It wouldnt be a good post without kid pics. These are some kids I found at a gathering I was at, or should I say, they found me. Some of them are part of the cheering squad that welcomes me everytime I come into town. I like the boy picking his nose in the second picture. He wont let me hold him and cries if I get too close. The two little girls in white dresses in the last picture really like me and always want to be held, swung or hung upsidedown. I always have a bouncy ball with me and everytime I see them we play for a few minutes which they think is great!



















My m0m asked for picks of my new home. The first 2 are of my bedroom, and the second of my kitchen. I have another room, but I dont really have anything to put in it so it is a bit bare now. I am going to buy paint and paint my bedroom soon. Looking for the right colors right now....

Images of Wakiso and swearing in

A collection of photos from Wakiso before I moved to Mityana and swearing in where we became official Peace Corps Volunteers:

Right before I left, I let the kids in my neighborhood try out my bike. Bikes are a huge deal here as very few kids have them and very few girls know how to ride them. I wanted to try to teach the girls that I talk to daily, or at least give them a ride on them. This girl is Enid. She was one of the most enthusiastic kids I have ever talked to. Everything she said sounded like you just gave her the biggest news ever. Here she is with my helmet on. They didn’t quite pick up riding my oversized bike, but we sure had fun trying…

These are my homestay brothers. I have never had brothers, but these boys are definitely the type of brothers I would want to have. Odegaard wanted a picture of him talking on my phone. He is another kid that just appreciates everything in life. If Odegaard says it was just an ok day, you know it had to be bad as every day is great in this kids mind. Geir just laughs at him. He is a good kid as well.

This is my training class. From l to r: Me, Bruce, Kristen, Herbert and Greg. Many hours have been spent with these people and I was lucky to have such a fun class.

Saw this on my last night in Wakiso… kids playing in the cab of a truck. It reminded me of my nephew Quinn and his obsession with trucks. Kids really are the same no matter where they are born….

As I can rarely sleep late in this country due to 1) the call to prayer 2) the roosters 3) the sun or 4) people getting up early, I was happy to see the sun rise in Kampala from our hotel. This was taken in one of the 3 days we spent in Kampala before going off to our site.

My training class! Imagine trying to get 23 trainees together with about 15 people taking pictures with our cameras. Also imagine a swimming pool right in front of us so that there is not a good angle to take the picture and what you get is many mediocre photos. However, this one shows us all. My closest friends in training were the 3 girls to me left, Kristen, Tess and Amy. Kristen is my closest neighbor so I am sure we will be spending lots of time together. Amy is about 5 hours away and is not a kid-person but is working with over 300 kids at an orphanage/school. Tess is about 2 hours away and is hilarious. During training she arranged a human pyramid (did not work) as well as ugly mumu day where all the girls found the ugliest dress they could find in the market and wore it to training. Funniest part about that day is that everyone thought we looked “smart” I had on a leopard print dress and was nicknamed “hot mama”

Because there is a lot of us in the central part of Uganda, we had 2 classes learning Luganda. This is all of the Luganda group with our teachers. We rearranged classes midway through so I had both Ven and Herbert (in the middle). We all get along famously well and have a lot of fun together which is good as we are all closest to each other. We will have a week of language training in 3 months and it will be a great reunion!

Here are a few more pics. We found this cool artist who makes pics out of material, metal, wood, etc.

Second pic is of the scaffolding on a construction project.

Next are pics of mushrooms that my womens group is growing and last picture is of the bricks they are making at my house so that they can build a fence around the property. All of these are being made by Moses, one of the helpers at home.

Kampala and Kusumbi Tombs

This is crazy fruit market in Kampal. They have more veggis and fruits then I have seen elsewhere in Uganda. We also were offered pot among other things. We were excited as we found gooseberries, and some delicious passion fruit.

The rest of the pics are from the Kusumbi Tombs where they buried some of the kings of Uganda.