June 5

Hairy Lemon island was so cool. So, we drove out about two hours to it in 2 matatus, and it felt like the entire second half of the trip was on the bumpiest dirt road ever. Finally we got close and then had to take a really sketch wooden rowboat about 4 at a time across the water to get to the island. It wasn’t far, but it was pretty funny because the boat was so iffy-looking. However once we got there it was so pretty and relaxing. It is in such a secluded place, and not a lot of people know about it except for really serious kayakers. Three of the missionary families and all of their kids came, so that was cool too. It was awesome. It seriously KILLS me that my closest friends and family (Patrick would love this place) aren’t getting to see the things I’m seeing! I was talking to David and Ashley about it and we all thought this whole experience would be way better if we had someone really close here to share it with!

Thursday was like a normal day, except in the morning I got news about the death of one of my pretty good friends from high school. I’m just kind of shocked and not sure how to react to that, especially here. Either way, my day went on. For service learning, Brian, Thiersten and I went to Christian Children’s Fund again, to try to get contact info about places we could volunteer next week. Martin, the head guy, was not there, his replacement was in a meeting, and Joseph, the finance guy who we met with last time, was in training, so there was no one to meet with us. So we left after about 3 minutes. Oh, and on the way there, we took pikis from the Source Café. First of all, the guys who picked us up didn’t know where they were going, so we went in a huge circle and stopped along the way at like three places to ask for directions, and when we finally got there, the drivers charged us each about five times as much as they should have. So that was good. So when we got back to the Gately we walked across the street to this place called the baby cottage (which is kind of like an orphanage). There are about fifty kids there ranging from babies on up. I am pretty sure it is run by Ugandans but there are several American volunteers there who are like staying for the summer, so that was cool to get to talk to them. That night at class, three of the female missionaries came to our communication class to talk about our chapter about culture shock. Their general consensus was that they missed privacy and starbucks the most about America.

Today for lunch I went to this place called Two Friends with Fish, David, and Ashley. The missionaries told us that it’s the best hamburgers in east Africa. So that was a fun experience. We were there for literally three hours though, so we played a lot of darts and just hung out. Afterwards we went back to Christian Children’s Fund and finally got to actually talk to someone…finally. So it looks like on Monday we will have a place to go and actually see some kids.

I am getting pretty used to sleeping inside of a mosquito net (except my bed at home sounds sooo good). A couple of nights ago I woke up to something falling on my head… I flung it off and it felt like a frog or something, but I just tried not to think about it. After quite a while of trying not to think about it I was finally able to go back to sleep. The next morning I just got out of bed without looking for it because I really just didn’t want to know what it was, and I was guessing that it was just dead somewhere in my bed. So I made one of the guys go in and look with me, and it was just a little frog the size of like a quarter, under my pillow. Whoops. But that’s ok. Tomorrow night we are each staying in a different village, like 24 hours of being alone with a village family. Oh man I can’t wait to hear everyone’s stories (because also this will mean that it’s over). I’m sure it will be fun but it is definitely the part of the trip that most people are the most nervous about!