Where to start?

Hello Hello Hello!  This is my first successful internet session from my new home.  I'm sitting in my front room (functions as a mud room for shoes and bikes and such) near the window where the reception seems to be the best.

I have a half hour left of internet time, so instead of writing you all individually, I figured this was the best way to update everyone who wants to know on what's going on.  Maybe next time I'll get an email out, but that may have to wait until tonight or tomorrow. 

I don't even know where to start.  I'm well, I'm here safe and sound, and I'm really enjoying my new home.  I feel shell shocked pretty much with scads of new faces and names and a new language and new home and new bathroom habits to get used to and the list goes on.

I was feeling pretty sick when I left the states, it started midday on saturday and I didn't really feel well again until I woke up from a good sleep on the flight from Heathrow to Entebbe on monday morning.  Philly was good, but I was kinda antsy to just get on with things.  London was okay but I wasn't feeling very well and was totally head bobbing in a cafe trying to read to stay awake for a couple of hours, it was quite embarrassing but what could I do?  Nothing.

Watched only 1 movie in all of the 14-15 hours of flying that we did, I got lots of sleep, and made use of the infamous barf bag on the first flight (I've been known to do this before, but at least this time I made it to the bathroom and no one was in it :)

Kampala was brief (maybe there 2 hours and most of that in airports of various kinds) but fine.  I saw the Entebbe Presbyterian church, a mosque and a Hindu temple on the ride in from Entebbe to Kampala.  I also saw a billboard advocating sexual purity that said "Say no to Sugar Daddies."  Stephanie and I (poor Stephanie, she was a saint, I was not the best traveling partner as you can imagine while being sick and all) flew with Pat Abbott (my housemate), Jennifer and Caleb Myhre and Melen (Jonah's wife) and two of her girls in a little 10 passenger plane flown by Laura the MAF pilot (I have pictures).  One of the little girls tossed her cookies during the flight (I thankfully kept my cookies to myself), but I was very empathetic...no bathroom option for her...

The arrival on the airstrip was everything the pictures you've seen entail.  The kids the jeeps the waves the hugs.  I unpacked (decided not to nap but to try to push through until nighttime so as to actually sleep at night), and then went to dinner with Pat at the Pierce's (David and Annaliese and their children Naomi and Quinn) where we had a very yummy pasta with tomato sauce, breadsticks and avocado dinner with watermelon for dessert.  Then I went home and went to bed and actually slept.  Yep, under my mosquito net tucked in around my mattress after having used the outside latrine called the "Cho."  It's much nicer than I expected.  Very doable.

Oh and I forgot to tell you about meeting my first Ugandans.  Tipo and Biwa and Antonina and Mabel.  You sit down before you're introduced, and then you say "Olio"  (oh-lye-oh) and other things but I only have the Olio down.  Then they all started chuckling and talking and looking at me and then at each other and pointing at their cheeks (I could tell they were laughing about my dimples :)  They were very nice, and Pat translated for me.  Most people do not speak English.

Then Tuesday morning I walked to the Nyahuka health center with Stephanie and she introduced me to a million people it seemed, I remember only a few names...I'm trying but it's going to take me a while I can tell to learn names and connect them with the right faces (and the families!  Ha!  forget it!  that's gonna take years because everybody's somehow related to everybody else and not using terms I'm used to).  Rounds in the clinic was super fun!  Palpated a spleen (very fun), held for an LP which Scott Will (PA) got successfully and was yellowish/cloudy which means meningitis so they isolated the kid who was having seizures (only 1 isolation room, had to move the TB kid out into the main ward), and we think the child died over night, hard to put the story together really from people who weren't there and there's no documentation of anything.  

Had lunch at the Myhre's (Ugandan sweet potatoes and G-nut sauce (like peanuts), and a leaf of some sort that I can remember the name of that was prepared like spinach (casava I think).  It was fine.  I read in the afternoon and then we had dinner for Stephanie's birthday at the girls' house next door which was good (cous cous, stirfry, greenbeans, bread, cabbage salad and wine :) and then home made ice cream and a dance party for Steph's bday at the Myhre's.

Then to bed and then this morning to rounds again at the Health Center, then HIV clinic which was fun too, although I can't do anything there yet, just watching.  

Beautiful people, huge smiles, great hugs.  They wave with both hands here, I think it's fun :)  

I've seen lots of lizzards (one with a bright blue head) and goats and chickens.

Okay, I've gotta get off, more later!  Greetings from Uganda!

Oh and Skype isn't going to work from here, so sorry for getting all of your hopes up.