Entebbe

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I'll start with a brief about my Friday. I woke up early expecting to have a session in the morning. If I had one then I would need to leave my place around 9am. I decided to wake up at 8am and send some texts. I didn't get any replies so around 8:45 I decided to take a shower. Since I still heard nothing I figured I would just wait. Finally around 9:15 I got a reply from May (the leader) saying that she wants to have a meeting at MUBS about the swITch project. Since I was already awake I just got some breakfast and then headed to the university.

I spent some time on the internet and around noon Roy showed up. We then sat there waiting for May. It's wasn't until about 1:45pm that she showed up. After all of that waiting she finally just said that she would try to get more days for us to teach so that we would work more than just two days a week. I thought that that was good since I didn't fly all the way out there to do nothing. She didn't have anything confirmed though so we still didn't get much direction about our project (for instance when is it going to end which is pretty important when you're trying to plan a syllabus). Overall the information that she told us could have been sent in a text message. I went back to the hostel and met one of the new interns from Australia, Rachel. Everyone that night decided to go out but I was so tired that I just stayed at home so it was a rather uneventful day.

Saturday I woke up full of excitement for the Uruguay v. South Korea and the USA v. Ghana soccer games. Some people said they were going to go the beach at Lake Victoria. I at first declined for fear that I would miss the first game (which started at 5pm). I know it sounds like I should easily get home in time but I know that things happen very slowly. I figured though that I'm only here for two months so I should experience as much as I can. Also I heard that they had TVs with the games on them at the beach so then I agreed to go. My assumption of getting a late start ended up being true as we didn't even leave for the beach until about 1:30pm. It 's about an hour away as well. Martin was leading the way on how to get there. There's a pro and con to traveling with Martin. The pro is that he always tries to find the cheapest price for cabs and meals. The con is that you can spend a lot of time waiting for a cab or finding a cheap place to eat just to save yourself $1. This was one of those moments where a 1 hour trip ended up taking two hours to save us each a total of about 50 cents. Instead of just taking a collective taxi to Entebbe we ended up take a taxi to city center and then go and catch a bus. The bus is cheaper but it operates the same way as the taxi. It doesn't leave until it is full. We probably waited on the bus for about 20 mins before it finally left.

After we got off the bus we still had to do some walking around before Martin was able to find the beach area. We had to pay to enter and then finally saw the beach. It was packed with people and since Lake Victoria is so big it really does look like the ocean. The only problem is that it is fresh water which means there's no salt to kill off many of the germs and it is heavily polluted. None of us went swimming since many people previously told us not to go swimming in the lake. It was still very pretty though and it was nice to get out of Kampala.

We walked around the area for a bit before I convinced everyone watch the Uruguay v. South Korea match. After the match we headed back to Kampala so that we could get home in time to watch the USA game.

There was lots of traffic on the way back so we barely made it in time for the game. We didn't have time for a sit down dinner so I just grabbed a quick pizza from the supermarket. Dylan (American), Nick (Indian), Susie (Chinese), Tim (Dutch), Laurel (American), and I all went to Centenary Park to watch the match at the outdoor tent. Unfortunately the match was against Ghana, the only African team still in the World Cup. The entire bar was cheering for Ghana. It was as though Ghana was Uganda. When Ghana won the place went absolutely crazy. Everyone was cheering and dancing. I was pretty disappointed but at least I wouldn't have to watch the USA play Uruguay in the next round. Once again I'll be cheering against the African team since the next match would be Uruguay v. Ghana.

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