Another week gone by

7/9/09
This day wasn't interesting at all, we just wrote all day

7/10/09
Grace came today, and another person named Janette has also been coming. Grace is pregnant and is due in September, so she is starting to get tired during the day and has gotten someone to help her. I don't like her as much. I was really irritated the other day when she opened and drank an entire box of juice by herself. I didn't even get any.

Today we had a meeting at the foundation. They had moved it to this day in place of the usual Wednesday meeting. It wasn't very interesting either, although it is nice that things are starting to reach a state of consistency. After Dustin and I stopped for a beer and to talk. We actually spent a lot of time talking about the things that we have learned since we have been here, and how this experience has changed our direction. There are a lot of things, but they all seem to be good. I'm very happy with my decision to come here, even though we have only achieved about half of what we set out to do.

We invited some people over for Sunday to cook a meal for them. They all seemed pretty excited about it. We haven't yet picked out a menu, but we want to cook somethings that are very American.

I still haven't made it to the Nile. I'm getting antsy to do it, but it keep having trouble finding a way to get there.

7/11/09
I slept in today, which was pretty awesome. I spent some time writing and had one brief interview. I went to the same place where I saw the vice president, but I didn't see him this time.

Since it was Saturday, we went out with our friend Joan for a little while and by ourselves for a little while. Dustin got pick-pocketed, but he is crafty enough to place a small wallet that just contains business cards in his back pocket, while he keeps all of his money and credit cards in the front. I thought it was pretty clever. At the bar I got in a long debate with some guy about how to get a white woman. He couldn't understand that white women expect to be treated as equals with men, and that men are expected to be able to take care of and feed themselves. I'm pretty sure that if most Ugandan men married white women they would starve to death.

7/12/09
Today we had our friends Joan and Willy over for dinner. We told them we would make an American meal for them. We finally settled on a menu of guacamole and pita chips for an appetizer, then a cucumber and tomato salad, for the meal, country fried steak and gravy, broccoli and cheese sauce, and baked potatoes, for dessert was banana bread. It all turned out really well, and they ate everything up. We waited to cook everything so that they could watch us cook. Of course, they were particularly impressed with Dustin's ability to cook. Willy was sure that Dustin was amazing. I told Willy that everything we were doing was really easy, and that he could definitely do it on his own if he choose.

It was fun to watch then look at all the food, and not know exactly how to eat everything. Willy really liked the gravy, and put it on his broccoli along with the cheese sauce. I actually enjoyed the incident because I was able to interpret his actions. Ugandans really like sauces of any kind on their food. they really hate anything that is dry, so everything is cooked to be extremely moist or they load it down with some kind of sauce. At first Grace gave us a hard time because we didn't eat enough sauce, but I think she finally figured that we just don't eat our food that way.

We were able to sit down and show them pictures of our families, they were intrigued by the pictures of different holidays like Christmas and Halloween. I think they enjoyed being able to see where we come from.

They stayed for a long time, till 11:00 and afterwards we had to stay up and work on our research proposal. We found out on Friday that our presentation was supposed to be on Tuesday. So we were scrableing a bit. But the presentation itself is not going to be the hard part, we also alloted a certain amount of time where we are asked questions.

7/13/09
We had an early meeting at the foundation this morning. We spent the afternoon working on our proposal. I've noticed that i've been very tired lately. Mentally I'm starting to get tired I think. We are always constantly thinking about our research, and it seems like almost everything is of interest to our research.

We had a short meeting with Dr. Bagenda. He had been in the states for a couple of weeks and this was our first time seeing him in a while. He has turned out to be a very good mentor and supervisor. He has a certain ease about him that makes him very easy to work with and talk to. We discussed our presentation with him, and then settled down for bed. We had another early morning.