Oh man. I am exhausted. A big group of us just returned from Jinja this afternoon where we had been hanging out this weekend. On Saturday we went white water rafting all day on the Nile. That was an experience, let me tell you. Though I've been rafting a significant amount of times in Colorado, nothing could have prepared me for this. We were hitting class 5 rapids and one time we accidentally spun into a class 6 rapid - which is declared "unraftable" for a reason. We flipped the raft twice. Not gonna lie, I thought it was over for me more than once. So much water. And so little air. To understand how ridiculous it was, check out some of the pictures on facebook that I'm recently tagged in. In a couple of them our raft is literally vertical in a sea of pure white. Anyway. I feel like I've been hit by a train in regards to soreness and depleted lung-capacity but otherwise I'm fine. It was so amazingly fun, after the initial terror. Then this morning a good amount of the group went bungee jumping. Yes, they purposely free-fell off a platform over the Nile with only a stretchy rope attached to their ankles. You can guess how quickly I opted out of that one. No thank you. All in all, it was a very retreat-ish weekend complete with hot showers and hawaiian pizza for dinner. Glorious.
Classes are going pretty well. It seems like we have a lot of homework but in reality, we have a severe lack of motivation. We're in Uganda. Studying is not high on the list. Actually Mark, the USP Director, said if he had it his way we wouldn't have to take classes here at all. But he realizes if we weren't getting school credit for this, most of us probably wouldn't be here in the first place. So it is what it is. My classes are all pass-fail, as in JBU will only take the credit and not the "grade" so as to not compromise their academic integrity or something. So I'm not planning on worrying too much. In Faith and Action we just finished "The Primal Vision" by John Taylor about the integration of the Gospel and African Traditional Religion. It was super good. And my African Lit class is wonderful. Our professor is a little old Ugandan man named Dr. Patrick and he's so funny. And intelligent. He's studied here in Africa, as well as the UK and America. My Luganda class, which at first was fun, is now dread. This language is too hard. I'm gonna declare it right here and now. Instead of having just masculine and feminine endings for the nouns like Latin or Spanish, Luganda has 8 different "noun classes" that divide up the nouns into totally arbitrary groups all with different endings. AND then all adjectives or possessives of any kind have to match the noun class endings. Like, they would say "Maama wange" (my Mom) but "mukwano gwange" (my friend). The two "my"s are different because Mom and friend are different noun classes. Thus Luganda is a lot of memorization. Also, my family here doesn't speak Luganda because they're from a different district in the North. And actually most UCU students come from the West and don't speak Luganda either. So my practice of the language mostly comes at my internship. Anyway, this coupled with the fact that the class is 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, makes me very grumpy. The class is over in 2 weeks and I absolutely cannot wait.
My internship..... oh boy. A lot of frustration, but it's only been 2 weeks. I keep telling myself to take some deep breaths and be patient. So far my partner Rhiannon and I have thoroughly cleaned and reorganized the library, played with the kids in the playroom for multiple hours on end, and sat in on some "classes" at the school. We wanted to observe some classes so we went into a classroom after lunch where the kids appeared to be waiting for their teacher to return. We thought she had stepped out to talk to someone or maybe make some copies. So we waited 10 minutes...20 minutes...30 minutes.... 45 minutes....1 hour....2 hours total! The kids were in the classroom. Alone. For two hours. On a school day. These were like 3rd graders. Some sat and were quiet. Others were going wild. It was unbelievable. Rhiannon and I sat there in disbelief. The next day, we went in to observe a different classroom (2nd grade) and the same thing happened except the teacher finally showed up after an hour or so, did some quick grading, and then dismissed everyone. We've been offered no explanation, and the kids say this happens all the time. I have no words. The lack of structure is very evident. Rhiannon and I were told that this experience would be as good as we make it. We keep being told we need to "take initiative". But honestly aside from standing up and teaching the class myself, I'm not sure what kind of "initiative" I'm supposed to be taking.
Last piece of news before I drag myself off to bed. My home family is fantastic. They're so fantastic, in fact, that even though our two-week homestays were supposed to end Friday, I've decided I want to stay with the Bilaks for the rest of the semester. My Momma and sister kept dropping hints that they wished I could stay longer, and they would make plans for me to come back and visit often. The more I thought about it and prayed about it, the more I felt that this was where I needed to be. So I flat out told my Momma I loved living with them and asked if I could stay. She of course was delighted. I talked to the USP staff and I'm supposed to having another meeting tomorrow to seal the deal. They wanted me to take this weekend to think about all my options, such as staying with them 3 nights a week and staying on campus 4 nights and splitting it some way. But when I thought about it and talked to my Momma, we agreed that that would be too much work carting my stuff back and forth and not enough stability. I need to pick a location to live and stick with that. Honestly, I'm less homesick when I'm living with my family and I'm interacting more with the Ugandan people and culture when I'm there compared to living on campus where its easy to get distracted by other Americans, my own secluded room, and the internet. My family offers me a stable safe-haven and I'm gonna take it. Plus, the thought of leaving them makes my throat constrict. They've been SO good to me and I've learned more than I believe I would staying here. So I'll keep you updated on the final verdict, but I'm pretty sure this is the new plan. This would make me an "IMME" student with no dorm room, but access to "IMME Quarters" which has very fast internet and 1928347 outlets in a building specifically designed for those of us living full-time with families who need a place during the day on campus to chill and do homework since we have no dorms. That's another perk.
Hope everyone is well at home =] Miss you guys.
