Our Journey to Kampala

Mist. Red earth. Cries from unusual birds mixed with the soft mooing of a cow. Roosters crow to the sun, "Wake up! Don't you know it's morning in Kampala?!?"

A few of the observations I (Abbey) have made this moring. Wide awake at 2am under your mosquito netting you take in a lot of new sounds. But let me back up a bit...

We arrived yesterday in Kampala, from Seattle via London. We had a 9 hour layover in the Olympic host town and we were able to take the tube to the East end to view the Olympic village & stadiums. We couldn't get too close without an event ticket but it was worth it to see people from all over the world proudly supporting their countries & wearing crazy outfits with their colors! We also spent a little time down town exploring. It was great to strech the legs & try to adjust to the time difference.

We boarded our flight to Kampala and arrived 9 hours later with all of our luggage (8 BAGS!!!) arriving! YAY! The Lord really blessed us with safe travels! We were immediately met by David the school's bus driver who picked us and another teacher up. We didn't even know this lady was on our flight but we all took the journey from Entebee to Kampla on some severly congested highways! After a bumpy ride down a red dirt road we entered a very nice gated apartment building. I said, "Do we live here?" and the answer was yes. It is a small building with 4 apartments, we later found out that 3 out of 4 apartments are rented by couples working with our school. We have yet to meet any of them but soon I'm sure! When we scoped out the new digs we discovered that Terri from the school had left us a sweet welcome note & a few staple items in the fridge to get us through the weekend. How kind! Our apartment is cute. We have two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, bathroom with flushing toilet and a living room with a table & chairs to eat at and a sofa, two chairs and a coffee table. It has been an adjustment & I'm sure will continue to be! Our shower put out hot water for about 5min. & then decided hot water was over rated. We both ended up taking showers eventually because we stunk after 36hrs of traveling!

In the afternoon we decided to walk to the school & check it out. We are a block and a half, maybe only a block, from the school. Praise the Lord! We wandered around and met Tim from Canada who is on the school board & was working with Jonthan and they were overseeing some new construction on the school grounds. Ernie was super excited because they were working on enlarging the soccer fields, putting in a new basketball court & building an office & storage area for his posistion! I was exctied because they were finishing up the new high school classrooms! There is a church being built on campus too! A lot is happening. It's a beautiful campus with stone buildings, palm trees and a little stream flowing through. Quaint little bridges connect campus over the water. As we wandered back to leave we were greeted by Terri (the one who left us all our goodies & she's been our constant e-mail contact)! She gave me a huge hug & showed us arround the administrative building. She even gave us a map and told us how to get to a few places (like the "grocery store" a loosely used term) in the neighborhood. We felt really good about connecting with her.

We did take a walk to the grocery store (more like mini-mart) to get a few more items & were generally impressed with the selection. Even a few brand names we recognized! Our peanut butter even came from the United States! Our neighborhood is really nice & it's great to feel like we're living in the culture.

So today is our first full day in Uganda. So far so good though I did have a few tears when I read a note from my mommy tucked in our luggage & saw pictures of the family we're missing so much. I can't help but feel like we're coming home in a month or so & it's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this apartment is supposed to be 'home' and that in a few months we'll be bringing our son here to live. CRAZY!

Well, keep the prayers comin' we're sure feeling their strength! Orientation starts on Monday & we can't wait to get started! Blessings to you & your families!

Missing hot showers & drinking tap water,

Abbey
PS Pictures will be coming.  It's a struggle to get them uploaded :)