Hello!

Today is Idi Day in Uganda and so me and kieran have decided to make the most of the day and explore the nearest biggest town called Mpigi which happens to have internet! :)

This is my first blog abroad :D This is going to be quite hard because i could come home tomorrow and talk for a week, there is so much stuff i could say!

I guess I will start with the basics, I live with the Local Reverend called Patrick, he is a really nice guy and has adopted us as his children. We have water from a well which we need to boil before we can drink it, we do not have electricity and today it has taken us 1 hour to go to the nearest Internet access point. I have african showers daily (7 so far) and even a true african toilet trip with a long drop. The village is very rural and the local school where we are teaching has 840 pupils and the smallest class in 80! We have already been given so many gifts from the locals who constantly call us "muzungu" and now they have started coming to our house and watching us talk in our bedroom by looking through the window; it feels like we are animals in a safari park!

We arrived at our project on monday after taking a taxi (A 15 seater minibus which had 23 people crammed into it) and then a buda buda where I actually thought i might die however I live to tell the tale, it certainly has been an experience.

The food as expected has been limited however we cannot believe how much they eat, because they have a lot of starchy foods, I can honestly say me and kieran have yet to finish a whole meal. So far, over 1 week we have eaten for meals; posho, matoke, beans, cassava, potatoes, cabbage and meat.

My average day so far starts with a 6 00 am wake up call from a cockeril. It is quite surreal because you almost seem to have a snooze button because as soon as you start to drop off, he caws again! After that, we usually wash and go to the toilet (thankfully we have bought toilet roll!) and we have potatoes most day for breakfast. The school day goes from 8 30 - 3 20pm and then after that we have to organise our room, wash clothes (by hand ofc) or write letters. We have also started playing football with the locals at night and playing for the first time was one of the best experiences of my life. Despite the fact we speak 2 completely different languages, we can come together and play football where language is not an issue.

By day, we are often busy and we enjoy evey second of it but by night it gets dark at 7 and we often take time to reflect on what we are missing but each others company is more than enough because we have so many in jokes and never fail to amuse each other at night.

Communication is very limited here, We do not have a postal service which we can use unless we have contacts in Kampala and electricity is over 2 km away and internet access was an hour away in a town called Mpigi.

We have fallen in love with so many things here although last night we had a discussion about burger king and we realised how little we actually have. It is so weird how even the headmaster doesn't know what pizza or burger is. We have even had to explain what sandwiches are and even what a motorway and mortgage is. It is so weird that we take so much for granted. Slowly we are learning the African culture and this time next week we will be at a true african wedding!

I do miss everyone at home and reading some letters yesterday was very hard but I am enjoying life here and wish you could see it for yourselves. Unfortunately I don't think that I will be able to upload photo's because the current internet is 256kb/ sec but i will try my best over the course of the year to upload some of the better photos.

Every night I find myself dreaming of home and all the people I miss and waking up is quite depressing but then I look outside my window and realise how lucky I am. :)

Hopefully my next blog will be near the start of October (8th/9th) when we will be going to Kampala but I cannot guarantee getting the opportunity to update.

I must go now because It has taken 1 hour to update fb and this blog but that is true african style and I am slowly getting used to their pace! haha

A good thing about this is that God has been with me every step of the way and has been blessing me every day so I want to say thank you to everyone who has been praying for me, it is appreciated.

The time is 1:55pm, I love you all and I hope you will all send me fb messages updating me on how you are doing!

T.I.A - This is Africa
Take care and God bless
Shaun & Kieran x
:)