this new post finds you doing well and enjoying your summer. I look forward to updating you on this coming week, as I'm sure it will be even better than the last. There are now three of us who will be teaching and a team from Australia coming to teach as well. I'm excited to see how the bunch of us can really work together to help out in the school and village in general.
Love always,
Lea
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