Going Crazy near the Equator

Hello Everyone!

I made it through a week of a million papers, or 5, without too much damage done. I did go a little nuts and got most of my hair cut off! More to follow on that one, along with pictures, of course.

So, since last week was so utterly stressful a few friends and I decided a sleepover/movie night was in order on Friday night. We also decided this would be the night to cut my hair off. So we got Pringles, chocolate, and orange juice at the Supermarket and then headed to Jen and Danielle’s house. Besides us girls, Drew and Josh also came (don’t worry, they didn’t spend the night). Once we arrived at their home we made African tea (basically black chai tea with a lots of sugar in it. We drink this at least twice a day, everyday). Actually, first we talked for about what movie we were going to start with. Our choices were: the Manchurion Candidate, a political thriller/sci fi, or Just Like Heaven, a cute chick flick. We decided it would be best for the girls if we started with the thriller and ended with the chick flick. However, before we even started the movie or the tea Drew and Josh wanted to cut some of my hair off. Why I agreed to this I have no idea, but I did. So they each cut off a pigtail and I was left with a really great reverse mullet for a while.

So the movie. Weird. That was my first impression. But then it was kind of scary, so I had to hold tightly to my Moose. Overall, though, it was a greatly entertaining movie that took a lot of thinking to try and figure out what is going to happen. Brothers of mine, you would probably like it a lot. But for those who don’t like violence and death, probably don’t watch it.

Ok, after the movie Drew and Josh went home. Girl party! Sort of. We ate dinner… well, Jen and Danielle did. My stomach was churning for some reason, and I threw up (again!!), so I chose to not eat that night. Don’t worry, it wasn’t parasites and I was fine the next day. Once they finished eating it was time to finish up my hair! We searched around for the scissors and couldn’t find them. Uh oh! I remembered that Drew had them last so we called him. Josh answered and said, “Well, the good news is that they’re not in Drew’s pocket. The bad news is they’re on our table.” Shoot. Scissors are not a common commodity in a Ugandan household. Your are much more likely to find a machete than a pair of scissors. We discovered that our options were a pair of manicure scissors, or a pair of scissors the size of sheep-shearing scissors, and much much duller. Crap. The manicure scissors won out. 3 hours later Jen had handwashed her laundry, and we had finished Just Like Heaven, and my hair was finally cut off! It was 1 in the morning by now. Straight to bed we went.

The next day we went into Kampala with a few more people. Weird day. Really weird. But awesome. We went to a craft market to get stuff for our families (sorry, I can’t tell you what it is because my family reads this), and then went to watch a movie at Kampala’s only movie theatre (that we know of). We thought we were going to see Surrogate, a movie with Bruce Willis that looked like a cross between iRobot and the Matrix, but it wasn’t playing until later. So we instead went to Blue, a Bollywood movie we knew nothing about. In the opening scene a man wrestles a shark and wins. That was probably the highlight of the movie. After about 20 minutes of it we left. It was just bad. But, we convinced the ticket lady to let us come back at 4:30 to see Surrogate! And man, it was WAY better! I recommend it, in fact. It is set in Boston and I was sitting next to Manny, who lives in Boston! So he knew all the places in the movie. It was great. In fact, the whole day was just random and spontaneous, which made it fun.

So the next day, Sunday, I got to go to a performance of Ugandan cultural dances in Kampala. This was AWESOME! Woman were balancing 8 pots on their heads and still dancing really well. Amazing! And the MC of the event could probably make it as a stand up comedian in the ‘States. He was really funny. Also, this little 2 year old girl kept wandering around the stage during the dances. She was cute and liked to dance, but there were a lot of close calls when she almost got trampled by the dancers. In the beginning I was wondering where her parents were. But then I realized that I was in Africa, and this kind of behavior is pretty much normal. They did eventually come and get their kid.

Overall, a great weekend. And yesterday I cranked out two more papers. Woot!

Onto this week! More papers, a presentation, and probably a lot of socializing.

Love to all!
Joy

Drew, butchering my hair.

Josh, doing the same thing... with help from Drew.

Then Drew took the scissors... so these were our options...yeah.

Finished!! Those were the scissors we used. Yikes!