Oh well.

I've been trying for about the last 25 minutes to upload pictures and it's just not happening, I'll ask somebody else if it's possible...

A second night of really good sleep to be thankful for.

Yesterday was a really beautiful drive over to Bundibugyo town to the Hospital with Scott. Scott did Ultrasounds for an hour or two which were super fun to watch, in the past I've never been able to see what everybody thinks they see on U/S but after several in a row I could finally identify some of what I was looking at. He found fraternal twins on one woman who couldn't figure out why she was so big (evidently this area has one of the highest incidences of twins in the world), and confirmed a healthy fetal heart rate on a woman who the midwives were having a hard time finding a heartbeat on. Then there was the mom with her son who had stuck a coffee bean up his nose 2 days ago...needless to say it's not really ultrasound material, so Scott sent them to the Operating Theatre to get it out. The Hospital was quite nice. Scott also showed me the graves of the 4 healthcare workers who died of Ebola (including Jonah's). It was really really sobering. One Dr. (Jonah), one clinical officer (like a PA or NP), one eye assistant, and the head nurse.

We stopped by the market in town and I got veggies and a pineapple, and then we stopped by the bank and I got some money out of the ATM (yep, an ATM! Evidently it's new within the last year).

Another highlight of the ride was a waft of roasting vanilla beans along the road. The smells here are going to take some getting used to (quite possibly I may never get used to them). So when we were driving along and i got a waft of this warm sweet smell, all of a sudden Scott stops the truck and says, "did you smell that?!" and backs up and shows me the bean pods drying in the sun, and I inhaled as deeply as I could while it lasted.

I'm making progress on the email inbox, am down to about 1500, so soon I'll be able to spend less time managing things online that I can do offline and make better use of the time we have online.

Today I believe is market day (I've heard it's pretty intense because it's soooo packed) and then it seems that people spend the rest of the day answering the knocks at their doors. I've been given a period of 6 months or so that I'm not allowed to give any money out, which I'm really thankful for because it's a boundary that will allow me to get to know people first and the lay of the land and so forth. Evidently everything here is so relational (above and beyond most any other value) that it's very appropriate to have a boundary like this.

I can tell that I'm in a honeymoon period right now in regards to being here. I can tell that there are going to be really hard things and times, I just don't know when my countenance/attitude will change.

Let's see, let me close with another word I'm learning...It will be really helpful for me to learn as much Lubwisi as I can because (compared to the girls who are teaching the missionary kids) I'll have a significant amount of interaction with Ugandans, but I'm pretty slow, so we'll see how it goes. It's fun though. "webale" (way-ba-lay) = thank you.