Week three (erin)

Hello,
Just had a lovely experience at the internet cafe. There were no computers available so we sat outside and ordered sodas and sponge cake. After our first bite, I saw a wee little ant crawling inside my piece of cake...then we realized they were all through it and we had probably eaten a few! Fun. They apologized and explained that they are just used to it when there is no refrigeration. I think they were laughing at us too but what else is new?

It's fun having a cell phone, now I'm gonna want one when I get home! I like texting. People here answer their cell phones no matter where they are or what they're doing. Even during important meetings, they just answer it, without any excuses. When Carli went to the doctor for her malaria, even he answered the phone while she was in the room talking to him! You've just got to laugh :)

So I was sick all weekend. I had a sore throat and achy muscles/joints. But Carli's homeopathic medicine and my advil cold&sinus pulled me through. I'm pretty much okay today, just tired. i think it was just a cold.

It was an "office" day at my practicum and they had nothing planned for me. So he got me to write up some learning objectives for my outreach visits tomorrow. Then I watched the others read their newspapers...then I stood outside while the girl washed the floors. Then I went to the mental health department next door cuz my supervisor wanted me to learn the basics of mental health. A man came in and he could hardly walk. He had lesions on his wrists, ankles and neck from being tied up with rope. He gets aggressive and destructive and his family didn't know what to do with him so they locked him in a room and tied him up. His left arm is completely swollen and he can't move his fingers. Yikes.

Our food situation is obviously not as dire as that of the people at the hospital but I have to admit that we are getting a bit desperate ourselves in our lack of good nutritious meals. As an almost vegetarian, I have to confress that I put the money out to eat a big steak the other night at the hotel across the street because I have felt so weak and drained, needed some iron. I'd eat just about anything here just to get more protein and iron. But what I could really kill for is a nice big green salad and gelato ice cream. I've also been craving cheezies for some reason. Ya, we're getting pretty sick of the food here. We don't have a lot of options. Even Carli, the vegetarian said she was ready to gnaw on the butt of a cow! It was really funny cuz there's cows all over the roads here...but even that didn't stop me from eating the steak. And by the way...I will never eat beans or rice again when I get home. I am very rice and beans out. Mom can you believe I eat beans everyday for lunch when I wouldn't even try them at home, haha!

We are going to go into Kampala, the capital, on Saturday and stay overnight. We will stay at the Backpacker's hostel. We are going to the Shop-rite which is like a Save-On-Foods, and we are hoping to get some good "western" food. We are going to also get some material for someone to make us some skirts. Capris are not in style here apparently :)

We had a nice relaxing weekend with all the neighbours away. Our Chilean friend, Einer was here for the weekend so we had some company. We watched a couple of movies on Jen's laptop when there was power and basically just rested. We played the travel monopoly and travel frustration.

Well, I think that's it for now. I'll have to try and get hungry again for dinner, the ant thing kind of surpressed my appetite. The weather has been a bit cooler the last couple of days so it's been very nice.


Bye for now,
weeraba (goodbye)