Over a month in Uganda!! So we have had some interesting times since my last blog. We went to church again but this time we ventured to the nearest town, Mubende. We were a little late, so walked into church at the front with around 300 faces staring towards us! We were seated nice and tightly packed with the children. To our surprise the headmaster from St Zoes was stood up playing the keyboard for all the hymns. The hymns were great and headed by one of the local secondary school choirs-also this time church was in English, so we could understand what was being said. There was also some drums-they were very good! After a bit of hymnage-the Reverend stood up. The Reverend (named Reverend Lioness) resembles Loveless the penguin of 'Happy Feet' so strongly in both character and appearance that I spent the first part of the service laughing! Especially when he started the service with 'Lets pray that in heaven there will be heavenly chips!!'-Yes, thats right 'heavenly chips, he then continued to say 'lets pray that there will be heavenly rice.' It was all very amusing-he also saluted me and Naomi in the middle of the service! After the service we met him properly and he was even shorter than he appeared he came up to about my waist! So for once I enjoyed a bit of church, although it did last a very long time and boy was it hot!!

Another interesting event recently our first Birthday Party, which was a girl from S3's 18th. It was held in the afternoon and on arrival we did not know what to expect! As we got closer to school we could hear some booming music and a huddle of primary school kids crowded outside the secondary block. As we entered we saw the birthday girl sitted at the front of the class witha table of presents in front of her and her two closest friends. They looked very formal, the birthday girl was also very dressed up and was wearing a dress similar to bridal attire. Lots of the boys were dressed very 'smartly' some in shirts and ties, otehrs in varying arrays of army caps and coloured socks! The rest of the secondary kids were sitted around on benchs in a semi circle. Then lunch was served (our second lunch!) which was greens, rice and a doughnutty thing. We also got soda-excellent :) So then after food the dancing began... I dont think I have ever laughed so much when they started dancing it was hilarious-and then of course we were expected to dance...yes I expect I looked ridiculous for the next 3 hours! After about 10 minutes all the teachers left because Arsenal was playing Chelsea, so we were left dancing. We had an amazing time, although it was HOT-very very hot-we were both bright red and dripping sweat!! We were also a bit unsue of how appropriate grinding with your teacher is!! They all grind a lot!!-luckily my height saved me from a lot of inappropriate griniding-Naomi on the other hand was not so lucky. That night when we got back we laughed and laughed about the party for a good few hours-in fact we were in hysterics. Then the next day I had to go in and give the students (most of which we had danced with) there mid term maths exam-I sat there invigilating the exam trying not to laugh! The Maths mid term exams went badly; for a student to pass they need to get 50%. In S1 15 out of 35 passed, in S2 3 out 0f 30 passed and in S1 0 out of 11 passed! (S1 is equivalent to year 8, S2 year 9, S3 year 10) There isn't S4 or above at St Zoes because the secondary block only opened 2 years ago. The Maths is ridiculously difficult with Logarithms in S2 and Distance time graphs!!-Eurgh I have done so much Maths recently-I really want the children to pass, so I have started going to prep at school from 7-9:30 to help them. I have done so much maths that I have started teaching matsh in my sleep!!!-Most nights Naomi gets to hear about how a negative multiplied my a negative makes a positive!!-I think I might just be going crazy-I have also started speaking Lugandan in my sleep!! Also yesterday we went to Mubende and treated ourselves to 3 bars of chocolate each-I ate 2 and was saving the 3rd for today, but I woke up in the middle of the night and I was lying on a half opened bar of chocolate!! I must have got up found the chocolate in the dark opened it and started eating it!!-I blame the malaria tablets-with there 'wierd dreams' side effects!

I really enjoy spending time with the secondary students at school and have started playing netball with the students (both the boys and girls play) and they are very nifty and feisty when it comes to playing netball! I also get quite involved and ended up shouting at the top of my voice at a poor ref's decision!! It is also very good ecercise and helps to burn off the huge amount of fryed and sugary foods we consume daily, although exercise in Uganda comes at the price of my very very red face. Initially the girls were like 'Madam why is your face so red!?' much to Naomi's amusement! Speaking of amusement, Naomi set S2 the task of writing a newspaper article and designing it and one girl did a particularly interesting piece entitled 'Man Bonks Pavement' which descibed exactly what the headline suggests, with details including the fact that the man had a fettish for plastic bin bags and his ultimate sexual fantasy was too be in a bin cart when the bin bags were crushed!!!! I nearly fell off my chair when I read it-every sentence was hilarious-there was also a nice little picture the girl had drawn. We were in such disbelief and couldn't understand how she could have imagined such an article, or how it could possibly be a real story!! But we have come to the conclusion that unbelievably it must be a real article because the English is unfaultable! The girl who did the article claims that she wrote it and that she did not copy it-we don't think shes aware of what she has written! Anyway thats all for now-tomorrow we are going to Kampala for the weekend, so we get to see all the other volunteers :)- we are very excited!! Thanks for reading x