Greetings from Uganda!!!

Hey everyone!!! So it's been a week so far and I'm still alive yea!!!! There is so much to say and so little time to say it in so I will try to type as much as I can because we can only use the internet for so long. Anyway, it is absolutely amazing here, I don't know what other words to use to describe everything that I have seen so far. Even flying into Entebbe was an adventure. Normallly when you fly into an airport you see the city illuminated below you, but here it was pitched black and the airport was the smallest one I have ever seen in my whole life. The scenery is beautiful, as long as you look past the barefooted children roaming the streets.

All the volunteers are cool too, it seems like we have know each other forever and we get along really well. My group members, Matt and Katie, are really nice and we have a lot in common.

Iganga town is so different, there is only one paved road everything else is dirt. And there are so many people!! They are everywhere, we learned that 50% of the population is under 14!! That's insane. The food here is good, but all we eat is beans and rice and fruit. But the fruit is delicious mmmmm the best pinapple and mango ever!!

We've been in our village for a couple days now and the people are soo welcoming we always have children in our yard that want to play with us, which makes it difficult to get any work done but they are too cute to ignore. We play soccer with them and sing songs. They like to teach of lusoga words and laugh at us when we misprounounce them. The language is hard to learn but we are doing okay, we have the basic greetings down. Good thing we have a translator.

We have already begun our work, we have traveled to the health center and looked at the records to see the most common diseases. I was astonished by what I saw. Page after page after page of malaria diagnosis. A worker at the clinic said that 80% of the population was infected and of that 50% have complicated malaria that doesn't respond to first line drugs and the clinic has no stock of second lines drugs to treat that form of malaria. We have a lot of work ahead of us. We have started interviewing the village and they all say that we are very welcome in there village and they are happy to see us.

Oh guess what!!! I had my first marriage proposal!! It was so weird!! He said he wanted to court me and asked if I was married. Then he told me he loved me and wanted to get married. I had to say no of course but he didn't understand why. It was interesting and hopefully it won't happen again. :) don't worry andrea no one stubbed their big toe ;)

So that's all the time I have right now to update and I dont' know when I will be able to again but I love you all and ttyl!!

ps. congrats kriselle on getting cleared.

pss. I don't think I will be able to send post cards:( sorry guys it's too expensive and I don't have the money I hope you can forgive me!!

okay that's all love you