Sunday, January 5, 2014

            The last couple days have been pretty interesting. Sometimes I’ll run around town by myself, but most days I meet up with Steve and we run around the field. He usually laps me at some point because I’m still getting back into running, BUT that wasn’t the case on Friday. Finally I kept my pace and he didn’t lap me. Might not seem that significant, but I’m taking that as an accomplishment for me.

            Yesterday was our cooking day. We all met up at Matt’s homestay house, because it was the biggest and nicest (IT EVEN HAD A TOILET), and cooked with his family and our language trainers. And good for me, he’s only a few houses down from mine. Since we’ll be on our own soon, the point was to get acclimated to things like the market and sigiris (spelling?). Sigiris are what many Ugandans use to cook instead of a stove; they can fit one pot and use charcoal. Marvin, our resident chef, was in charge of organizing and delegating. The day before we visited the market to get all the ingredients and then met early Saturday to start cooking! I pretty much did preparation stuff – chopping different veggies. We wanted to make an American-style meal and I must say, it turned out pretty well! I help my homestay mom cook sometimes, but I’ll admit, she does most of the work. It’s nice having someone cook for you, but I definitely miss being able to decide what I want, when I want it, and how I want it cooked. Not meant to take away from how fantastic my mom is! I didn’t really do any cooking on Saturday, I stirred and taste-tested some beans if that counts, but it was nice to have had a say in what was going to be cooked. After we ate, we just hung out and played some games for a while. It was nice to be all together in a relaxing atmosphere, eat good food, and have fun.