It's been quite a while since my last blog entry, getting a quick enough connection that doesn't crash when I try to update this thing has been a bit of a night mare! I'm now nearly three weeks into my xmas holiday traveling, and I can't believe I've been in Uganda three and a half months already, time really is flying by. As we were told, the two month mark was the hardest, the newness and excitement was wearing off and it seemed like such a long time until I return on the 18th August 2012. Thankfully over the two month hump now, and I can definitely call Uganda my home.

The third term has ended now, and I really hope my students have done well in their end of term exams and that when I go back after Christmas they will have been promoted. Teaching is slowly becoming easier and less daunting. The students are absolutely fantastic and are always asking Meg and I strange questions (like the infamous 'madam why do you carry bags everywhere'). We did try and start up a drama club, the first week was great, but after that it fizzled out a bit due to other commitments for the students. Hopefully next term we can get it properly timetabled so that it can run every week. Next term we are also going to start teaching in the primary section. I'm going to do some PE and Meg is going to teach some maths lessons, we're both going to help out with English lessons and maybe Art. Really looking forward to taking on more next term as this past term we haven't had many teaching hours and sometimes the days can pass pretty slowly.

We've also visited a few of the other volunteers projects, along with a few trips to Kampala thrown in there.

Myanzi.

Beth Cairns and Jessie live in a small trading centre around a 40 minute drive away from us towards Kampala. They teach two primary schools, one government and one private. Beth and Jessie probably have the most basic conditions out off all of the volunteers here. They live just off the road in a tiny one room house that they have managed to transform (with a lot of DIY goddessery) into a really cute little home. They share an outside shower room and long drop with their village, and wipe with banana leaves as toilet roll isn't available or is very expensive in their local area. They had a ten minute walk to the bore hole, only currently the nearest bore hole is broken so they have to spend up to an hour and a half fetching water every day. We have been to stay with them twice so far. Megan and I spent a night with them in October, we stayed in a lovely room nearby with beds which was a nice surprise as we had been expecting to sleep on the floor. Beth and Jessie showed us around and we helped them fetch water. They cooked us a lovely pumpkin soup on their charcoal stove, and half way through cooking we had to rush inside as we were rudely interrupted by a rain storm. Megan and I were so excited to be eating veggies, as it's mostly carbs, carbs and more carbs for us at home. We had a really nice night chatting and so on, and we had our first experience using a proper long drop, it was fairly liberating!

Our second trip to Myanzi was for halloween. Beth and Jessie had arranged for most of the volunteers to stay in the two empty rooms next to theirs. In true halloween style, we all got dressed up. I was a very strange pumpkin and Megan was a really crap red hiding hood (she didn't have a hood...) but the prize for the best costumes had to go to the Kyenjojo girls with their Harry Potter themed outfits; Rhona was the room of requirement, Phoebe was Fluffy the three headed dog, Carolien was a hogwarts pumpkin and Elspeth was the marauders map, they looked amazing! We had a fairly sedate night, sat on mats on the concrete floor of one of the empty rooms, chatting and waiting for the soup to cook (pumpkin, of course) and went to bed nicely full and content.

Kaihura.

Phoebe, Rhona, Elspeth and Carolien all live together in the most amazing house in a village called Kaihura in the Kyenjojo district, near Fort Portal. Their house is probably nicer than a lot of uni accommodation back in the UK. They have six bedrooms, a kitchen and living room area with a large table, sofas and chairs, large worksurfaces, a two ring gas hob and a sink with running water, they also have two rather powerful cold showers and two flushing western toilets. The hole house is painted really nice and bright colours, and Rhona's elephant mural on her bedroom wall is amazing. Not to mention the chalk graffiti that Megan and I contributed to significantly the weekend of their party.

The weekend of the party Megan and I turned up a day early and were given a lovely pawpaw soup with a cabbage and tomato salad, we then stayed up chatting and had a nice early night. The next day we woke up and Megan and I made our first chapatis before being taken round Elspeth and Carolien's school, St Marys, which is the school where they all live at. Next we were taken to Phoebe's school on the way to have lunch at Rhona's school. Rhona's school, Bringing Hope, is absolutely tiny and they are currently renting shop fronts to serve as classrooms while their new school building is being built. The kids sang us some lovely songs and then we ate lunch with the teachers. After lunch we headed back to the house to wait for the rest of the vols to turn up. Friday night was the 'preparty party' but that didn't stop some people from drinking far too much gin in a game of ring of fire and then throwing up in the broken toilet (Megan...). Was a really good night though and was good to see the other volunteers. Saturday we had rolexes for breakfast and were driven into Fort Portal by Faith, the director of Bringing Hope. On the way we saw baboons which was amazing! They just hang out on the roadside on the way to FP. In FP we went to the very well stocked super market for much needed alcohol supplies, then were taken to The Mountains of the Moon hotel, which seemed way too posh for all of us tramping in, hungover and scruffy. Had the most amazing beef fajitas and really nice African tea. After our meal had settled we went for a nice dip in the hotel pool after managing to haggle the price down with a lot of begging and pleading as we are poor volunteers. That night we had the official party which was a lot more chilled out than the night before. There were plenty of drinks flowing, which was evident from Hannah's report of their journey back to Masaka, which involved her throwing up on a woman's head out of the window of a bus in FP bus station!

My next trip to Kaihura I took on my own. I spent the night with the girls and as Carolien and Elspeth had the day off the next day, we went to the big Wednesday market just outside of Fort Portal and grabbed a few bargains, as well as cooing over baby rabbits.

Kampala.

Five weeks in we headed to Kampala for our induction weekend with our lovely reps Finn and Lucy. We decided to have a reunion of the awesome foursome and Megan and I met up with Liam and Sam the day before induction officially started and we went for a nice meal and had quite a few laughs. The next day we accidentally special hired a matatu, which resulted in one of the most infamous quotes of our year: 'But you said two five sebo!' After spending far too much money in Garden City book shop, then having our first ever Cafe Javas meal, we had our first long boda ride through Kampala back to MAF guest house. The whole time I had Liam whispering in my ear 'I don't want to die! I don't want to die!' Not very comforting... When we got back the other volunteers had started to turn up and we spent ages gossiping and catching up while stuffing our faces with Lucy's awesome baking. That evening, afer a lovely meal from Lucy, we had our first encounter with Dr Stockley, whose bedside manner is not that dissimilar from Dr House. He gave us his words of wisdom desgined to keep us from going home in a box, the first rule being 'Hakuna Matau' (No matatus!) which we promptly broke as soon as he has left in order to get in to town for our first Uganda clubbing experience. We headed to Iguana, which is a little bit like a tree house, and when it started raining outside, it starting raining inside too. Had an absolutely amazing night, stayed out till about 6 and then squeezed nine of us in a private hire to get us back to our beds that were occupied for about 2 hours before we had to wake up for a day of induction. The next morning we were all feeling a bit worse for wear, but those of us who weren't glued to the bathroom floor had to sit through a teaching discussion with our Dep Rep. Laura. After Lunch everyone made their way up to the American Club to swim off our hangovers before the Uganda vs Kenya football match.

Kabale.

As the term wound down, Meg and I had to take a trip to Kampala for me to go to the doctors about an ear infection. We hung around Kampala for a couple of days and decided there was no point in going home as we needed to travel down to Kabale at the end of the week, so Meg and I decided to head down south early and spend a few days with the boys. The Post Bus is the nicest public transport I've been on in Uganda, but it was still a little unnerving when we had a bus wide prayer that we would arrive at our destination all in one piece. 8 hours later, after accidentally stealing some meat on a stick, we arrived in Kabale and met the boys. We spent four days camping outside/sleeping on their floor when our tent started leaking and chilling at the Royal Cafe and watching films. On the saturday the rest of the group arrived in Kabale and spent the night in order to cross the Rwandan boarder the next day.

After Rwanda we spent another week in Kabale doing plenty of chilling before Liam's nativity play on the friday. The nativity was so cute and really well done, have loads of photos which will hopefull make their way onto the internet at some point! That night we had a bit of a party round a bonfire before the next leg of our journey.

Rwanda.

90 days we have to cross a boarder in order to renew our visas. We hitched to the boarder, and after a mildly stressful time trying to get through the boarder, we headed into noman's land to try and find a lorry we could hitch to Kigali, the capital. In the end we found 'The Sex Bus', which was basically a promotions lorry that had lots of seats in it and was owned by Ugandans promoting Aids awareness and safe sex. The highlights of our journey included one of the guys trying to take of Bex's trousers in an attempt to teach us the Luganda for 'vagina', a guy called Power Man lifting Bex and Liam up with his teeth, and one of the tyres shredding about 60km from Kigali causing us to spend the rest of the way driving slower than pushbikes.

When we finally reached Kigali we were lucky to find a reasonably cheap yet nice guest house to spend the night. Rwanda is much more expensive than Uganda. It also seems much more developed; the Rwandan government have ploughed lots of money into improving the roads and promoting tourism. After a very late night driking, we headed to the genocide museaum on boda bodas, which are very differnt in Rwanda to Uganda, you can only out one person on the back (as oppsed to sometimes 3 in UG) and passengers have to wear helmets. In theory they are safer but having all the precautions made it seem unsafe! At the genocide museaum we got some hangover breakfast, before making our way round the museaum. At the end of it I felt so emotionally drained. It was so interesting, but very heartbreaking, with lots of videos of eye witness accounts and talking to the families of people who were killed in the Rwandan genocide. It also had information on other genocides that have taken place in other parts of the world, which was really interesting to learn about as I'd never even heard of some of them.

After the museaum a group of us zipped back to the hotel to cross the boarder back to our lovely Uganda before it got dark.

Lake Bunyonyi.

A 20 minute motorboat ride across Lake Bunyonyi brought us to the island of Byoona Amagara. Unfortunatly two tourists had drowned off the swimming dock there the previous week and still hadn't been found so it was a little eerie to think about what might be below us. The island was absolutely gorgeous, and the big canteen that had amazing views of the lake (and amazing food!) took on a bit of a ski lodge feel due to the freezing cold weather (for Uganda).

We spent the week chilling, swimming, eating and taking advantage of the free tea all day before 6pm deal. One of the days we decided to hire dugout canoes and set off on an abitious voyage to Punishment Island, a tiny island on the lake with only one tree on it, where women who got pregnant before marriage or had abortions were banish to to die unless they got lucky and a man who couldn't afford a downry rowed over to save them from death. I was on steering duty, and Will and Sam were on entertainment duty, resulting in several music videos being made on that trip! About halfway through the week Abi and I volunteered to go back to the mainland to pick up supplies (ie cheap alcohol and mixer) and hitchiked into Kabale with the Ugandan Marines. At the end of our stay we were sad to leave, but excited that we would finally be heading somewhere a bit warmer!

Kampala.

After Bunyonyi we had a stopover at Edirisa in Kabale, with a night out at Match and Mix, Kabale's best club. The next morning we set out early to hitchike up to Kampala. After a rather comical moment where we accidentally got into a taxi and the realised our mistake and got out, but they wouldn't open the boot to get our bags out so I jumped back on while the car crawled down the road slowly until they parked up and relenquished our bags. After that we were luckier and ended up a group of 7 of in the back of a truck for the 3 hour jounrey to Mbarara. At Mbarara we were lucky enough to be picked up by a congolese couple and spent the rest of the journey to kamapala in a rather luxurious (air conditioned!) car. After a day of illness, I visited Owino market for the first time. Owino is a completely crazy maze of stalls and sifting through the piles and piles of shoes, clothes and whatever else you can think of is a bit like hunting for treasure. It's not the most fun place to be a muzungu in, with people grabbing you left right and centre to tell you how much they love you and so on and so forth, but it's such a fascinating place to be and you can get some great deals if you haggle enough.

Entebbe.

In November Liam and Sam had an Italian guy (Fred) volunteering at their project. After hearing our travel plans he decided to come back out to Uganda to spend the holidays travelling with us, so we headed to Entebbe to spend a couple of days at the backpackers, a couple of days at the zoo and to pick Fred up from the airport.

We arrived at Entebbe backpackers in the early evening and were very excited to spot what we thought was a pool in the gardens, but actually turned out to be a fountain that people we using as a paddling pool. The next morning, Hannah, Sarah and I hired bikes and set off for a cyle around Entebbe in search of a nice beach. Having not ridden a bike in several years, and having a bike that was a little too big for my rather short legs it was comical to say the least, but after a while we got going and barring getting lost a few times, it was a rather successful outing, even if our bums were severely bruised after the ordeal.

That night we decided to check out the Entebbe nightlife and headed to a club called Knightriders, as it was ladies' night. It was the first club I've been to in Uganda where the Muzungus were more creepy than the locals, and the place was crawling with prostitutes. Other than that it was a really good night, and rather surreal when I was lying in my tent falling asleep and was woken up by sam bellowing 'FRED'S HERE!' at about 4 in the morning.

The next day, with a substantial number of the group nursing terrible hangovers, we set off for Entebbe Zoo where we had booked to spend the night in Bandas. After a mix up with the booking and quite a lot of arguing with the receptionist, we got lead on what seemed like the longest walk of our lives to the accommodation, which was right by the giraffe pen. Staying in the zoo was really cool and rather surreal when we were wandering through in the dark after hours on our way back from dinner. Even meaner than the zoo staff were the grey colobus monkeys that hung around the entrance, waiting to mug innocent tourists of their breakfasts. Beth C got her eggs stolen by a particularly mean monkey and Beth P and I both got slapped by one of the monkeys, not to mention the ones nibbling on Hannah's skirt. From then on it was war between us and the monkeys. The accmmodation wasn't the best, the bandas were nice but the water broke and there was raw sewage leaking from a grate outside, not to mention the really grumpy staff, but we made the most of it and had a really good time.

Banda Island.

We spent our christmas on one of the Ssese islands on Lake Victoria called Banda Island. After a three hour motor boat ride across the lake, we finally disembarked onto the beach and were greeted by two very smelly and hyperactive dogs, and the owner Alex. After having a tour of the accommodation and 'bar' area, we were a little freaked out. The rooms and bed smelled like rat wee and there were bats and rats swooping and scuttling all over the place. Alex informed us that meals are taken in the 'castle' at the other side of the island, and despite how freaked out we were, our curiosity kept us from swimming back to the mainland. The castle was rather impressive, and meals were served in cauldrons and eaten at the impressive 20ft long table, with bats ducking and diving overhead to eat up all the insects and create even more atmosphere. Ignoring the giant spiders, the island was absolutely beautiful and listening to the waves crashing againtst the pebble beach was so relaxing. At night we sat round a bonfire and tried to hide ourselves from the 'Ssese snow', which is a rather euphamistic term for the hundreds of thousands of lake flies that swarmed around the bright light of the fire in such a thick cloud that it looked like a blizzard.

Christmas eve was incredibly atmospheric, we woke up to find a massive storm going on and sat around the table in the castle it felt more like christmas eve on and island on a loch in Scotland rather than a tropical rainforest in Uganda.Unfortunately, I had left my newly washed pants in a bucket on the beach while I waited for line space to dry them, unfortunately the storm had caused the water to rise and had carried the bucket, with the majority of the pants I own, off into Lake Victoria, Bex managed ti rescue four pairs of them, but the rest have been lost to the lake.

On christmas day we woke up buzazing with excitement, Liam disappeared and was replaced by 'backpacker santa' with the aid of Rhona's paints. As a group we did a secret santa where we all had to make and fill a stocking for another member of the group. We all tramped up to the castle in our pyjamas in true christmas morning style. It was so exciting having santa hand them out, and we took it in turns to open our stocking so everyone else could see what we had got. It was so much fun and it really did feel like xmas morning. That afternoon, on the beach, we held our talent show. The 'sun catchers' performed a dance that they had spent the past couple of weeks perfecting, Abi and Bex perfomed a Ugandan version of 'That's not My Name' by the Ting Tings (are yooouuu call-ing me white girl?) and our group perfomed 'Uganda knows it's christmas' featuring an excellent broad scottish accent from Rhona and great dance moves (as usual) from Sam and Will. For Christmas dinner we had fresh tilapia ('actually') lasagne and lots and lots to drink. A very merry christmas indeed.

Boxing day moring half the group decided to leave, leaving a few of us on the beach to soak up the sun on the best day we'd had in terms of weather since reaching the island. Really glad we stayed for boxing day, my legs are not brilliant white anymore!

Lugazi

After the island I spent one night at Tuhende Safari Lodge (AKA Kampala home), then after a Cafe Javas and emergenct underwear buying session, Bex and I hopped in a matau to spend a night at her project in Lugazi. Bex and Abi like in a small two room house on the school grounds. Their house is the noisiest I've ever been in as their cielings do not reach the roof and they can hear everything that goes on in their next door neighbours house, including the rooster that their neighbours insist on keeping inside with them at night.

A highlight of the trip in terms of humour was me attempting to ride Abi's bike, which is possibly the most humiliating thing I have done since being in Uganda. Even though Bex had put the seat down for me, I still had real trouble mouting the bike and after several failed attempting and one of Bex's colleagues suggesting she doesn't take me on the main road (I had to insit I do know how to ride a bike, I'm just a bit challenged in the leg length department) I managed to get on and we were off down to the village to pick up rolexes for our dinner. Luckily there was a slope in the village I could mount my bike from...

Kampala.

This week we have spent so long in Kampala I'm starting to feel like Safari Lodge is my home. We stayed here to celebrate NYE, which was great fun despite being filled with drama. Some of us spent the countdown at a new club called Mish Mash, which was a bit like being in a really posh house/art gallery/ bar. Jessie and Bex made it just in time with 2 minutes to go, we had loads of fun with the free drinks and Jessie got her sparklers out of the countdown and we could see fireworks going off all over Kampala. After sitting in the treehouse for a while, most of us decided to head to Bubbles as our rep Finn was there and said it was really good. After Bubbles we rounded the night off at Iguana and when I finally crawled into bed it was 5:30am.

New years day was a bit more subdued, we got Uchumi sandwiches and sat on Garden City rooftop before waving Bex off to get the 15 hour overnight coach to Kenya to meet her friend at Nairobi airport. That eveni8ng we went to the very yummy Indian down the road for a curry, then watched a film on Fred's laptop that I lasted about 20 minutes into before crashing and falling asleep.

Ou trip to Jinja has been delayed a bit due to loads of stress concerning Jessie's passport after she got her bag snatched the week before. So last night we decided to treat ourselves and went for curry at the restraunt owned by a guy that Abi met on one of the many nights out we've had in the past couple of weeks, we got a great deal and had loads of delicious food. My stomach still hurt this morning!

What's next?

We're off to Jinja this afternoon to meet up with the rest of the gang and celebrate Sam's 18th birthday. Tomorrow morning Beth P and I are going on a two day horseback safari which I am so exicted for, though a little bit dreading how my arse will feel after 36 hours in the saddle! On Saturday there is a group of us thinking of heading off on a very impromptu trip to Kenya to soak up the sun on white sandy beaches and explore the marine national park. After that we'll be returning home, and I need to prepare for the new term beginning on the 31st of Jan!