The House and The Town

The house was muuuchhhh better than I thought it was going to be

We live like 5 houses away from the president of Uganda so that means it safe right? 

Here we all are when we arrived 

(did you notice that I have been wearing the same exact clothes for two days of traveling....??)

 The house

The view from the side yard. (Thank you Alexis for the picture)

This is my most comfortable bed surrounded by my princess canopy followed by our super nice bathroom with nice hot water...

(In case you didn't catch the sarcasm in there, I was joking...but it's actually much better than I thought)

Self expanitory...

Story time: Holly (the country director) comes in our room with these nice lookin creatures who happen to be ants and a real nice snack for Ugandans. I refused to eat them but after everyone else did I HAD to. I mean, when am I ever going to eat ants again right? Well, I guess I could, but you get the point.

The worst.

 The "after eating an ant" face

That night we got settled in and I somewhat got organized. It's hard to have a routine when you are living out of your suitcase. They next day, we went on a scavenger hunt and they literally threw us in the middle of Mbale and we had to find all these different places. For example, find live chickens, find a specific market, find the clock tower. Cray cray. The only way this could happen was asking people because we obviously had no idea. There are no street names so that makes it harder too. I can't even get around in Idaho, how the heck am I supposed to get around in Africa?? Luckily, the group I was with had a good sense of direction so I followed and trusted them. The walk from our house to town is about 20 minutes, depending on how fast you walk. What I noticed here is they all walk so slow. Americans all always in a hurry...now I am going to list highlights of the scavenger hunt followed by some pickchurs

• We are celebrities here, everyone stares at you when you walk by and calls you MZUNGO which means white person, it's hilarious.
• It started pouring rain in the middle of the day, apparently this happens this time of year. It actually feels good after you are walking in hot/humid weather
• We asked these people where we could find live chickens and they pointed us in the right direction so we find them and there are like dead ones everywhere and it's super chaotic
• When we were walking back from the chickens these same people asked us where the chicken was cus they thought we were going to purchase one. We just laughed and said all we had to do was take a picture with them. We ended up having a conversation and one of the guys, Leesha says he wants to marry all three of us and he wants to go to America and he will take care of us. It was soooo funny. Then he decides to name us different names so he names Mallory a sweet African name that means beautiful. He names Carley some sweet African name that acutally meant mud haha and he calls me Helen. I was ticked. I demanded he names me something different but nope. So, after 2 days of being here I am not proud to say my African name is Helen.
• Buying my first pair of African earings!!
• Going to this BOMB African resturaunt called Chat and Chino that is super modernized that all the "mzungos" go to. It has wifi and errthing. It's awesome and they have all kinds of food. I plan to purchase everything on the menu by the time I leave.
• Mallory and I ordered this amazing Passion Fruit Juice at Chat and Chino and it was delicious

AFRICAAAAA

The AMAZING nachos we got at Chat and Chino

 The Passion Fruit Juice

How cool looking is the money??!!

Everything about this day was overwhelming and unreal (the two words that I will be using a lot for the next four months) I would say I did have a bit of a culture shock buuuut I think I will get used to it quickly, after all this is my home for the next four months...