1.2

My past week:

I traveled away from the Peace Corps training center for a couple of days to visit another volunteer. One may think that a four hour bus ride on Ugandan roads would be nightmarish, and to a certain extent you are correct (cramped, hot, people constantly trying to sell you a chicken on a stick), but to another extent, you would be terribly mistaken. Over the four hour trip we passed fields of tea, papyrus, and acre upon acre of sugar cane. We saw the great Lake Victoria, and the fabled River Nile. This was only the beginning of the trip though. The volunteer I went to visit lives in eastern Uganda and about 30 minutes away (by foot) from his home is a place with known rock paintings. You always hear about rock painting, and to tell you the truth these were faded and certainly not the works of the great Mark Kessler, but they had hidden power. Standing in front of of a work 2,000 years old, wondering who, what, why; there is an awe and mystery in it. Also, the rocks contained a natural xylophone where different rocks could be hit to produce these reverberating pitches that archaeologists think were used to call in cattle herders in times past. The rocks were a bit of a climb, but at the top, they offered a 360 degree view of Uganda. It was beautiful. The Peace Corps Volunteer's family had sent him some care packages, so that night, we sat in his living room talking African politics eating candy bars and trail mix. I think that it's times like these, more than any others so far, that I really realize what a blessing it is to be here, how I never could have imagined this. Then though, there are the times that you realize you really are in to something so bizarre, so unique, and so unbelievably exciting that you have to be thankful to God. The next night, we traveled to one of the major cities of Uganda to meet up with some other volunteers. In the midst of conversation, soccer got brought up and before I knew it, at midnight that night, I was sitting in a movie theater type building with wooden chairs watching live, European soccer (Man U vs. Inter Milan) with hundreds of screaming Ugandans who all definitely had a weird, soccer crush on Ronaldo but none of whom would have admitted it! I wish I could bottle that moment and let you all open it up and experience. I don't now do it justice. I don't really know how to end my blog entries. I don't really know how to write them either.